This year I celebrated my 60th birthday. I was born in 1960. This means I grew up with just one telephone in the entire house, hanging on the kitchen wall. Computers were just a huge monster at important places like NASA, and the Internet didn’t even exist. Today I use a laptop, iPad, and cellphone, but as a child, teen, and young wife and mother, I experienced life in a device-free world.

I have precious childhood memories of carefree days…riding my trike round and round the milking parlor on the dairy farm where I grew up, squishing mud pies in a red wagon filled with shovelfuls of dirt, collecting bucketsful of black walnuts in their gooey purple-stained husks, playing hide and seek among the hay bales, and swinging for hours on end. No phone interruptions, no dings sounding in the background for social media, no electronic distractions to tempt me away from exploring and enjoying the big wide wonderful world.

So when my grandson arrived for a sleepover recently, I was prepared. I decided to be intentional about experiencing a device-free relationship with him. I left all three of my devices in my office at their charging stations. No, I didn’t just turn off the notifications. I didn’t just leave a device in my pocket determining not to answer it. I left them behind. All of them.

It was nothing short of delightful. How magical it was to sit on the patio swing together, singing our favorite songs. We watered the sunflowers, seeds planted at his last sleepover and now 10-inches tall. We bounced a big ball back and forth for Four-Square. We dug in the dirt and mud to build a trail for toy trains to travel over (including a tunnel made of pine branches). When we went inside, we sang more songs with Grandpa on his guitar, read books, built a cowboy town with Legos,® and all played Uno® together.

All this while my devices were busy by themselves left behind in my office.

I have decided I want to enjoy more and more device-free relationships. But I’m not the only one. Click here to check out HANDS-FREE MAMA for more ideas, tips, and testimonies on how you can experience the joy of device-free relationships, too.

Nancy I. Sanders is a bestselling and award-winning children’s author of more than 100 books. CLICK HERE to visit the website of one of her newest books, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS.

Image by rein schoondorp from Pixabay