Austin Scholar #72: My thoughts on screen time, summer plans, and other reader questions
& my crazy adventure
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: My crazy adventure
My thoughts on screen time, summer plans, and other reader questions
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been reading this week
I am absolutely crazy busy this week. Like, this is seriously one of the busiest weeks of my life. But, I still, of course, wanted to write for you. So I’m doing something a little different: I’m going to answer some reader questions I’ve been collecting. I hope you enjoy!
Austin’s Anecdote: My crazy adventure
I’ve been keeping a big secret for the past three weeks, and I can finally tell you a little bit about it…
For the last three weeks, I’ve been in, drumroll, please… Budapest :)
My sister, one of my best friends, H, and I were given an incredible opportunity to stay in Budapest for a few weeks to create a program to help give Ukrainian refugee kids a better education. And no, our parents weren’t invited.
From living in an AirBnB on our own, to actually visiting Ukraine, to putting together a major 500-kid event in just two weeks, we’ve had a pretty insane experience this summer.
I’m going to give y’all the whole story next week, but here are a few quick highlights.
The very first week we were here, the person who invited us to Budapest to help the kids set up a sightseeing tour for us. Unfortunately, my dad called right when we got the email with the itinerary, and when my sister expressed to him her excitement for sightseeing, my dad immediately shut it down and told us we couldn’t sightsee until we’d accomplished our goals. To this day, the most we’ve seen in Budapest has been the buildings we pass on our way to the school where we’re doing our pilot education program.
When we were in Ukraine, we visited a refugee center near the border. We spent over eight hours filming and interviewing and we were all pretty exhausted. But right before we left, a darling older woman walked up to the three of us and handed us the most beautiful red roses we’ve ever seen.
On the last day, we were at the Learning Without Borders school for our pilot program, our kids made us an adorable, sweet goodbye gift. They performed many dances and gave us origami flowers and made such lovely cards. And when one of our little girls started crying and begging us to stay, I couldn’t hold in my tears any longer. It was an emotional, but rewarding day.
I’m writing this newsletter during the lunch break of Day One of our event, and it’s going amazingly. There was a whole line of kids who wanted to share their creations after the first workshop; everyone loved the VR station we set up, and we didn’t mess up once in our introductory speech. In fact, all of the kids cheered and clapped at all of the right times. I can’t wait for the rest of the event.
My thoughts on screen time, summer plans, and other reader questions
I’ve recently gotten a few questions from my readers, and I wanted to take the time this week to answer them.
The following are some of the best questions I’ve gotten (or frequently asked ones!). To answer each, I’m sharing links to previous newsletters I’ve written that address those questions, plus additional thoughts and sources to help.
Question #1: “Can you tell me more about screen time? It’s something my daughter and I fight about a lot.”
I’ve written a couple of articles about this:
I also think this resource is super helpful:
A couple of other questions I’d recommend considering:
How can you use screen time (watching TV, doing to the movies, etc.) to meet your kid where they’re at?
Is there a way to make screen time a connection moment for your family?
Based on my own experience with this (my parents and I also fought about this a LOT), I’d recommend using DEARMAN to have a productive conversation with your kid about screen time limits. Using DEARMAN helped my parents and I actually communicate how we were feeling and reach a mutually agreed-upon decision.
Question #2: “My kid is bored over the summer. What should they do?”
I love summer plans, and I’ve written a couple of articles about this one: :
Austin Scholar #22: How to Help Your Kid Find Value In Their Summer
Austin Scholar #67: How to design epic summer plans (and why you should)
Other resources I’d recommend:
If your kid is struggling with summer plans, I’d recommend using the “three F” strategy (which I talked about in last summer’s newsletter: basically “fun, family, future”) to create some last-minute summer plans (my favorite type). I did this two summers ago, and it turned out to be awesome.
Question #3: “I want my kid to start reading, but they hate it. Do you have any recommendations?”
Oh yes, I do. My favorite newsletters on this::
Some other ideas and resources that might be helpful::
Use ChatGPT to create personalized stories for your kid to read (maybe a book is boring, but a dramatized account about someone they know or admire might be more fun).
Really at the end of the day, reading is so much more fun when you’re actually interested in what you’re reading. Get your kids something to read that THEY will enjoy, about something THEY already love.
Question #4: “My kid doesn’t want to work hard. What should I do?”