A Tale of Adventure and No Media Mondays

*name changed for sake of confidentiality

“This is a tale of adventure, mystery, and despair,” begins Home Parent Dad, Al Howell.

Perhaps we should back up before finishing this adventure and explain that the following “tale” took place because of No Media Monday in The Zimmer Home. Our Harrisburg schools are not in session on Mondays. Thus, a typical Monday used to look like kids doing chores, breakfast, homework, lunch…and then time with electronics. It wasn’t long before the Howells decided it was time to do away with those on Mondays.

Mom Rachel says, “The kids adjusted pretty quickly. They are now able to be so much more creative, plus they get to practice their conflict resolution skills a little more.  They play outside, make up games, learn new games, and make up dances to songs.  It frees them to use the imagination God gave them.”

Back to our tale. Al continues, “I stepped outdoors and saw our 11-year-old boy, Shawn*, throwing rocks. I exclaimed, ‘What are you doing??!’”

Shawn replied, “The cat is trying to eat the baby birds!!”

“I walked over to where he pointed and saw a low hanging branch with a nest. I could see baby robins chirping for their mother, and our barn cat walking out on the branch to get them. I then let him throw a few more sticks towards the cat, which soon decided that a full stomach was not worth the harassment and ran away. All of our kids cheered and told Shawn he had done a great job.” 

Later that day, Shawn accomplished another daring feat. For an entire month, he had been working on trying to climb one particular tree, without success. The same day that he rescued the birds, he also got all the way up the tree by himself for the very first time.

Building confidence and showing compassion for the helpless is definitely a big win for Shawn, and for No Media Mondays!

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