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Unplugging the Millers — A family ditches television and finds Narnia—and each other.
By Ingrid Case
 Can a family with 300 TV channels, two DVD players, one high-speed Internet connection, two Game Boys and a PlayStation2 surrender the remotes and rediscover each other? Thrivent magazine decided to find out. We asked Thrivent Financial members Perry and Jaylene Miller, along with their two sons, to spend one week unplugged—no television, video games or iPods, and only emergency Internet and cell phone use. Read on to see how they did—and then ask yourself how your family would fare in the same scenario.
An All-American Family
The Millers live in Pinehurst, Texas. Perry, age 40, teaches religion and physical education at Salem Lutheran School and Church, where the family also worships. Jaylene, age 38, is a bank manager, while Jordan, age 13, and Joshua, age 9, are avid participants in baseball, basketball and other sports.
According to Nielsen Media Research, 50 percent of American households have three or more TV sets. The Millers, no exception to this rule, have four television sets, including one in the boys’ playroom and a 65-inch high-definition set the family inherited from their home’s previous owners.
A typical week in the Miller home looks like this: When Jordan and Joshua get home from school, they may head for their playroom TV—and the parent-approved video games, TV shows and DVDs that wait for them—only after they’ve finished their homework. The family switches on the front room set during dinner one or two nights a week. After the boys have gone to bed, Perry and Jaylene tune into favorite shows like Survivor and CSI. The whole family watches television together on weekends and rainy days.
A Tentative Beginning
Prior to going unplugged, Perry and the two boys thought that giving up television—especially sports programs—would be difficult. The boys also were dismayed to give up video games. “I always have my Game Boy in the car,” Joshua said on the eve of the experiment. “It’ll be boring to just do nothing.”
Both kids were sure that their friends would think the plan was “crazy,” or maybe a punishment for bad behavior. “Our friends will say, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Jordan predicts, adding that he hopes it doesn’t rain.
From Deprivation to Discovery
As it turned out, the weather was clear and warm all week, which helped the Miller boys enjoy new bicycles. The family also got out card and board games such as backgammon.
“I think the hardest thing is getting over the habit of picking up the clicker and turning the television on,” Jaylene says a few days into the experiment. “But there are so many other things to do, like laughing with each other.”
Some of that laughter was derived from realizing just how dependent they had become on technology. When the experiment prevented Perry from turning on the Weather Channel one morning, he turned to old-fashioned weather gauging: “I went outside and felt how cold it was,” he says, “and told the kids to put on some pants.”
Deprived of their video games and favorite shows, the boys found a new pastime: reading. Joshua began The Wind in the Willows, and Jordan dug out The Chronicles of Narnia. “I never thought I’d be reading, because that’s one of my least favorite things,” Jordan says. “I miss the TV and video games—every time I walk into my living room and see that 65-inch blank screen, it freaks me out, and I really want to turn it on. It’s tormenting me, but I’m starting to do other things that I don’t usually do.”
The Millers made other meaningful observations, too. Perry and Jaylene noticed that they had relied on television and video games to keep their sons occupied. “Having them watch a show used to be the easiest way to occupy their time,” Jaylene explains. “Now we have to get more creative.”
The Millers also noticed that their TV-free boys had more conflicts—and more time to solve them. “Now they have to be more interactive and handle disagreements on their own,” Jaylene says. “It’s good to watch them learn to referee themselves.”
A Change for the Better
At the week’s end, the Millers were happy to get their screens back, but they plan to stick with some of the changes they made during their seven-day technology tune-out. Joshua will keep playing backgammon. Jordan is halfway through The Magician’s Nephew, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, and is too hooked to stop now. And the whole family plans to keep hanging out. “The time we spent together during the experiment was precious,” Perry says. “I used to feel disconnected when I didn’t watch the news. Now I wonder if I even missed anything.”
The boys are even volunteering to forgo some future screen time. Despite their fears at the beginning of the week, the worst part of going without video games and television was “nothing, really,” Joshua says. “I think we might do this again.”
Minneapolis-based Ingrid Case is a past contributor to Thrivent magazine.
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