Have you ever looked at tech today and wished for a time when things were simpler? I’ve found myself pining away for those days when remote controls were new inventions and there was literally nothing on tv if you watched too early or too late. Today is our chance for a bit of a reality check.
In today’s conversation we get the special treat of hearing from my dad, Greg Sutherland, and take a little trip down memory lane to the late 1980s and a fateful decision he and my mom made to do what, at the time, was nearly unthinkable: Get rid of television.
I didn’t have this episode planned, but I’m so thankful for the chance to record it and I’m excited for all of you to get a chance to hear from a wise and loving man on what it means to raise kids who love God and use tech.
Transcription:
Nathan Sutherland:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today, we are joined by a special guest, adding onto a special episode of our Analog Adventure series, my father. Welcome, Greg Sutherland.
Greg Sutherland:
Hi Nathan. It’s good to be here.
Nathan Sutherland:
That’s the only time you’ll hear me use his first name, by the way.
So little context. My dad and I are on a road trip for work. You joined the party bus this week for travel in eastern Washington.
Greg Sutherland:
I did. We’re in Walla Walla and loving it.
Nathan Sutherland:
Beautiful out here.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, it is.
Nathan Sutherland:
It’s incredible. We got caught in a bit of a squall. It snowed last night in the foothills. So we can see the Blue Mountains from here. It’s gorgeous. And doing some talks at a church. So tonight we’ve got workshop number two. But I brought dad on because when we’re talking Analog Adventures, when we’re talking raising kids in a tech world, like this man and my mother we’re at the forefront of this because, well, they raised me, Mr. I want to use tech for hope. I am the kind of, what would you call, the exemplar of the child turning to technology to feel good. So I want to ask you a couple of questions today.
A little context dad. I’m assuming, of course you’ve heard them, but for the listeners then I’ll say this. Last three episodes were of running through of how do we create fun at the pace of real life? And I talked about, last one was sports and getting out in nature. And the previous one was, oh, can I do this, board games and something else important. And the one before that was reading and making adventures on your own in that way. I’m sorry, guys, I should have had those in front of me, but I don’t. And we’re going to keep rolling.
With that then, we’re going to have a conversation about what does it look like, what was it like for you guys, because you made some intentional steps with tech. And then what can we talk about with families about what does it look like to raise, I guess, counter-cultural in the tech format, because that was something you guys did. So listeners, I hope you enjoy this conversation because it is unique. I literally have him trapped here. He can’t go anywhere. We’re stuck for another full day. So I’m excited to have you guys hear from him and yeah, get this conversation going. So with no further ado, let’s get this conversation started.
Welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast, a resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth in a tech world. As an educator, parent and tech user, I want to equip parents with the tools, resources, and confidence they need to raise kids who love God and use tech.
Thank you to everyone who’s helped make this podcast possible. Thank you for listening, for liking, for sharing and subscribing so you don’t miss any of that new content. And thank you for just being a part of today’s conversation. Speaking of today’s conversation, we’ve got my dad here. We have a man who’s a father of five. What was that process like? Why did they make the decisions they made? Dad, why don’t you take us back to this idea we kind of were kicking around before this. When you had five kiddos, you ended up choosing to step away from television and getting rid of that house. Why television and why in that season of life? How’d that happen?
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, good question. Mom and I, my wife is Raylene. I’m going to refer to her as mom here.
Nathan Sutherland:
That’s fair.
Greg Sutherland:
On behalf of our five children. Nathan was about five, and we decided, Raylene and I decided we’re going to go on just short vacation. It was an orthodontic seminar and it was in the Orcas Islands. So we decided that we’d attend this and see if we could learn. Well, one of the sessions was on parenting and we didn’t have it really planned to go, but we said, well, it’s kind of rainy out. Let’s go see what’s at least at the seminar. So at the seminar, the leader was talking about removing TV. And he did it because he said that when you look at a TV set, it kind of flashes at you, and that draws your attention to it. And we always thought if the kids were attentive to TV, that was helping their be able to focus and keep longer attention.
Nathan Sutherland:
It’s slow.
Greg Sutherland:
And in fact, it was just the opposite. He said, “If you really want your kids to learn well, get them away from the TV and have them start listening to reading or reading themselves.” And he said, “If you want the kids to be social, get them involved with other people. Don’t have them sit in front of the TV and listen to things.” So we heard enough to really challenging us with our ideas of do we really want our kids to be involved in a TV or do we want them to be involved in the lives of other people? So when we came back, we stopped at the North Mall-
Nathan Sutherland:
Oh, Northgate.
Greg Sutherland:
Northgate Mall. We stopped there and we bought a whole bunch of toys. We bought Lincoln Logs and all these kind of things that you put together and play with and dolls and that kind of stuff. And so we came back kind of with gifts to buy our TV away. And we disconnected the TV. And initially, we left it there, but then people would still ask, “Well, can we watch TV?” Because we watch TV. No, we can’t. So I carried it finally up to our bedroom and put it in our closet, and it stayed there for a long time.
Nathan Sutherland:
So for context, we are talking late 1980s, at this point.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, yeah. It was about 35 years ago.
Nathan Sutherland:
Because if I was five, I mean, we’re talking late 1980s. Listeners, let’s wrap our brains around this. There’s literally a point at this time in technology when there’s nothing on TV. Now we say there’s nothing on TV and we just mean, I’ve already binge washed all 700 hours of these shows I like. But there’s literally nothing. You can turn on the TV and it’s just those colored bars and that screeching noise. So there’s no smartphones. There are still corded phones, not a lot of cordless. And no car phones at this point.
Greg Sutherland:
Correct.
Nathan Sutherland:
In that context, you go to a conference and someone says, TV we are showing is hurting your child’s ability to focus, to stay present, with whatever programming we would’ve been watching at that point, which at this point would have to feel like the slowest thing on the planet. Have you guys ever gone back and watched a show from the ’80s? They’re slow.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, it’s really slow. But the other thing was they said not only the focus, and I’m recalling this right now, but how are your kids after they watch TV? Do they get along better, or are they kind of aggressive and fight and squabble?
Nathan Sutherland:
Never. We wouldn’t.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah. Yes, you did. And so invariably watching three or four hours at TV, no one was happier. Everybody was more anxious, crabby, whatever it was. And so when we pulled the TV, we went through some trauma initially for maybe a week. And then after that, things worked well because you found other avenues. You went outside and played. You played with your sisters, you did things together. And we had a happier family. When we told people we pulled the TV, they go, “What? You can’t watch the Seahawks?” I do miss that.
Nathan Sutherland:
It was Largent. There was something to show up for.
Greg Sutherland:
I did miss that. I missed that a lot. But anyway, when we reflect back on that, it was a decision that we didn’t really consult anybody else. We listened to that. We watched our kids and we said, “I think it’s going to be worth it.” And really, for no one else, Nathan is going to, he’s really into the tech stuff. Because I love tech too. And to pull that was a big deal. But when the kids look back at it, there’s no one that said, “Dad, I wish we hadn’t done that.”
Nathan Sutherland:
And I absolutely think that’s true. I don’t know of any of the five of us who were like, “You know what I wish about my childhood? That we had more TV time.” That’s not something that crosses… so you guys went to this conference, you came back even with this technology that’s almost laughable at this point, where we’re like, really? We would celebrate if all we had in our house was 1980s television. That’s Mr. Rogers in Sesame Street. Just so seemingly mundane to what we have now. But these professionals saying, “Hey, you guys are working with young people with families and have kids of your own. Maybe TV.”
So you took this, it had to have been a 60 pound television, upstairs and hid it in your room.
Greg Sutherland:
It was heavy.
Nathan Sutherland:
Because it had a big old vacuum tube in it. There were no LED screens at this point. And you made a swap where you basically, and this is what I’ve told my children with video games, like I’m going to overpay on other kinds of awesome stuff. So you guys, on your way home, bought all the analog toys, all the things that didn’t plug in and just here’s all the things.
Greg Sutherland:
So we didn’t call him analog.
Nathan Sutherland:
No, I’m just saying that’s what I would call it. Now, I overpaid on, Owen just got a… the board game you guys got him, for his birthday. It’s expensive, but my goodness, that kid that night just a couple nights ago, Owen went, got this amazing Star Wars board game, immediately went upstairs to his desk. I had swapped out his light bulb of his little table lamp to one of those crazy bright white 4K just blindingly bright, so that he can clip all the little pieces of his game out and then glue them together and then begin making this Star Wars game because of this very thing. Buddy, I want you to be enthralled and you’re never going to get overstimulated when you have to build the game pieces to be able to play the board game. That’s something that I love and have seen because of the way you guys raised us.
So I want to walk back to that time though. So year one, you convinced us that it was worthwhile. We fought you it sounds like, for a little bit. And then eventually… there was still a TV though, right?
Greg Sutherland:
There was a TV initially there until that became, “Hey, can we just watch TV just a little?” Then said, “No, we’re going to just kind of put it away.” So then I carried it upstairs. But I think it’s really an important conversation to have about the similarities really between the video game and the TV. It was not the programming, it was the process. See, the process of being involved in anything technical that draws you into it doesn’t allow you to be focused on anything else. So the people went away in the process of watching TV, but that’s not true. When you take it away, then the people become more important.
So the programming, you can have really good programming or you can have mundane programming, or you can have a program that’s just terrible. But in the midst of all that, you’re still engaged in the TV and not in the people. And so the best programming isn’t a difference really.
Nathan Sutherland:
So you say it doesn’t matter necessarily what you’re watching.
Greg Sutherland:
It doesn’t matter what you’re watching, it’s the fact that you’re engaged with that rather than other people.
Nathan Sutherland:
So in that, then we became more engaged than people would say, “Hey, what was that like than raising kids or raising a family that was quite counterculture?” I mean, this was the time in life where people set a schedule and be like, no, Friday nights TGIF. Thank God it’s Friday, this is going to be our evening plan. That wasn’t what we did. Did you notice any pinch points in that for you guys or for any of the kids as you were trying to operate in a tech world that they weren’t a part of?
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, so this went on for at least 20 years.
Nathan Sutherland:
All the way through when I was out of high school.
Greg Sutherland:
And Kelsey, who was 5, 7 years younger than you went through… so it was at least 25 years we didn’t have any TV. What we did do is we bought a smaller portable TV set. It was a white one, and we moved it down more easily so it wasn’t carrying 60 pounds, because it was really heavy. And we would have Friday night at the movies with the family. And we would go, and we would purchase Focus on the Family videos, VHS, Five Mile Creek or Odyssey, whatever it was. And we’d have popcorn, we’d sit around. I’ve watched one of those a few years ago and they are so boring. But when leaves falling is the most exciting thing that you got, Five Mile Creek was okay.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah. I vividly remember a couple of those. I’m sure that that would be the take. Well, because then fourfold disclosure, eventually, by the time I was in high school, we got a regular screen for movie watching, but we didn’t have TV. We didn’t have antenna, we didn’t have cable because I remember we played Nintendo 64 in high school. We played Bond. But that, this is a video game, you’re going to do this with people and then it gets shut down and you go along your way. So this wasn’t no tech, but I think the low tech would definitely be part of the description. So did we ever have pushback when people came over?
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, I think we had enough games. We had foosball, we had pinging pong, we had basketball outside. We had croquet if it was nice. And then I got into the remote control cars for the kids.
Nathan Sutherland:
It is nice that you were a bit of a tech gearhead in that way.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah. So I got things that would be fun. And in the summer we had a pool. So there was stuff that you could do and still engage people but not get hung up on just sitting in front of the TV and watching stuff.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah, just as you were talking about part of that, I remembered what was the thing with me and the TV, I was trying to turn it on? I was like, what was it, three, two?
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, you were about three.
Nathan Sutherland:
And I was making the choice knowing I was getting in trouble as I recall. I recall this from being told this, not because I remember the actual experience.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah, I remember it.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah. Right. I think that idea is, I see that in my own children of this idea of sometimes the temptation is just too great. You say no, the general overview, everyone, of the story, as I recall, correct me if I’m wrong, you told me not to turn on the TV. I looked at the TV, you warned me to not look at the TV, and I turned away and just reached to turn on the TV anyway. Is that roughly accurate?
Greg Sutherland:
That’s roughly accurate. But you were crying too because you knew you would probably enter swat land.
Nathan Sutherland:
I’m going to do it. I already regret it, but I’m still doing it. I don’t regret it enough to stop.
Greg Sutherland:
I was just going, “Nathan, you don’t want to do that.” The next couple decades of my life-
Nathan Sutherland:
That’s the reason we moved the TV.
Greg Sutherland:
Yeah. Because it was just too much of a temptation to have it in front of us. Then it wasn’t there.
Nathan Sutherland:
Anymore. Well, that’s awesome. I will say from my perspective, Anna and I, raising our kids, obviously that’s been an influence because I’ve seen that I can survive. The first time I watched a Friends episode, which if anyone listening to this is my age, you know that Friends was a huge deal. And yet, it very quickly became apparent that I can survive without knowing specific dialogue from Friends. Anna loved Friends. So once we started dating in college, I watched Friends. And while I’ve enjoyed the show, I’ve also been like, yeah, I probably didn’t need that content in my brain, especially as a young developing man. There’s a lot of not truth about how they talk about relationships and hope and love and sex in that show.
There’s not a single thing in my life that I can point back to and be like, man, it would’ve been better if I just had more screen. And I think listeners, my hope for you in hearing this is it was still a process and a conversation in the late 1980s. We think sometimes about the ’80s as though tech had reached its pinnacle, and if only we could get back there, things would be fine. But that tech led us to this tech and there’s great things in there in technology that we’re currently using. There are also things we want to be deliberate. Maybe the TV is one for you, but maybe something else. Maybe it’s the way you’re using your screens, your video games, your shows, social media. Really, I love what you pointed out, dad, that it comes down to a reset still. It comes down to does this tech improve your relationships and responsibilities, emotion, sleep, enjoyment, time.
And if it does, use it. Five Mile Creek doesn’t sound like we got super overwhelmed watching that.
Greg Sutherland:
No, you didn’t.
Nathan Sutherland:
Did we watch a movie called The Bear or something at some point? I feel like there was a movie that had no talking and it was like two guys hunting a bear for an hour and a half.
Greg Sutherland:
It could have been one, in Alaska. We watched some exploratory type things that you normally wouldn’t watch, adventure things.
Nathan Sutherland:
Definitely not overstimulated. I remember that. All right, well thank you. Any closing thoughts for families, parents, either the people with young kiddos or people who are kind of entering this conversation on their own, for maybe an encouragement or anything to go by?
Greg Sutherland:
It just seems like one of the things that motivated us to make changes for our family was our love for God and our love for our children. And we wanted both of those things to merge together. We wanted our children to love the Lord like we did. At the same time, it didn’t seem like the programming was necessarily doing that. We didn’t see it as a great distraction. But we saw the TV itself, the kids just weren’t doing well After they watched TV for a couple hours. They’d be crabby and not get along and it’d take almost the rest of the day for them to settle down. So it just seemed, to us, that we needed to do something. And when you look at your kiddos and you say, “Man, when we do this or this, they are better or worse,” then you kind of gravitate towards the better.
And I think using just some common sense and also begin to pray about it, because God will put on your heart what you should or shouldn’t do, and then you have to move forward in it. But it’s not a give up, it’s a gain. When your kids are veteran, all five of our children, we love them and even through the teenage years-
Nathan Sutherland:
[inaudible 00:20:19].
Greg Sutherland:
They loved us and we always tried to do the best for them, even if they didn’t see it. I would say I remember a time that I asked our daughter not to see this guy and to have 30 days without talking to him or seeing him. And I said, “We love you and we want the best for you, and we don’t think he’s the best for you, so we’re going to ask you and we’re going to call in our friends and ask them to pray.” And it was on the 30th day that she saw what we saw. And that was a big deal.
Nathan Sutherland:
And so surrounding children with prayer. This is more than just getting our tech right, it’s getting our love for our kids right and putting that first and foremost. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And listeners, my hope for you in hearing this is, yeah, we just got to peel back the curtain a little bit and hear what is it like to raise five kiddos in what we used to think was a perfect tech world? It wasn’t. Guess what? We still needed Jesus. And it’s not perfect parenting that has led anyone to a better existence, it is loving parenting. People who go to the Lord for us. And thank you Dad for doing that. And if mom were here, mom, if you’re listening to this, thank you for praying for us and for loving us. And thanks dad, for this time.
Greg Sutherland:
She’s a wonderful wife.
Nathan Sutherland:
She’s an amazing woman. I wonder if we can get her on here sometime. Oh my, that’s a goal. Listeners, if you have any questions, you can reach out to me, [email protected]. You can find us at lovegodusetech on Instagram and Facebook. You can share this with others if it was encouraging and helpful. And please, go this week, pray about the tech your family uses, and think about what does it look like to love your kid well, where they’re at. And then join us next week as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.
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