Seven Screen-Free Ways to Reconnect as a Family

by Michael Scheele and Christine Temko-Scheele

Television is an easy answer to the question, “What should we do tonight?”

Most people enjoy television and movies, particularly when watching them has become part of the family routine. Phones are even harder to resist. They’re portable, constantly available, and filled with short pieces of content designed to keep our attention.

We tell ourselves, “I’ll just check this while I’m waiting,” or, “It only takes a second to answer this message.”

Usually, it takes longer than we think. Even when it doesn’t, it interrupts the time we’re supposed to be sharing with the people beside us.

The answer isn’t to declare that all technology is evil or to make every screen an enemy. Technology can be useful, educational, and enjoyable. The problem begins when convenience quietly replaces connection.

A screen-free evening doesn’t need to cost money, require travel, or become another elaborate project for an already tired parent. It only needs to create room for family members to turn toward one another again.

A Free Resource for Your Family

We’ve created a free two-page guide called 50 Screen-Free Ways to Grow Closer as a Family. It includes Bible activities, indoor games, creative projects, outdoor adventures, acts of service, family storytelling, and faith-building ideas.

Download 50 Screen-Free Ways to Grow Closer as a Family

You don’t need to complete the list or follow every suggestion exactly. Choose one activity, offer your children a few options, adapt it to your family, and leave room for conversation.

Here are seven simple places to begin.

1. Work With the Time You Already Have

When parents hear that children need more individual attention, it can sound like one more demand on an already impossible schedule.

If you can’t make additional time, work with the time you have.

Invite your child to help prepare dinner, sort laundry, organize a shelf, tend the garden, or complete a safe household repair. Yes, it’s often faster to do the work yourself than to teach a five-year-old and patiently guide those small hands through the process.

But your child’s development is part of the work.

Children need to learn how ordinary responsibilities are completed. More importantly, they need time beside their parents. The task gives you something to do together while conversation develops naturally.

This shouldn’t completely replace silly time, reading time, or playtime. Make the work enjoyable when you can, and continue looking for opportunities to give your child your undivided attention.

2. Let Children Help Choose the Activity

Taking away a screen without offering anything meaningful in its place can feel like punishment.

The earlier a family begins establishing screen-free routines, the easier they’ll usually become. We know homeschooling families who don’t own televisions, and their children don’t feel deprived because television was never the center of family recreation.

Whatever your family’s current habits may be, make the alternatives genuinely enjoyable.

Instead of announcing, “Nobody is using a phone tonight,” offer two or three possibilities:

“Would you rather play a board game, build a pillow fort, or make dessert together?”

Children are more likely to participate when they have some ownership of the decision. Parents should participate too. Screen-free time won’t feel valuable if the children lose their devices while the adults continue checking theirs.

3. Make Bible Learning Playful

Conversations about God don’t always need to begin with everyone sitting silently around a table.

Have a Bible sword drill and race to find a passage. Play Bible Pictionary or Bible charades. Act out a biblical account and let everyone guess the people or event. Choose an ordinary household object and challenge family members to explain how it reminds them of God’s character, creation, mercy, or truth.

These activities don’t diminish the seriousness of Scripture. They help children become comfortable opening their Bibles, asking questions, and talking about God as a natural part of family life.

The objective isn’t merely to test who knows the most answers. It’s to make God’s Word familiar, accessible, and present within the home.

4. Tell Stories Together

Begin a fictional story, stop at an exciting moment, and choose the next person to continue it. Keep passing the story until everyone has contributed.

The results may be hilarious, completely unreasonable, or surprisingly good. None of that matters as much as the interaction.

You can also invite children to interview their parents or grandparents about childhood. Ask what games they played, what school was like, what they did during summer, what they feared, or how they spent time before smartphones.

Some of our strongest childhood memories aren’t expensive trips or elaborate events. They’re quiet moments.

Mike remembers fishing trips with his father when they caught nothing and spent the day talking. He remembers long walks with his grandparents. As a father, he remembers catching frogs with his children and splashing through the mud without worrying about the mess.

Children may forget many of the things we purchase for them. They’re much less likely to forget the stories, laughter, and attention we share with them.

5. Create Something Side by Side

Bake something together. Paint the images or truths a favorite Bible verse brings to mind. Build a pillow fort. Make a paper blessing quilt. Invent a family board game and revise the rules after playing it.

The finished product doesn’t need to look impressive.

A crooked cake, unusual painting, or poorly engineered pillow fort can still become a cherished family memory. The purpose isn’t perfection. The purpose is shared attention.

Creative activities also give children a relaxed opportunity to talk. When their hands are busy and the pressure of direct conversation is removed, they may share thoughts and concerns that they’ve been holding inside.

6. Step Outside and Slow Down

Take a nature walk and notice tracks, insects, clouds, plants, and sounds. Search for four-leaf clovers, not because Christians need luck, but because they’re uncommon and exciting to find. Use James 1:17 to talk about the difference between luck and God’s blessings.

Go fishing, even if nothing bites. Eat dinner in the backyard. Camp outside the house. Sit quietly and make a map of every sound you hear.

Children growing up with constant digital stimulation may rarely experience genuine stillness. They may never discover how comfortable the grass can be when it’s no longer freshly mowed but hasn’t yet gone to seed. They may not understand why an older man can be perfectly content sitting on his stoop and watching the world pass.

Stillness gives children room to observe, imagine, talk, and think. It also gives families room to notice God’s creation together.

7. Turn Family Connection Outward

Screen-free time doesn’t have to remain inside the family.

Write encouraging letters to residents of a nursing home or veterans home. Make care kits after asking a local outreach what it actually needs. Leave a handmade gift and note for a neighbor. Braid old T-shirts into pull toys after checking a rescue shelter’s requirements.

Serving together teaches children that generosity includes more than money. It includes attention, creativity, time, effort, and a willingness to notice other people.

It also changes the character of family time. You aren’t merely trying to keep everyone entertained without a screen. You’re working together toward something that matters.

What Children Reveal Through Play

Children often lower their defenses when they’re relaxed and playing.

A concern that they haven’t been able to express directly may suddenly appear in an imaginary game. A child having frightening dreams about ghosts may introduce ghosts into the story. A child worried about conflict at school may create characters facing rejection or bullying.

Parents should pay attention without turning every game into an interrogation.

Play gives us a window into what children are processing. When we participate, listen, and remain emotionally available, we create opportunities for reassurance, instruction, prayer, and connection.

Begin With Yourself

The strongest family habits rarely grow from a forced program.

When a parent’s prayer life, Bible reading, and desire to share God’s Word are genuine, faith begins flowing naturally into ordinary family life. Children see that God isn’t reserved for church services or formal devotional time. He’s present while we work, walk, play, talk, and serve.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says:

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

That passage describes faith woven into daily life.

Not every screen-free evening will become a treasured memory. Sometimes children will complain. Sometimes the activity won’t work. Sometimes everyone will be tired and the board game will end much sooner than expected.

Keep trying.

We’ve seen the connection firsthand. The more quality time families spend actually interacting with one another, the closer they tend to become.

Outside of investing in their spiritual lives and strengthening your marriage, there is no greater investment than meaningful time with your children.

Find an Idea for Tonight

Our free guide offers 50 ways to begin, including activities for different ages, energy levels, interests, and amounts of available time.

Download 50 Screen-Free Ways to Grow Closer as a Family

Choose one. Put the phones away. Turn toward one another and see where the time leads.