Here I am again…..still on holiday… I have a spare minute or two lounging on the balcony whilst husband gathers lunch…in a hunter kind of way….it makes him feel good….it may only be a very very very hot trip to the mini market a short stroll away but hey ho it if is good for his ego who am I to argue. Eldest has gone too. He needs to learn such manly pursuits sometime.

Middlest and youngest are watching dubious TV. The choice is limited it being Greece here. But they have stumbled across the Disney Channel which seems to play white middle class teenage comedies on a sort of loop. They find it totally hypnotic. It is preferable to the 24 hour doom and gloom on CNN. And anyway it gets them out of the sun for a bit.

I had an idea for this entry which I seem to have lost the thread of. Where was I?

Oh yes I remember. I came on to talk about electronics. Specifically children and electronic devices. But now I have told you that two of my three are currently sitting in front of one I feel a tad hypocritical. But then I have spent all morning in a pool with them playing ball, and races and diving for ‘sinking seal’. So I feel a little bit of me time is in order…this blog is me time by the way. And they are on holiday and allowed to choose to spend some time watching mindless TV, even if it is beset with horrific stereotypes and canned laughter of the worst order.

Scene setting done. One, I am not against electronics per se, two, my children have devices and watch TV, three, not sure but this sentence seemed to need a three….

What prompted this post was a phenomenon I have already observed at home but which has been brought into sharp relief here. And that is the use of electronic devices at dinner tables. What really brought it to a head today though was seeing this at breakfast. Yep breakfast.

Breakfast here is an all you can eat buffet. I have mentioned the queuing for bacon already. But the choices are really quite endless. My point in bringing this up is that it is not a passive affair. One has to get up, regularly in my family’s case, to refill your plate or glass. Luckily the walk from the table we inhabit to the groaning buffet is quite lengthy and goes a small way to compensate for the vast amount of calories on offer.

As such breakfast can be as long or short as you like. It is busy and noisy and in no way refined. As such I see absolutely no need for a child to be watching a film/ playing a game/ searching you tube on an electronic device propped up on the salt and pepper cellars. I find it distressing. Actually distressing.

I don’t really like seeing it at dinner either. Yesterday a group had set the adults up at one end of their table and the four children at the other each mining for something on a separate device.  My only hope is that they were at least ‘networked’ and able to meet up in the virtual world. I think you can do that in Minecraft.

I find this odd. There were four of them around the same age. Even if the adults did not want to interact at all with their offspring surely those offspring could have entertained themselves off line?

Or if the adults were worried that they were unable to sit ‘nicely’ at a table without the use of an electronic kosh they could have been left at home with a babysitter (10 euros an hour here I am told, quite reasonable at current exchange rates). Whose job would have been very easy as I don’t think I saw any of them speak the whole time we were there.

When we eat I like to talk to my kids. Even when they were little they joined in with the meal fully. Yes those meals were not extended three hour affairs and when we went out we made full use of those colouring books and pencils provided at many family friendly restaurants. But they joined in.

This morning at breakfast we ‘discussed’ plans for the day. We talked about possible future holidays. I regaled them, probably not for the first time, with stories of our past trips abroad. I embarrassed them by being overly demonstrative and animated. In short we interacted.

I was saddened to see a little girl sat in a highchair, dummy in in between ‘courses’ watching some kids TV show on her rubber protected I pad whilst mum and dad ate in silence, each on a phone. I guess it is somewhat equivalent to reading a newspaper. Those cliches of men retreating behind their broadsheet to avoid being drawn in. I don’t like books or papers at the table either.

And yes I don’t know the ins and outs of their families. Maybe they hate each other (odd to come on holiday to Greece though in that case). Maybe those children are extremely difficult.

But I see it so much that I cannot believe that to be the case all the time. I just think it is laziness. Or a lack of anything to say. Which is just sad.

Any how rant over. I must be off to save my children’s minds from the drivel they are sat in front of. And anyway I think I hear hubby and eldest returning with freshly hunted packets of processed meat and fried potato products. One must arrange one’s grateful and somewhat awed face. And take off one’s judgey pants…