Last week, just after Monday night’s family dinner, my wife, our three children and I had a meeting. All five of us sat around the table with a weekly calendar and wrote down our obligations. We wrote down the extracurriculars, the birthday parties and after-school programs. We wrote down the play dates and school projects, and then my wife, Mel, and I formed a game plan for who will take which kid to what, all in a vain attempt to make sure that our children have fulfilled childhoods. 

We’ve had this meeting each Monday for a few years now. We started it in 2019, just before the pandemic. And back then, it was a real chore to make everything fit each week. I remember leaving our family meetings feeling overwhelmed and slightly exhausted, glad that we were organized and that there wouldn’t be too many surprises during the week, but also feeling like Mel and I were two co-workers who were trying desperately to maximize our children’s lives. And part of that maximizing involved an agenda that minimized opportunities for screen time. 

I will be the first to admit, before 2020, I was pretty anti-screen time. Not that I didn’t enjoy watching shows with my kiddos, I totally did! But I also felt that our kids needed to spend more time doing what I called “real things”: social interactions, playing in the neighborhood, sports and other extracurricular activities. I was a pretty big stickler for it, actually, arguing with the kids to watch less and engage more with life outside the house. In a lot of ways, it was my motto. It was something I really clung to. Life happened best outside of the digital world, and I still believe there are some amazing opportunities outside of screens. But like many parents, my views changed in 2020.

Once COVID-19 hit, each week we’d meet and, well, the schedule would be more or less left blank. All that busy work of raising a family went out the window. Leaving the house took a lot more planning than staying home, and what I referred to as “real-life” opportunities became opportunities to contract COVID. Eventually, just to have something to put down on the schedule, we ended up scheduling a family movie night. Not every evening, but close to it. And being under stay-at-home orders during the age of streaming, it felt like the movie and TV show possibilities were endless.

Our family meeting changed from all of us thinking deeply and making sure we caught all the weekly obligations to a family of five scrolling through Netflix on phones and tablets, calling out titles we’d like to watch throughout the week, and making suggestions of movies or shows that other family members might enjoy. 

Looking back on the past two years, I can’t help but feel like some of the most rewarding moments I shared with my three kids during quarantine were spent streaming films, just the five of us hanging out on the sofa and chatting about life, the pandemic and movies. And now, as I sit across from my wife and children each Monday, the five of us working over the schedule, trying to make it all fit, the slowness of pandemic living looking more and more like it’s in the rearview mirror, I can’t help but miss the simplicity of having nothing better to do than sit and watch movies with my kiddos. 

I know if 2019 me were to sit in a room with 2022 me, he’d have some real opinions about how badly I want to just sit and chill and stream movies with my kids as opposed to taking them outside for some “real life.” But I don’t think 2019 Clint really understood how much simple warmth, delightful conversation, and stress-free living came from scheduling less and streaming more. Clearly COVID living has changed the way I view family time, and I’ve started to value those simple moments of snuggling on the sofa and watching a show with my family. Now that the business of birthday parties, extra-curricular activities, and church obligations have come knocking at the door again, I’ve begun to long for things to slow down enough so we can just chill and stream a show. 

So last week, when we were discussing all the activities we needed to place on the family schedule, I took a stand. “Can we schedule a movie night? You know, like we did during quarantine?” It got quiet for a moment, then my 12-year-old daughter said excitedly, “That would be awesome!” almost like she’d been longing all along for someone to make that suggestion. My 7-year-old’s face lit up at the prospect of watching a movie as a family, and even my 15-year-old teenage son, who is usually disinterested in all things family, said, “Yeah, that’d be cool.” 

And we picked Friday night. All of us were scrolling through Netflix again, just like we did in 2020, calling out titles that might fit, bantering over which movies we wanted to watch, laughing and getting excited about spending a simple evening as a family streaming movies.