A Mental Health Month

[ChetlovesMer]

My wife and I decided to do a mental health month long challenge. It was suggested by one of our jobs health programs and we decided to do it. We made the kids do it too even though it would not have been their choice. Basically it's a no-screens, or minimum screens challenge. 

We decided to go one month with no screens that weren't directly related to either school work or our jobs. 

We didn't really plan it or say he let's do this in the future. We just heard about it and started right then. 

We also didn't go completely dark (a la Aaron Rogers). We just eliminated any screen time that wasn't for work or school. ... Cell phones got into a bit of a grey area as texting a happy birthday message to Aunt Kim was considered okay, but sometimes too much texting was kiboshed. 

Anyway, it was kind of cool. We played lots of ping-pong, poppa-shots and pool. All four of us improved at each of those games. I think getting the extra movement was good for all of us, especially because the weather over that month gave us very little outside time. Plus, it was fun to see and hear the ping-pong challenges and smack talk being laid down at dinner every night. 

So do we have better mental health now? ... I'm not sure. But I'm positive we don't have worse mental health. 

Here are some things I learned. 

1. My wife and I are a pretty good ping-pong match. 
2. My kids' friends were freaked out when they first would visit. "What, no screens?". But they too got into the other stuff we did. Ping-pong really seemed to be the thing everyone liked most. 
3. Its nice that we were able to use our basement a lot over the month. (ping-pong, papa-shots, pool.) 
4. Not watching the SuperBowl is actually a good thing. That's like 6 hours of your life you can spend doing other stuff. I didn't watch even a second of it and don't feel like I missed anything. I do drive a lot for work so I did hear about it on the radio the next couple of days. 
5. Playing pool with your kids teaches you a lot about how they handle good luck, bad luck, winning and losing. ... Kinda like golf does. 
6. I actually think lowing your screen time improves your sleep. 
7. Lastly, we spent a lot less time sitting and that has to be good for us. 

Anyway, its a fun little challenge. I know it's probably impossible for most of us to eliminate screen time all together. As you probably know, there are tons of studies linking quantity of screen time to depression etc... 

There are some things on screens we still like and will go back to... i.e. hanging out on this forum. But we did learn that a lot of what we do on screens is just mental gum-chewing and pretty much only done out of habit. 

It's kind of a fun experiment and although my kids didn't like it at first, I think they actually got the most out of it. 

 

[iacas]

So that's where you've been. 🙂 

[snapfade]

It's interesting you brought this up. Since my wife's cancer has spread to her brain, she has become obsessed with mental health and healing. She meditates for an hour each morning with no TV on, and other things. One thing we do now is every evening after dinner is to turn off the TV and play Yatzee for an hour or so. We have limited our TV time and have been reading more.  For me the big three are, metal health, financial health, and physical health. I admit that I slack on the physical end, but mental health affects are areas of your life. 

[ChetlovesMer]

1 hour ago, snapfade said:

It's interesting you brought this up. Since my wife's cancer has spread to her brain, she has become obsessed with mental health and healing. She meditates for an hour each morning with no TV on, and other things. One thing we do now is every evening after dinner is to turn off the TV and play Yatzee for an hour or so. We have limited our TV time and have been reading more.  For me the big three are, metal health, financial health, and physical health. I admit that I slack on the physical end, but mental health affects are areas of your life. 

2 Things: 

First, I hope your wife gets well.

Second, I love Yahtzee. Growing up, my family did a weekly family game night. When it was my turn to choose the game I often picked Yahtzee. Much to my sister's chagrin. 😁👍👍