[Christian Science Monitor] Remember when we had to get up to change the TV channel? Talk to our friends on a rotary phone? Go to a real library? Cook using an actual oven? Remember when we stayed out playing until dark, and didn’t come home until we heard the dinner bell?

It’s natural to romanticize the “dinner bell days.” But while life is quite different today (Internet, microwaves, smart phones, etc.) – and in many ways, better – perhaps the most telling piece of longing in these electronic odes to a bygone era is the memory of the freedom of childhood….

Last summer, I spent two months in the West Bank with my 5-year-old son. We rented an apartment in Ramallah and watched from our window as the neighborhood children came out to play in the cool of the late afternoon and evening.

Read the full story on the Christian Science Monitor