Taking a family vacation without cellphones and iPads | THE MOM STOP

My three kids are like a lot of other teenagers or pre-teens across the country: Their faces are often focused on a screen, whether it’s an iPad or a smartphone.

Childhood today is different from what it was even 15 years ago, and especially different from when I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.

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I try to explain to my children that we had to wait until Saturday morning to watch kids cartoons on TV, because there was no such thing as “on demand.” We had to pay to develop film so we could see what pictures looked like. And when it came to road trips, we had few entertainment choices: reading a book or magazine, drawing, or playing games like “I Spy.”

I still remember how, on road trips, my mother would pack us a basket of coloring books, card games like “Go Fish” and tapes of “children’s music.” Often, my sister and I would end up with a pillow in the middle of the backseat to separate us since we just couldn’t get along.

Last week, my husband and I took our three kids on a bucket list of a vacation: a one-week road trip through the Canadian Rockies. We had visited the area without our kids previously on an anniversary trip, and were so blown away with the beauty of the mountains that we knew we wanted to come back.

And so we did, with our kids this time.

I have to say, my kids were impressed by the landscape. It’s not that surprising, given that the Canadian Rockies make the foothills of the Appalachians look like anthills. During our vacation, we got to walk on a glacier and stick our faces in ice-cold meltwater. We canoed in turquoise waters, hiked through woodlands surrounded by centuries-old pines. We saw wildlife from moose to elk to even a grizzly bear. And we slept in a log cabin ― with no Wi-Fi.

I repeat, no internet.

For our 15-year-old daughter, driving for hours with no cellphone reception was difficult, but staying in a cabin that had no Internet was the real challenge. For our 9-year-old daughter, the stay started with a lot of whining about being “bored.”

But then, our teenage daughter started working on her artwork, since she brought her sketchbook and markers on the trip. Our 12-year-old son, who is also a Boy Scout, took to practicing his ax skills outside by breaking down logs into kindling for the firepit.

And our 9-year-old temporarily went missing. We quickly found her outside, in the tall grass in front of the cabin, picking wildflowers in the evening dusk.

Each day, we drove to local sites and spent our time hiking and enjoying the national parks. And each evening, our family cooked s'mores over the firepit. The last night, as we played giant Jenga, our three kids laughed. My husband and I exchanged “Do you see this?” looks.

Our kids were enjoying each other’s company, getting along, and there were no screens in sight. Going to the Canadian Rockies provided us with some of the best scenery and outdoor activities in the world.

But it also provided us with something possibly just as precious: screen-free quality time with our kids. In today’s world, that can be just as rare and important.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: An unwired family vacation? It can be done | THE MOM STOP