Christmas in August?

Yesterday it seemed that it was unexpectedly Christmas in August at our house. 

Internet connection
We'd had this "internet connectivity" issue that we'd been waiting to be fixed ever since we arrived in this house six weeks ago. In fact we'd been working on getting connected for some time before that, but it just seemed to be one disappointment after another. So, for the last six weeks we've been functioning with a mobile dongle in an area of poor receptivity. 

Through that, though, we were learning a good deal of patience and adaptability. We were working on nice days outside on our patio, which was the only area near our house where we could get reliable internet. 

The latest as far as we knew, was that we had an appointment on the 17th of September. We'd pretty much resigned ourselves to many more weeks of mobile dongle inconvenience.

Yesterday, though, David unexpectedly had a phone call while I was riding with the boys to school, which went something like this:

"Hi, I'm from NBN. Sorry I've been away on holidays, can I come around and see what needs doing?"

It turns out he and another worker came around and did everything we needed to connect up to the national broadband and hey presto, we've got internet everywhere in our house!

The internet arriving marks the last of our "big" things to do for settling here in Australia, so it is a relief to have that completed. 

New computer
At the same time as they were working on connecting us up to national broadband, David was having a second go at transferring all our data to our new computer that arrived last Thursday afternoon. Our first attempt, on Friday and Saturday, had failed after hours of trying.

Yesterday, though, in under two hours our new computer was up and running and I'm typing on it now. After more than a year of sluggish, sometimes unreliable or quirky computer issues, I now have one that is working fast and reliably. It's delightful!

New book

That's my hand!

During all the above exciting events, I was shopping for weekly groceries. As I loaded supplies into our green van I received an anonymous text:

"The books have arrived."

After a bit of back and fro texting, I figured out that the 31 Days of Prayer for Japan books had finally arrived in Brisbane. Our state director brought 50 copies to our door later that afternoon, so I now have them in my hands! I'm going to have fun promoting these. Message me if you'd like one. They are AUD$4 (plus $1.40 postage within Australia).

Inside the booklet.
I wrote the article on the righthand page and one other page. The rest
of it I edited closely, with the help of other people.

So excited about these, but also so tired. The weekend was big (Sunday we had our first deputation appointment at a church), and Monday's are always big with wrestling/gym/mobile dinner happening after school and into the evening. On top of that we have a family member visiting for a week. It's a joy to have her, but I do admit to being tired.

It's four and a half weeks until we go on two weeks holiday: camping and visiting family. In that time we have quite a bit to do, including a big national conference for our mission next weekend (29-31). We'll be very ready for a rest by time our holidays come.

Sort your rubbish?

Today has been more planning for presentations. Boring stuff to write about on a blog, really!

Rubbish collection station around the corner from
our house in Tokyo.

The fun thing was talked about over lunch, however, was an idea we've had for some time but haven't had time to put it into action. Aside from talking in front of groups of people in formal-type situations, sometimes we get the opportunity to do some more interactive things with groups. These are so much fun! In the past we've done slipper relays, chopsticks challenges, origami, a Japanese receipt game, and a language learning activity. 

This time we want to do a Rubbish Sorting Game. Sorting the rubbish in Japan is complex but a game based on this has the potential to make a fun activity to give people a feeling of culture shock. It's just that there are so many ways we could do it. We've been bandying around ideas for months now, but not gotten very far.

We talked in more detail over lunch about it today, though, and David's actually written some things down. Perhaps we'll make some progress on this soon?

It certainly takes our mind off the internet troubles that we continue to experience. Today we were supposed to have someone come, supposedly to "connect us up", but it didn't happen. The "outside team" that would make sure there was a connection that came from the street (as far as I understand it) didn't show up so the technician that did had nothing to connect up to. 

And so we continue to wait. But we're not in too bad a way, as long as we can continue to use this mobile internet out the back in our "patio office" it works pretty well and decreases the incentive to work at night-time when it's coolish out here.

Unplugged parenting

Today I realised again how anti-screen our parenting style is. We actively discourage our boys from spending much time watching TV, or on computers. We don't only have strict guidelines on how much time they can spend on these things every day, we have actively encouraged them over the years to develop interests that don't need to be plugged-in. And we've never bought them toys that are screen-based.

This began quite young, when we restricted TV to only one hour at a time, and only at certain times of day. That's faded out as they've become busy at school. These days they don't usually watch TV during the week and only occasionally on the weekend. As the years have gone on, internet usage has been given rules too.

But I realised today that having more than one child is definitely an advantage in this regard. When a Japanese mum of a young teenager and only child asked (in regards to the upcoming coming three weeks break from school), "What will they do, if they can't be on the internet?" I had lots of answers, but some didn't apply to her.

Our boys will be out getting exercise, playing board games with each other, and playing with their Lego, NInjago, action figures etc. They'll also be reading and perhaps doing crafty things. I'll be asking them to help me cook meals too.

Our teenager has developed a number of non-plugged in hobbies/interests including: Rubics cube, collecting dice and manipulation puzzles, learning various knots, working out (for wrestling), logic puzzles, and he is a voracious reader. He's also recently been creating an Australian version of Risk in his spare time. This boy, of his own volition, has spurned Facebook, which, I believe, is where a lot of his friends (at least the girls) are spending their time.

One of the reasons we steer the boys away from the internet and from TV is that it cripples their creativity. It also produces behaviour that isn't very helpful. A few weeks back they developed an obsession with a internet based game. Their behaviour was disrespectful and they couldn't think about anything else except getting to play that game. I banned it for a week and things improved significantly around here. That obsession has faded, thankfully.

Our guys live life at a pretty high intensity, we don't need anything that will add to that intensity. I guess every parent has to figure out what works best in their family. We've found a pretty good balance for us. We'll see how that progresses as our boys get older.

Not feeling so bad today

Some follow-up on yesterday's emotional post.


It is funny, the twists that life takes with kids. As I said yesterday, I set up separate accounts for our boys on our Mac. I didn't tell them why (David did tell our oldest later privately). But they were so excited. To have your own password, be able to organise your desktop etc. – to them it seemed almost like they'd been given their own private computer! I guess they do this at school (the passwords, etc.), so it seemed familiar. A few kinks to work out, especially for our older son, but it seems to be okay at this point.


On Facebook Jean pointed out how important it was not to just rely on filters, but to teach our kids about self-control, internet safety etc. And she is so right, especially as they get older and need to use the internet more and more. She pointed us to this website, which seems to be a very helpful place to spend some time browsing.


During our usual individual Bible time with the kids, David spent some time talking privately to our son about what I'd discovered. Our son was speechless with embarrassment for a time. It turns out he was curious, had some questions. And what do you do these days when you have a question? You Google. Unfortunately when you Google things about women's bodies you find yourself in some very bad places. We've been teaching him, so he knew that what he'd been looking at wasn't great. 


It was interesting to me that after they'd had a chat (and my husband revealed that he would be teaching our son and the rest of the boys in his class in Sex Ed early next year!), our son was very happy, buoyant even. Like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. David answered some questions he had and will continue to keep that door open. He also pointed out that the internet isn't a good place to find out this kind of information, that people who make websites about these things aren't thinking about doing things that please God.


So now I'm left to sort out the kinks in the filter that prevents our boys from doing things that they  need to do for school. And to keep educating my self and being more proactive about educating our boys about these things.


Why I felt embarrassed to admit this yesterday, was because this has been coming, we knew it. I'm just sorry we didn't do something about it earlier. And I felt sick because it reminded me, yet again, of how heavy this burden of parenting really is, praise the Lord that we share it with him in our house! It has been good to get it out in the open, though, because we all face it. And all of us parents are dealing with new stuff, it just wasn't like this when we were kids. Let's face it, video stores and the internet didn't even exist when I was in Primary School (US=elementary)! 


But for now I need to focus myself on some editing, some Bible study preparation, and the Australian Christmas presentation I'm doing for the Grade 1s this afternoon.

I'm feeling a bit sick to my stomach

This morning I discovered my 12 1/2 y.o. son had accessed Youtube videos, while I was upstairs cleaning, that were very unsuitable. And I feel a bit sick. This responsibility of raising children keeps getting heavier.


This means significant changes in computer usage around here. It was always coming, but this is the big wake-up call. I just feel sick that it took this to wake us up! 


Really, the whole computer use by the kids in our house has taken off in the last 15 months, ever since we came back to Japan. At that point our eldest got his own school email address. And the younger boys were expected to do homework using the computer (various educational websites like IXL and Typing Pal and their classes have their own blogs too). Now our eldest is in the school wrestling team and they've been encouraged to watch Youtube videos about wrestling. It is really only a very small step sideways from that to the most undesirable. Our computer is in a common room, but as was demonstrated this morning, I cannot be always looking over my sons' shoulders.


The other problem is that I am a multi-tasker. And the way I got a lot of computer stuff done when the boys were toddlers was to have the computer on and between other things will be dashing off an email or checking something on the internet. That habit remains with me, unfortunately. I'm looking at the various options to change our current status. Probably everyone is way ahead of us, I feel like we've had our heads in the sand. 


The easiest thing to implement today (in the midst of busy week) is that everyone has now their own "account" on our Mac and there are parental controls there that block the sorts of things our son was looking at this morning. That means that I have to log-out from everything I've been doing to let someone else use the computer (though really, I hardly use the computer between 4 and 8 p.m. these days, it is too busy with boys doing homework and such).


My husband will talk with our son this evening. In a way there is good that can come out of this. We've mostly met with disinterest when raising this whole topic with him before. Now, he's obviously changing and interested, so this is an opening to talk.


I'm really am a bit embarrassed to admit all this. But I figure if there are others out there who can learn from this, then I want to help you avoid this in your own family.