Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/303828
Mom decides to forgo Facebook for a day. Daughter does without smart- phone for same period. Dad agrees to hold off on checking his work email. Or how about: no Internet one day a week. All devices go into a suitcase for an afternoon. The family goes for a hike with no cam- eras, phones or video equipment. Agree to do one thing every day that you will commit to memory, to create shared stories that you tell back to one another in conver- sation, sitting around the campfire – metaphorical or otherwise. There is also the "surrender control" option, which we pursued when visiting Aus- tralia a few years ago – we let the kids decide what we were going to do on any given day, as long as it was new, active, outdoors and something we could all do together: swim- ming, hiking, penguin watching. You're likely to be on safely unwired ground if the activi- ties involve two things: physical movement and fresh air. A key factor in the unplugged vacation is that parents need to set the example, since slouching on the couch watching golf on TV with a brew in one hand and your smartphone in the other is just as powerful a message at the lake as it is at home. If we tell our kids to unplug, we must do the same. So remind yourself: as important as you no doubt are at work, you are more important to the people you're on holiday with. If we're able to unravel, even for a day, the wires, circuits, signals and transmis- sions that surround us, our relationships to the world and one another might actu- ally improve. So I give the unplugged vaca- tion a thumbs-up – the original "digital" communication. W p10-11_SavvyTraveller.indd 11 14-04-11 3:16 PM