The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
Are there any among you who try to limit your screen time, or especially phone time? I've started using a timed blocker app to ensure that I spend my early mornings doing something other than scrolling X. I have been surprised at the extent to which I had acquired some kind of muscle memory that makes me pick my phone up every few minutes to check notifications; but I may have broken that now. Wondering if anyone else has similar or related experiences.
I was horrified to see that I spent 7 hours looking at my phone yesterday.
The biggest challenge for me is finding a replacement which allows for frequent interruption without diminishing enjoyment. Memes and X threads take a seconds to consume, so if one of my many children spills a cup of milk or bumps his head I can easily put the phone down. Even smartphone games require too much unbroken engagement. I would love to read some of my many books, but I've tried and I just end up reading the same page 47 times.
I can only say again what I keep saying over and over only to be told that it's impossible:
Don't even try to look at your phone when kids are around.
I could expand on this, relay my experiences on the topic, and how I am very, very convinced that this is the only remotely sensible way - but everyone nowadays is addicted to the little screen, so why bother. Nobody will follow this advice. There will be excuses.
Edit: Oh well, I ended up writing a screed anyways:
If you stick to it, it will make your life a lot easier, and your interactions with the kid a lot better.
But yes, you will have to just suck up those brief moments of "This feels like three seconds of downtime in which I could twist open the dopamine faucet." and instead tell yourself "No. Now is child time.".
Which isn't to say that the child needs uninterrupted attention. Far from it. But you have an example to set, and the example shouldn't be "Goes for immediate gratification at a second's notice." or "Turns into a drooling zombie two hundred times a day.". Either do something with the kid, or at least do something useful that the child does well to observe.
I see far too many people who are annoyed by their children, and keep bitching at them or ignoring them, because above all what the children are to them are interruptors of the dopamine flow. And that is, IMO, very unfair to the kids, and very counterproductive for the parents/grandparents/nannies. And they do it just to doomscroll. It's disgusting. I wish people would stop that. I wish I could pry my wife away from her phone in such a way that it doesn't snap back into her face at the first physical opportunity. I wish my parents would stop cracking open their notebooks and tell the kids to shut up as soon as they arrive at home. I wish I wouldn't see parents dragging their kids along the street with one hand while staring at their phone with the other, chewing them out all the while but never looking them in the eyes. I wish they wouldn't all park the kids in front of the TV so they can get back to staring at screens. Screens, screens and sugar all day every day. I hate it. I hate it so damn much. I can have a full and productive day with the little one, without trying to shut her off so that I can favor my addictions instead, and after such a day relax and do something for myself in the evening and actually feel that I deserve the rest. God's gift to mankind: Children sleep longer than adults. I am far from perfect, a creature of many failures, but this is one thing that I am convinced I do right, or at least less wrong than most. I wish others would follow suit.
But it isn't to be. Humanity is fucking over.
I'm going to try it.
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