Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlin Childress,

and I have for you another guest that works in

the digital space, in the screen free

media, free space. And her name is Molly Defrank

and she wrote a book called Digital Detox, the Two Week Tech

Reset for Kids. Last summer, I did do an episode all

about the work from Molly's book Digital Detox. And I went

over it and I gave you a play by play and walked you through exactly

what she recommends in the book. And then today I got a chance to

interview her and give you an opportunity to hear her voice and hear her

perspective. And she was just super lovely and really what a delight

to meet her. And I'm really excited to share this interview with you.

I highly recommend her book, Digital Detox. You can get it on

Amazon or wherever because it really is a simple, accessible way

for you to reset your kid's nervous system

and give them a break from digital input and allow your

family to become a little bit more whole and integrated. So I hope you really

enjoy this conversation with Molly Defrank. Oh, no.

Sorry, I'm messing this up. Hi there. Hi,

Molly. How are you? Do you pronounce it Darlin? Yeah. Okay,

cool. Nice to meet you, darling. Nice to meet you. I'm so happy that you're

on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the

opportunity. Yeah. I loved your book and

the first book, Digital Detox. And as

a podcast host and a parent educator, I really do

always want to help parents have access to

healthy tools and tools that are manageable and accessible.

And in this tech space, it can be so overwhelming where you're like,

you're doing it all wrong. And what?

Fix it, change it, stop it, solve it. That energy and I just felt like

your book really normalized the tech overuse

and gave really practical, accessible

tools so that parents can feel empowered to do the work. So

I'm excited for this conversation. So thanks for being here. Awesome. Thank

you. That means a lot. I appreciate that saying that. I'm glad that you felt

that way. Good. Yeah. So please introduce yourself, whatever you want to share with

us. And then I have questions to talk about the Digital Detox and get into

that. Yeah. Topic. Yeah. Real quick. I have an. I'm in my

garage. I don't. There's an AC unit. Can you hear it? Nope.

Okay, cool. I'll leave it on then. Okay. You let me know if you have

any, like, sound issues and I'll fix it. So anyway,

yeah, I'm Good. Okay. So sorry, just introduce myself, you said?

Yeah, please. Okay, great. I'm Molly Defrank. I'm the author

of digital detox, the two week tech reset for kids. I have

six kids ages 8 to 15, and.

And I live in California, and I love helping parents get a

handle on the screen. Time struggles. Yeah,

everyone right now, all they heard was six kids.

Do you get that a lot? Where people are like, wait, what? Yeah,

I really do. And I like to encourage parents. Honestly, I think the hardest number

of kids to have was two, because going from one to

two, you have to let all the things that don't really matter, you just kind

of have to let them go. You realize like, oh, gosh, these kids have

so many needs. And then once you start juggling or you're making two PB and

js, you're like, oh, what's a third? What's a fourth? What's a fifth? Just come

on over. I'll just throw another plate out. You know, you switch to paper plates.

You just. You take things in stride a little more. You can't stress out about

the small stuff. But, yeah, it is, I guess, a lot of kids. That's so

good. My neighbor, I tell this story on the podcast a lot because I loved

it so much, and I. People would say, you know, how do you do it?

How do you do it with four kids? And she would say, not as well

as you. It's probably too bad.

It's just this beautiful answer of like, you know, not

stressing, not overthinking, just kind of like I lowered my

standards at some point and it's working okay. So

true. Yeah. I remember one time I had a kid at the park,

had like an accident or spilled a popsicle or something on them, and

I ran to the car and I had a change of clothes for her and

I put it on her, and my friend looked at me. She had two kids

and she's like, oh, my gosh, you're so organized that you had a change of

clothes. And I looked at her, I'm like, that was just laying in the car

because I didn't clean it. It's not like, plan ahead. This is

like, I'm so messy that everything's come full circle and it's

actually proven to be beneficial sometimes. So, yeah, you just kind of just go with

the flow and do what you can. Yeah, your mess served you.

I love that. It's so good. It's true, though. I mean, that can be a

metaphor for life is like sometimes our

response, flexibility and the ability to pivot. I just did

an episode on pivoting, parenting pivots. And it's like

when you're a little bit more free and open, you actually have

a little more flexibility and you're ready to problem solve and be

creative. Which does lead us into the detox space because

you are, you know, we're going to get into all the nitty gritty of it,

but like, when you are doing a big shift in your family,

there is going to be things that come up that you're like, well, what's going

on here? I don't know how to solve this. And being able to

not be so tight. Like, we're in the big picture here.

We're in. I think about when I teach bedtime routines or

introducing new foods or transitioning to preschool,

that we can get really tight about the day. And

instead of thinking of the bigger picture of like, yep, it's gonna be fit some

and starts and stops and all sorts of

movement towards something. And having that

intention and having that goal in mind can be really

freeing because in the middle of it, it's gonna be a little messy. And

that's especially true of a digital detox. But really anything,

I'm sure you can relate. Oh yeah, that's so true. And I think as a

culture, we're just, we're allergic to struggle. You know, we're growing

up in a time when you see everything perfectly dialed in

on Instagram or social media. And there are these aesthetics aspire to as

moms. And we sometimes, if we don't take a minute and

think about it, we think that that's just, that's like the saddest quote for

people all the time and that there was no struggle involved in getting there. And

that's just not true. Anything worth doing, anything

great, that happens. There's so much struggle behind

the scenes along the way. And sometimes as parents too, we

want to, we want to skip the struggle, but that's really where,

that's really where the seeds are planted. That's where everything good grows. You know,

even working out, it's like you lift weights, the muscles breaking and that's how it

grows back stronger. It's the same is true for parenting. Everything good

and worthwhile that happens is really happens through struggle.

Yeah. Positive messages on become a calm mama.

Here we go. Just kidding. Everything's going to be a struggle, which

is true a little bit. Just normalizing. It's not going to look

like I had a person I interviewed from front row moms who works with

working moms. And she said so much in parenting doesn't look like I thought it

was going to look. Yeah. And I have a image and we're

off the rails a little bit. But I had this image of myself and my

friend and I used to talk about it before we had kids that we were

going to be. I lived in west la, like near the ocean. And we were

going to be these moms that were like very perfectly coiffed with like

our nails done. That was like a very specific thing. And

looking super cute. Pushing our little babies in the stroller along the Venice

boardwalk. We had this big image and now our kids are both

21 and it has just been so messy all

along. She's divorced. You know, my kids had major

pivots with the pandemic and it's just we're all in

the wash looking fine. But it never felt like

I thought it was going to feel, feel or look. So

true. Yeah. Okay, let's get into the weeds a bit

on Digital Detox. So right

before your episode airs, I'm airing an episode with Moms Against

Media Addiction. Are you familiar with the organization with Julius Yellow?

Yeah, I've heard of them. They do great work. Yeah, great work. So

this is such a great piggyback because we talked about

being really intentional about our kids

screen time use and looking at ways

that we can be more mindful about what we allow our

kids to use and win and those kinds of things.

And a lot of parents maybe have gone

too far in allowing their kids a lot of freedom around

screens. And I think this is especially true

post pandemic. So I'm going to speak on that just for a second if

you don't mind. Before, so I had kids, my kids

were 13 and 14 when the pandemic happened. So I already

had a lot of years where we were tech free. Like

we had done slow tech, we had introduced tech slowly. They

got phones around 13, both of them, which

maybe I would have done it differently but they had had phones and they

hadn't, excuse me, they hadn't played video games that much or you know, they had

slow tech. So then the pandemic happened and it was like cat out of the

bag. I don't know what happened in those rooms, you know,

excuse me. It was rough, like

and everyone was just a zoom school. I mean that was insane. And I think

that felt like if you had a 13 year old, if you have a 13

year old now, like you have a 15 year old now. He was 10, right.

Or she was 10. You have an eight year old. Three. Right. We can look

back and everything's about five years. We look back at that time

and I think what happened to parents is that they felt out

of control of what was okay

and what not. Like the rules broke because of zoom and

because of quarantines and all of those things. And now we're

seeing maybe a course correction. Yeah, yeah. And I want to

normalize that. We're all in this place where we did what we did, we made

the best, we figured it out, we didn't. We had two loose of

rules and now maybe our kid is struggling.

Yeah. What are you seeing? I'm seeing that that is the boat that every

parent is in right now. The vast majority of parents say that

their kids screen time use is their biggest concern, their biggest struggle in

parenting. I think like 75% of parents, the top

three or four concerns for parents all revolve around

screen use. It's around, you know, what their kids are being exposed to online

or too much video game use or video game addiction. It's, this is a huge

concern. 8 to 12 year old kids are spending 40 hours

per week on digital entertainment right now. 13 to 18 year

olds are spending 50 hours a week. Our kids are spending

the same amount of time as having a full time job, but just being

digitally entertained. And really parents are struggling with this because

they're hearing from all this research that's come out how

damaging it is to our kids. But they can feel powerless at the same time

because they look at their kids and they're like, I don't know how to fix

this thing because I know when the screen timer goes off

that my kid turns into a monster. So are you telling me that

the best thing to do is to live with a monster around the

clock? Like I don't want my kid to fall apart or throw these tantrums all

the time if they don't have their screen time. That's what they're, that's what

I'm dealing with in the home. So I, my heart goes out to these parents

and that's why I wrote this book and that's why I love talking about this

issue. Because there's so much hope and freedom on the other side.

There's so much that parents can do to just get back in the driver's seat

with technology. And I would just encourage you, if you're

listening, doing this digital detox for your kids,

you're not signing up for two weeks or the rest of your life of A

kid or falling apart, throwing screen tantrums. That's not what it is. You're actually

getting your kids back. You're going to see that this technology

has been doing things to their brains that you didn't even know.

For me, you know, I detox my kids. I had,

My oldest was 10 at the time. It was before COVID when I did this.

And I thought that's what I was doing. I was signing up for like

tantrums and crazy behavior and my kids staring at me like I needed to

entertain them like a, you know, a cruise ship director doing all

this like crazy stuff for them. And that's just not what happened.

And I think the fear that's holding parents back from actually taking action

is, is really unfounded. And when parents actually do just go for it and

they pull the plug and they do the detox, they're very. Every time a

parent are surprised, they're like, this transformed my family in the best

way. So that's why I love talking about, is just sharing with parents. You can

do this thing. It's simpler than you think. There might be like a day or

two of hardship, but I have really practical ways to get

in front of that. And really what you're, what you're getting back

for you and for your kids, for your relationship, for their future, their

creativity, their mental health, their social life, their academics.

It's just, it pays itself back in dividends really.

So I love helping parents with this. I agree, I agree. And

you're so on point by saying, you know, the idea

that you're going to have that so screen time

chaos all the time from now on. Because

you, you know, like you said, you go, okay, time's up, timer's gone

off. And then you have that giant. No, five more minutes.

It was downloading. You said, no, I didn't start right at 11,

my sister came and interrupted me and you asked me if I had to. I

had to go to the bathroom. I mean, the amount of negotiating

and big feeling cycle that comes and it's, it's purely

dysregulation from the experience with the device

and the transition from that stimulation

to non stimulation, that boredom gap, that dysregulation that

happens then on the other side, you get a little bit of

freedom. But if you're experiencing that daily and you're picturing a

detox, and I want to talk about what a detox is, but you're picturing a

detox, you're thinking, I'm going to have that for the rest of my life or

for the whole two weeks and what you're offering and my experience, I've done

a detox as well. Around the age of 10 or 11.

Same. And it was not as bad.

It actually was way better. The first few days were really tough and we did

three weeks and it was in the summer. We did it and it was so

great. I did get my kid back and we did have a wonderful

summer and there was a lot less. He was happier, so he was better

behaved and it was beautiful. So break down a digital

detox. Just kind of the concept and then I want to talk about kind of

like how to know if you need one. Yeah. So

it's basically, I recommend two weeks, no digital entertainment for your

kids. So that means no tv, no video

games, no social media. Get those phones out of here.

No iPads. No iPads, yeah. Tablets are huge. None of that.

All of it's gone. YouTube, everything. So what you're doing is you're actually

just giving your kids a chance to reawaken

interest in real life activities and other people.

You're helping to awaken their creativity, their

boredom negotiation skills. These are things that our kids need to

succeed in life and they've actually been deprived of these opportunities

when they've been on these screens. So that's what you're doing. And in fact

I came across some really interesting info that Silicon

Valley, these, these guys who work at these tech companies, they'll

routinely give themselves digital detoxes over the weekends or

over long holidays because they know what it does to

the brain, what the social media, what the gaming does to the brain, and it's

just jacking up the dopamine levels in our brains. So that's really what

you're doing, is you're resetting the dopamine levels in your

kids brains. And let me just take a minute to explain

why that's so critical here. Um, you know, our brains are

wired to release dopamine whenever we experience anything pleasurable or

enjoyable. You go for a run or you have a delicious bite of food,

dopamine is released. And these brilliant people in

Silicon Valley have taken what they know about how to release dopamine in the brain

and they've baked dopamine release points into the games, into the

apps. So now you've got, you know, hundreds of people on the other side of

your kid's Tablet, of your 3 year old, your 4 year old's tablet, and their

sole job is to hijack the dopamine system and keep your

kid on the device, your kid doesn't stand a chance against that. There is so

much dopamine getting released as a result of their device use that real

life dopamine just doesn't. It doesn't even register. In fact, dopamine receptors

are dying. They're numbing out. So now you've got this addictive

cycle where it takes more dopamine to experience the same amount of

pleasure that they used to get from less dopamine. So that's why when

you tell your kid, turn off the device, go play outside, and they say, no,

that's boring. They're not trying to be a stinker. There's a

physiological change in their brain where they don't even register the

fun outside or in real life because they're getting so much more

dopamine from the device. So when you take it all away for two

weeks, what you're really doing is you're giving them a fresh start. So now they

can go outside and play. They can blow bubbles, they can run around with their

friends, or knock on the neighbor's door, jump in the pool, and that actually starts

to feel enjoyable for them. And it's. There's a chemical reason

for that. Yeah, it's like a giant nervous system reset.

And moms can probably relate because

we talk about. I mean, this whole podcast is called Become a Calm Mama. I

mean, anyone listening who's a regular listener knows we've talked about

this so many times. But just to remind everyone that our nervous system

gets dysregulated and we have the stressor in our life, the

circumstance, the situation. Like you talked about a little

kid having an accident at the park, and all of a

sudden your mom. You go into mom gear and you're on, right?

You're solving the problem and you're dealing with it. And

that stress juice is very important to problem solve. And

then you have the stress juice. The stressor is over, but you

haven't really released all that stress juice. And whether

that's cortisol or in the gaming world, it can be dopamine, but it can also

be cortisol, too, especially for adults.

Intentionally creating stress on your device in order to keep

you kind of going back and problem solving through the device. And

when you're a parent, we have to take time that's outside

of the experience to reset our nervous system.

Going for a walk or drinking some water,

going to the bathroom. We have the problem with our kids or

whatever's happening, and then we go back in and we reset our nervous system. And

if we don't do that. We stay at that high level. And that's

if we think about the device in terms of the nervous system

and how it's creating all of that dopamine,

cortisol, adrenaline, all of that going on in the nervous system.

When does your kid get to actually reset?

Yeah, yeah, you're spot on. And I'm glad you brought up the cortisol and

the adrenaline because when these kids are gaming too, their brains are just being

bathed in these stress hormones. And then when

our kids lose it or they're throwing a tantrum or

they're mad about something, we're using the problem, pretending

like it's the solution, and we'll hand over the tablet to get them

to soothe. But it's just they're numbing out. They're not

learning those techniques like you were talking about going for a walk or taking

some deep breaths or having a conversation with someone. They're just not learning these

skills of self regulation. And so

childhood is such an important time to learn those things.

The brain goes through these pruning periods and when kids are like four and five

and then again when they're in their early teens where whatever they're repeating

and practicing, those things get hardwired and

whatever they're not using, it'll get pruned. So if our kids

are using back and forth conversation to

negotiate these like social relationships and those social emotional skills, they're going to

get great at that. If they're reading books, they're going to get great at. If

they're doing first person shooter games, they'll get great at that. So we just

need to decide what do we want these foundations for our kids to be? Do

we want them to be learning these coping skills, learning how to negotiate

boredom in a waiting room at a restaurant?

You know, do we want them to numb out? Give yourself the peace and the

freedom parents to. If you're at a restaurant and you're trying to teach your 2

year old, your 3 year old to sit still and wait for their food, I

know that's so stressful, but, but good for you for not bringing out the

tablet, for not turning on a device because it takes several times,

it takes a long time of doing this and teaching them how to sit and

how to wait patiently. So those are skills they need

and having them numb out, that's not helping them. That's actually degrading the sorts of

skills that we're trying to cultivate in our kids.

Yeah, we want to raise emotionally healthy kids and

the Short term ease. Sometimes

you got to do it like mamas, we get it right, you got to do

what you got to do. But let's choose also the long term

strength, right? And being, like I said, big

picture kind of what are my values? Where are my intentions? What

do I want for my kids? And sometimes that means

doing the hard thing. But what I love about the detox is

it actually sets you up for making it a lot

easier. So if you've gone to a place like for

my family, why we did a detox

was in the summer. I had introduced video games to

my 10, 11 year old. I waited

for as long as I could because he had an older brother. So I was

like. I felt like at 12, the older one could handle it. But then

with little kids, whatever you do with the first, it's harder to

keep it back for the second. And it's funny because

my older one just turned 21 and so he can like drink a beer if

he wants. But then my other one's 19. And I think we're all like, okay,

this one, we're not gonna. Just because you're 19, just because your brother's doing it,

you're gonna do it anyway. It's the same kind of boundary. Like

we introduce something and then you go, oh, wait, maybe this wasn't the

right time. And that's sort of what happened for us. And my son just

seemed lots of rage, quit

raging at the game, yelling profanity,

and really young. And I just felt so out of

bounds. And I was reading a lot of Victoria

Dunkley, which a lot of your work is based on her work and you

know, how to reset your child's brain. And it was like, do this detox. And

I'm like, okay. And we did it. I did it with a group of three

other two other moms and me. So all of our kids hung out all summer

and we all did it at the same time. And that made it so much

easier because then they had playmates to play with and they

had almost like complaining partners.

Yeah. And they all became. Dr.

Dunkley became this name that everyone used, like almost a

as a swear word. Like, the kids, they'd be like, Dr. Dunkley,

this is so funny to me. So we did that. And

what happened afterwards is that the rest of the

summer I could reintroduce my rules in a way that felt

aligned with what was going to work for us. And we had to

back, like, we had given too much freedom. It

had gotten kind of out of bounds. So then we Decreased it

completely so that there was kind of a no, no

rule, you know, no screens for the whole family.

And then from there, when I went to go introduce it again, it could be

a little more aligned and a little bit more

acceptable to them that like, okay, we know we're not going to always

have it. We're not going to go out of bounds with this device. It's going

to be limited. And if I needed to take a weekend off,

they would be able to because they knew it wasn't forever.

We could just take a detox. Sometimes we would do like a, you know, the

whole screen free in the summer, like a screen free week or a screen free

weekend. And just to kind of keep those resets.

So that's where why I did it and when I did it. But what do

you recommend? Like how does someone know they should or what are

some signs? Yes, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought up Dr. Dunkley.

When I came across her work, I was blown away

because I had already detoxed my kids. And then I started sharing tips

for this online how to, here's how to do this. And then I started

reading the research and the science behind what this technology

is actually doing to our kids brains. And Dr. Dunkley

actually coined, and you are aware of this because you read her book, but

she coined this new condition called electronic screen syndrome which, and this is

what really blew me away. She said this is a condition that is brought on

by too much digital entertainment and it will disguise itself as

ADHD and bipolar disorder and

OCD and all of these things that parents think their

kids might have. When it's really just the

adrenaline and the cortisol and the dopamine just it's

hijacking their brains. So like a lot of parents,

I thought my kids screen use was just really impacting them

right after the screen timer went off. Right. If we put down. But until

I read Dr. Dunkley's research, I didn't appreciate

that the reason why it was affecting them around the clock, it was affecting their

sleep, it was affecting all of these things. And the crazy thing is that

in Dr. Dunkley, in her book, she said that

kids will go into her practice and they'll go for, you know, bipolar disorder,

adhd, whatever. She won't diagnose a new client until they have

undergone a digital detox because most of the time the

symptoms will resolve and those kids won't even need medication because

that is how powerful this technology is. So anyway, so

amazing. Isn't that wild? Yeah. I can't believe Electronic. Electronic Screen

syndrome. Just like, slow it down for the listener. Yeah, it's weird.

And what we're referring to is Reset your child's brain, a book by Dunkley. And

we will put that in the show notes. And when

you think about, like, Electronic Screen syndrome,

what are some of the signs of that? But like, adhd, and, you know, we

have. We have diagnosis we can throw around, but what are the

actual symptoms of it? Do you remember? Yes.

You know, irritability, aggression, low frustration

tolerance, problems, sleeping, inattent,

inattentiveness. You know, kids are just a little

ornery. So just that irritability, you

know, all those things, kids that don't seem to be able to focus

on something for very long, things that kind of look

like adhd, it's all of these things that can

either disguise itself as those conditions or exacerbate

them when they really are there. So, yeah, and her book is

great. Mine is more of like a parent in the trenches, sort of a perspective

and kind of some practical tips. Here's what to do when everything goes south. But.

But, yeah, she has great research. Well, and I recommend your book a lot because

of that, because it's so accessible and it's,

you know, not so research heavy. Like, I love. I'm

like, of course, a parent educator and a podcast host. Like, I'm in the weeds

all the time on all of this stuff. But for just kind of your

lame parent who's just, you know, wanting to figure out what

the heck should I do? I love your book. It's short and

accessible and easy to read and kind of like gives you just enough information.

So, yeah, spot on. Yeah. I also really

appreciated that you grabbed a couple of friends to do your detox.

I think that is totally clutch because, you know,

there's strength in numbers. And just like you said, the kids have people to

kind of commiserate with. That's great. Good for them. Enjoy that. Yeah,

yeah, go complain about us. Yeah, that's fine. Go for it. But then the parents,

you can troubleshoot with each other and you can encourage one another. And I think

that's so important. But, yeah, I have the book broken down. The first half is

how to do the detox. I say that every successful detox that

I've walked parents through has four things in common. You're gonna

unplug. You can remember it like this acronym, undo. You're gonna undo the tech

trance for your kids. So the U stands for unplug. Cold

turkey, two weeks. If you want to go Longer you can. We

did ours for a couple of months. I didn't tell my kids at the time,

it's going to be two weeks. Obviously, if you tell them it's two weeks, it's

got to be two weeks. But my kids were young enough to where we could

say, until further notice, we're not doing digital entertainment.

And, you know, I recommend that cold turkey because. And if you're listening, you're probably,

you know, if you've been trying to add 30 minutes, take 30 minutes away,

it doesn't work. We are, you know, that doesn't work. So you gotta do cold

turkey. Um, and it really just goes back to the dopamine that we talked about.

You're resetting the dopamine levels in your kid's brain. So

unplug. Cold turkey, two weeks. And then the N stands for

notice your kids like never before. You're gonna observe your kids. Where are those

weak spots? Um, if they cannot wait their turn, they have the patience

of a, I don't know, a potato. What is. What has, like, no

patience goes well. They say a lot of times they use a goldfish,

like, entertain. Like, the goldfish is, like, moving around all the time.

Tr. Yeah. So if they have no patience, they can't wait their turn.

Great. That's something you want to hone in on. You want to help put them

in situations where they have to grow there. And again, like we were saying earlier,

people, we. We want to avoid the struggle and kind of numb it out, but

we're going to go against that urge, and we're going to kind of put our

kids in these experiences to really to grow where they need

to grow. And also we're going to notice what are our kids interested in. That

has nothing to do with the device. Before our detox, my three oldest

kids, their. Their favorite hobbies, it was each a different video game. And

I thought, well, that's fine. That's how kids play these days. But it doesn't have

to be. And after our detox, I noticed, wow, this kid loves,

loves cooking. I didn't really appreciate that, because if he had the option to go

game in the other room, he would take it. But, you know, during the detox,

I'd be in the kitchen chatting with my kids, cooking something, and they all hang

out for a little bit, and then there's one that stayed behind, and the rest

kind of wander off over the next 10 minutes. But once he's my asking

questions about the food, and I'm like, maybe you want to cook? So we'd

get some kids cookbooks and bring them in and he'd help

or new card games or whatever. And you're gonna start to notice what is your

kid into? And pick up nonfiction kid books at the library.

Soccer. One of my sons was really into soccer and so I got him a

couple books about great techniques and he actually started using some of

them. It was so cute. And then d develop a list of

screen free fun ideas. I have a ton of these in the book. But. But

really just sit down, help your kids. Show em they have everything they need in

their brain and their imagination to think of what they can possibly do for fun.

We have honestly the time we're living in. Kids have never had

more options and opportunities of what they can do to fill their free time.

So don't believe your kids when they say there's nothing to do. There are so

many things to do. And sitting down and helping them come up with this list

is showing them, look, you guys know how to think of things to do. You

can figure this out. And then o is open the books. You can make a

bookworm out of any kid. I used to think that some kids like to read

for fun and some kids don't. That's not true. You can actually make any kid

love reading. I've had some of my kids take to reading immediately. Some of them

it's, you know, a labor of love to be a book matchmaker.

But I have lots of tips for that in the book too. And then the

second half of the book is, well, now what? How do we make a plan,

a long term plan? We don't want to like turn into Little house on the

Prairie here. Like, we're not moving off the grid. We like Mario Kart in our

house. We like some technology. We enjoy watching shows and movies together

as a family. But what is the right place for this technology in our

home? So I help parents. It's going to look different in every home. And that's

great. It should. No one knows your kids like you do. So I just help

parents take what they learned in their detox and then make a plan that fits

their family. Yeah. And that is what I love

about the detox period of time, like I said, is that it gives you a

chance to reset, to figure out what other what the interests are

and kind of how your family interacts. How do you play? How

do you not play? What does work look like and

chores and bringing in all of those responsibilities

without the distraction of the device. And then when you get

to be Intentional about how you want to bring devices back in

and go through that

thoughtful kind of intentional way of having screens in your

family. And I really do want to go back real quick to

how, how really the last

four or five years have been very hard for parents in

this space, partly because the schools

give them Chromebooks and iPads and individual

devices. And the norms, the social

norms have been a little bit like, give your kid a personal device by

at fifth grade graduation. That's kind of normalized. And

then also just maybe you don't give your kid an

iPad or a tablet, but you have one and

they become kind of reliant on it. And

the stress of the society and all the things that have been happening in

the world make it really hard for us to stay present.

But the truth is when you take the devices out,

you create space for new ways of

relating. And I'm really glad that we had a slow tech

family the whole time because my kids

played toys, they knew how to entertain themselves. And

I talk a lot on the podcast about like that boredom gap and that

dysregulation. And you said, you know, the kid comes out after they use their

device and they're like, it's boring outside. And you said to them,

that is very true. And really having

compassion for our kids when they're in that dysregulation,

not solving it, not immediately.

If you go right to like your list, you know, I love having the list,

but I've noticed that if you go right to the list while they're in the

middle of that dysregulation, they'll reject every idea.

But if you wait a bit and you let them struggle

and just say like, you can handle it. This is hard. I get it. You

know, you're going to figure this out and hold space for that

belief in their ability to self regulate without making it a crisis

in yourself or that something you have to solve or something's wrong with them

then going, yeah, I'm here. When you're ready and

being available, you can be still doing your thing, kitchen

cleanup or whatever you're doing or sitting down, reading a book

yourself or looking out the sun, I don't know, whatever you're doing, playing with another

child, the kids will come to you

fine. What do you what you say play to fine. They kind

of show up in that grumpy energy, but they're ready to pivot into something

new. And I wonder if you've noticed that behavior and

like the parent struggle there. Oh, for sure.

And I think you know it goes back to one of the things you were

saying that we can feel dysregulated as parents. And when you've got a kid

whining at you because they're bored, you're like, gosh, I just don't. I

don't want to hear the whining. I want to just take care of this. Let's,

like, end it. One of my favorite tricks for the

boredom solution. I'm sure I got this from my mom when I was a kid,

but we would say, yeah, you know, you could think of something to do. Or

if you can't think of anything, I have this basket of laundry that you are.

You can fold. I have plenty of chores that you need to help around the

house. You know, if I hear the word board, I hear, oh, I need to

a chore. And the kids usually find something to do real quick. They're like, oh,

I have way better ideas than that. So they'll come up with something.

But I think that's great. And, you know, learning

how to negotiate boredom is so important. And that's one of the things I

noticed too, after so the first day of our detox,

I really braced myself. The hardest part, too, is breaking the news to your

kids. They're going to lose it. They're going to hate it, obviously. So you're the

calm parent in the room, even if on the inside you're like, this is

horrible. What. What have I done? But that's how I felt at least. And we

stayed calm. You're not in trouble for anything. It's okay. We're just going to try

it. We're going to try it for a little while. And I braced

for a very stressful day. But the next day, my kids

knew that if they complained of boredom, they would be met with a chore. And

so they played their hearts out. They made

forts. They were young enough to still be into that. And

where they usually would hit a boredom wall or, you know, we can't keep this

side propped up. And they. They kind of get frustrated or bored. And usually they'd

be like, can we watch a show? Well, that wasn't an option. So

instead of turning to the easier thing, they would figure out a way to

fix it. And they would, like, you know, take a breath and push through

and those things. Even when our kids are so small, even if you're Talking about

a 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 year old, you're developing stamina

and grit in your kids and you're developing problem solving skills,

and it's all these little tiny micro experiences of

pushing through frustration, pushing through difficulty, even

in the. The things that look tiny, the tower falls over, you go again. You

don't just like go towards the easy thing. You don't give up. And

I've watched my kids grow in so many areas just as a result

of being exposed to falling down and having to fix something.

And I think that's one of the hidden benefits that we don't really talk about

enough. Another thing I wanted to mention was. I want to say something

about that, if you don't mind, because I think I've thought about this a lot

and I appreciate Jonathan Haidt's book Anxious Generation

a lot. Of course, everyone does. And I think

the anxiety is actually

from the lack of belief in themselves that they

can overcome obstacles. And that if I

don't believe I'm capable, if I haven't experienced enough

frustration that I've overcome enough obstacles, that

then I have reset myself, then I'm not

going to believe that I can handle it. That's going to create a

crisis of confidence. That's going to create anxiety. I think that

the screenshot have become

like a blankie or like a soothing thing

in that though they create stress, they create anxiety. Yes, they create

dopamine, they create all the stuff that we're talking about. But it's really the

opportunity cost that is more true

that when you take that ability to

soothe or get your needs met through

tech and that's off the table, you

are forced to find other ways to get your needs met.

In an addiction world, we use abstinence, right? In

order to create space to move to another

coping strategy. Abstinence in itself is not all

that valuable if it's easy. Abstinence is only valuable

when you are kind of butting up against the limit

or the boundary of no. And then you have to figure out a different tool,

like I'll say abstinence around yelling at your kids.

Like we'll create a detox, right? Like a yelling detox.

And don't do that and then see what happens, what else you

have to do to communicate or what else you have to do to cope or

what else you have to do to soothe. And that really

is so valuable for our kids. I'm so glad you

brought that up because there's a great Jonathan Haidt quote. He says

experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.

And he calls the phones and the tablets experience blockers

because, you know, they reduce the face to face play in the real world

and, and that's how kids learn empathy and language and

grit and truly all of these things that if you ask parents,

and I start the book with this too, like, let's just zoom out for a

second and take a minute. You know, our schedules are

packed, life is busy, the days fly by. We're just trying to keep our heads

above water. But zoom out for a second and you know, talk with

your spouse. And what are the things that I want to instill in my kids

when my kid leaves my house, moves out of this house, what are

they going to look back and say? My parents really wanted to make sure that

I blank that I was, you know, that I grew up to be brave, strong,

looked out for others, loved the people around them, you know, wasn't selfish,

use my gifts for the good of other people. Like, what are these things, these

big kind of lofty ideas that we're trying to instill in our kids? And then

I think most parents would probably have similar ideas they want to

impart. But then you zoom back in and look at the day to day and

you have to go, gosh, does our daily life support these big

goals or are we handing our kids these

devices that really erode our efforts to build these things

in our kids? So I think it's so important to kind of take a

step back. And I'm so glad you brought that up because that's what happens. These

devices are experience blockers. Yeah. And

it's, you know, some parents listening are

already doing a very good job at managing their

device use, especially like longtime calm mamas. They have

limits, they understand compassion. And I don't want

anyone to go, oh God, now I gotta do, I better do this, like

create, I don't wanna create more anxiety, really. Looking at, does your

child seem like they're not coping with stress very well? Do they seem

that they are, like you said, highly irritable? Do they seem that they're

having a ton of sibling conflict? Like tons and tons of

sibling conflict might be because they haven't been able to work out

some stuff in their relationship because they're not getting

opportunity because they're on devices or their dopamine is too high or their cortisol is

too high. If you're seeing an off balance,

then maybe consider, just

consider what it would look like to have a detox and you don't even have

to commit to one. Just think about, well, is, would this actually

create more room? What if you find, well, my kids only

use screen like once, like an hour a week. It's like, what? Yeah, maybe there's

something else going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have to make all this. Like,

I just feel like parents are very, very overwhelmed. They're like, oh, another thing. It's

like it only can be one thing. It can be just if you think, if

your gut, your intuition is saying something's off here. Yeah,

and that's a great point too because there's so many

shoulds in parenting, like everywhere you look and there's so much shame

that can wrap you up and swallow you whole where you're like, oh, gosh, I'm.

Here's another thing I'm not doing right. But I think it's also

empowering where just assess your, your home. And I

mentioned earlier, like 75% of parents, this is the biggest issue for them. But that

also means that for 25% of parents, they're fine with the status

quo in their home. Yeah, it's working. Maybe they've already done the work. They could

have already set some boundaries or they've had a slow tech environment for

a long time. We went to a school that was slow tech, low

slow, you know, on purpose. So I was in a like minded community

that was kind of our values. I didn't, I didn't have it. I remember

one friend telling me that Baby Einstein was bad. That's like dating

me and my children. Yeah, for sure. I remember that. And I was watching

this other mom who I respected show Baby Einstein and then this other mom

was like, oh, you shouldn't have your kids watch any tech. And I was like,

what the heck? This was like like a 18 month old. And I was

like, whoa. I had no idea there was like so much to learn.

And I kind of went like, well, what is important to me? And I

asked my friend who was really thoughtful about it and she had really good

points, kind of what we're talking about. And this was what,

2005. So a long time ago,

before there was even a iPhone existed. Oh yeah.

But I was already kind of like, oh, this is going to be a value

for us. This is going to be. We want to encourage childhood and be an

outdoor family and be a play based family and that kind of

value system. And that's when I got exposed to it.

What if I had got exposed 10 years later? You know,

undoing that work would have meant doing more detoxes

and more getting my family back aligned. But it's all possible and it's

all worth it. Yeah, for sure. And I do think the early

2000s. The early 2000s was probably the hardest

time for parents because it was all, you know, the iPhone came out in

2007, the iPad came out in 2011. And the

marketing was pretty fierce. It was like, hey, if you want to raise a

little rocket scientist, early technology is best. And

I bought into that marketing for sure. I remember buying a

tablet holder to go in the back of my like the

driver's seat in the car so my kids could watch probably Baby Einstein or something

like that. But, you know, I bought into the marketing absolutely. And then after a

couple years getting these nudges like, gosh, is this right? Because

they, they can transition just fine from like a puzzle to bubbles, but they

can't really go from a screen to anything like what is going

on? So parents would get these nudges and then the data starts coming out

and we're like, oh, okay. And then that. Here's the kicker for me too

is you find out the people who are the most

involved in the creation of this technology are the

strictest parents about their own kids use of

technology. Well, we talked about that with Mama in the

last episode and it was really that

these devices were originally built for adults and for work.

And then the entertainment came and the creativity,

the content came and, and at some point it became

normal for us to put them in the hands of children. And that could have

been marketing or just, you know, just

normalizing, overwhelm. We all grew up watching Saturday morning

cartoons and after school specials. So we kind of thought, well, that's what

it's okay for kids to have some content. You know, we had Mr.

Rogers and Sesame street and there was content for children. And so there

was somewhat of a normalized thing that there's some things that are appropriate for

children that are on screens. And at some point it

literally the wheels fell off the train. Like we just became

completely derailed as a society. And maybe

going back to some of those earlier values of child based

content that is on a large TV that's

limited to certain amounts of time and then that we're good. Like,

yeah, you want to sleep in on a Saturday morning. You want to have Saturday

morning cartoons in your family. And yes, let's do that on a TV where

kids have to negotiate what they're watching. You're in charge of the remote, you

put it on, you come in, you're like turning it off because everyone's leaving for

whatever activity. Being parent led

in this way. Yeah, it's very possible. I want to give lots of hope.

Absolutely and that's another reason why it's so hard to parent

well with technology now. Because when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s,

it was like my parents could know and they're pretty hands off. They were like

the opposite of helicopter. They're great parents. They were not like getting super. I'm the

fourth born too, so they're like, you're good, everything's going to be great.

But you know, they knew that if I'm sitting in front of the tv,

there's a rating system in place and there are sensors and there are things that

kids won't hear if they're watching television. And now if

a kid has a device that connects to the Internet, there is no

rating system, there are no filters. So if our

kids have a device, an iPhone,

a smartphone, a tablet, a computer, anything that connects to

WI fi, it is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when they're

going to be seeing porn. They're going to be coming across these things that

will alter their brains forever. These images that

are so explicit and harmful. So

we just have to work a little harder. But to your point, there are absolutely

ways to use technology in redemptive and

purposeful uses. So for me, it's all about

putting technology in its right place. And I kind of laugh about this because,

and I like to clarify, I'm definitely not anti technology. It's just

putting it in its right place. My dad put food on the table as a

writer. He wrote in television, wrote TV shows like, I love a good,

love a good TV show. We love digital entertainment in our house. It's just a

matter of sifting and sorting and being wise and

purposeful and intentional about how it works best in my

home. And without shame, truly. Yeah, don't stress

if your next door neighbor does it different. You tell my kids all the time,

like, yeah, that's their house rules. That's cool. This is our house rules. This is

what we do. They can do whatever they want. Those are their kids. That's cool.

Like this is how we do it in our house and this is what we've

chosen to watch or not watch or allow or not allow. And there's

so many great resources too. I mentioned my oldest is in high, My oldest two

are in high school. And there are ways to for

them to have phones without giving them access to everything under the

sun. You can be in charge of the apps that are on their phone.

Like you mentioned, you schools do not make it easy. These teach for a while.

We Were holding out in junior high and even in high school. And it's like

you don't have Internet access, you don't have app store access. But the teachers are

asking these kids like, okay, pull up your Internet browser and

we're all playing this game together. And your kids like the odd one out, which

makes it tough. But again, a little bit of intentionality, a

little bit of research and you can, you can make these guardrails and

these parameters, you can make the technology work for you. Yeah,

yeah. And that's why like organizations like MAMA are so helpful because they are

creating bell to bell rules so that if you that

the teacher, that also normalizes equity. But if the teacher wants to have some

sort of, you know, access to a Kahoot or whatever

they're playing that it's with the tech at school and then that tech can stay

at school. There's not really a lot of reason why it needs to be a

one to one. That was such a 2010, 2012

value. And thank God they did it because then the zoom

world happened with the pandemic and then kids did have some

devices, but we're not there anymore and we've learned that it's

really unnecessary. And so we can start to advocate for

our kids, starting in our own homes with, you know, digital

detoxing and then finding out what actually works for our family.

Maybe you don't even need to do a detox for some families. Maybe your kids

are young enough where you just like new rules. Yep, exactly. Like

it's summer and families are, you know, feeling

worried about their over screen use. Especially

their kids aren't doing a lot of camps and stuff like that. Some kids that

doesn't work for, it's like just pick, is it an hour a day,

Is it individual devices one to one, or is it going to be

the group device? Are we connected to the Internet? Are we not? Just kind of

make some broad strokes for yourself

and then tell your kids, hey, this is how it is. You get to be

the parent. Absolutely. And just to encourage parents too,

like if I came across a piece of research that was so interesting to

me. Dr. Jean Twengy. Yeah, yeah, she's

awesome. She wrote Igen, but she has I think a couple other

books. But she studied what makes kids

happy and they showed that every

screen based activity made kids less

happy and every non screen activity made kids

more happy. And that included chores and homework

and that really blew me away. There was not a single exception. So even though

our kids are asking sometimes like please, I really want to play this game,

or I really want to do this app or whatever. We're thinking, like, oh,

that does make them happy. But we're the ones with the fully

developed prefrontal cortex. Right. They're the ones that are. They don't. They

can't parse out, like, oh, no, that's my dopamine system

beckoning me to the device. That's not actually the thing that's going to give

me joy and happiness. So that's kind of our job is to say,

well, I know what the research shows, and I actually know that isn't what's

best for you. And in saying, like, no, we're not going to do that, just

like you said, like, putting those rules in place and just kind of correcting course.

And I just think there's no shame in course correcting. I actually

think those are the coolest parents I know. Coolest coaches or

teachers are the ones that are, like, assessing and going, hey, that didn't really work

that well. What else can we try? You know, they're willing to say that, like,

full of humility, going, well, that didn't go how I planned. What, like, what's

next? Give me another idea. And trying. And there's no shame in that. I think

that's awesome. So great. Yeah. So we just. We're here to

encourage everyone. I really do. I think everyone needs to read your

book. It does, really. It's such a good overview

of why we need these rules and why we

need to think about these things and then how to do it. It's very practical.

So thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.

Darling. Any last. Last things you want to share or. I

guess one last thing just to encourage parents. You can do this if you're filling

the nudge. Just give it a shot. Just give it a try. I will tell

you, I've helped thousands of parents do this, and

of all the parents that have come and reported back to me, none of

them have said it didn't work. None of them had said my results were just

okay. Every response I've ever gotten has been, this blew us

away. This changed our family. I couldn't believe how great this was for

our home. So I would just encourage you. Give it a shot.

There's nothing to lose. You can do it. Thank you.

Yes. I'm going to leave it with that. Thanks so much. Thank you.