How they deal with the electronic home invasion

Patrick, Luisa Shanahan, Foss and nana Adriana van der Fluit put great value on family time. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

It is so easy, so insidious, to allow things like Nintendo to take over your children's lives, says Luisa Shanahan.

She and husband Allan, of Milford, combat the electronic invasion with strict rationing.

Patrick, 9, and Foss, 11, do not have mobile phones. They are allowed just one hour of TV/DVD/GameBoy when they get home from school.

After that it's homework, playing with the rabbit, taking the dog for a walk, swimming, dinner, soccer, sailing and hockey for Foss, soccer or piano for Patrick.

Luisa, 46, explains how cellphones keep children one step removed from their parents, rather than keep them in touch.

"They text their parents minutes before they're to be picked up from, say, rugby practice: 'We're going to Takapuna'. Some parents just sigh and turn the car around. I text straight back: 'I'm on my way. Stay there'."

Her problem with electronic toys, games and entertainment is not that they speed up kids' lives but steal them from family life. "They're incredibly good babysitters - it's very easy for a weekend to go by without parents and children interacting."

Luisa is not about to let that happen. Every school night the family - including Laura and James, Luisa's children from her first marriage - sit down to dinner when Allan gets home. Often the boys head off to soccer or sailing with their father, who doubles as coach.

Laura, 16, a school athletic champion, has never encountered phone or text bullying. She doesn't like computers and doesn't drink or smoke because it interferes with her training.

She has, however, had to deal with the fallout from divorce and her father being in Australia. But, as she says, many of her classmates have to cope with divorces: "There's the odd complicated one, but most have sorted it out."

The biggest issue was crashing the children's car. It was during school time. Although Laura had only a restricted licence she was driving friends. "I had to pay off the $1000 excess before I was allowed to drive again. That's mum's rules."

Mum's rules also include: home by midnight on Fridays and Saturdays; no dates during the week; no boyfriend sleeping over. Laura says: "Family's the best part of my childhood".

James, who is studying commerce and psychology at Auckland University, has a girlfriend, a job at Burger Wisconsin and a laptop.

"For uni you really have to have internet access," he says. "They post pages and stuff on the website, send emails." He uses Google, emails friends - and plays World of Warcraft. Most important socially is his mobile phone: "Texting is different. Like, you can't be in the know without a mobile - we don't even have each other's home phone numbers."

Childhood for Luisa meant no television or video. And compared with today's children there was incredible freedom.

"Our house was on a quarter acre. We had guinea pigs, a goat, a creek at the bottom of the garden."

All four children walked the 4km from St Mary's in Onewa Rd, arriving home to Adriana and a bowl of a few chippies, dates, and a couple of slices of cheese. Lunch was sandwiches, school milk - and no tuck shop for temptation. Dinner was "as soon as Dad stepped in the door. There was always a tablecloth, always a dessert. Mum put on a lashing of lipstick and we all sat down together."

"I don't remember homework, but there must have been tables to learn, a spelling list and a reading book."

There was no weekend sport or shopping, just one car, a big rumpus room with a record player and piles of LPs, get-togethers with their Italian and Dutch extended families, and bach holidays at beaches.

Her father, Peter, made fresh bread every weekend, Luisa spent Saturdays mucking around with horses at Triple R ranch, and her younger brother, Peter junior, was in the Screamin' Mee Mees - the first New Zealand band to get to number one on the Hit Parade. "I still remember Mum's face when he shaved his hair and dyed it blond.

"I don't ever remember being aware of wealth. Mum made most of our clothes. I still remember my first pair of jeans ... And when I went through that terrible insecure stage I had those two people," she gestures towards her elegant parents, who were celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary that day, "guiding me - firmly."

For Adriana, born in 1930 in Fiume (now Reika) on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, childhood was dominated by World War II. There were eight children, no car. Their father worked in a torpedo factory. Celebrations were baptisms, first holy communions, confirmations.

"It was a very simple life," she says. "We walked to school, played together and hiked in the forest without our parents. Much of the time we were quite hungry. I remember my mother would leave us and go, with a rucksack on her back, to look for food. Yes, it was tough, but it didn't do us any harm. I didn't miss anything because I had so much love."

The family moved to Italy, then a refugee camp. In 1951, when Adriana was 21, they boarded the Goya for Wellington.

Her first thought on arrival: "I want to go back."

Today, she says, "There are not enough boundaries and far too many choices. They don't give children enough time to amuse themselves, to explore."