Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress. I'm a life and parenting coach. And on today's episode, I've

invited Christy Busch, who is the founder of Protect Our

Kids, to come to talk to us about how to

introduce a cell phone to your kid. I get this

question a lot about what should I do or what should

I tell my kid or how should I set it up if I'm gonna give

my child a new phone or a phone for the first time? Christy and

I walk you through all these best strategies for what to do

before you give them the phone and then also some strategies

about what apps to use and how to monitor

their use. We barely scratched the surface in this

episode because technology is so complicated.

But the big takeaway for this whole episode is

really for you to understand that you are in charge of

your child's technology. It is a skill using

social media, using tech, having a relationship with their

device is a skill. And your

responsibility as a parent is to teach them those skills and you do

that in stages and you do it slowly. So we never wanna

introduce the one technology and give them an all access

pass to that technology. I really think this episode

is extremely helpful for anyone who is concerned

about technology and cell phones and social media, and you want

to have really good practices in your family. So

please enjoy this episode with Christie Bush. Thank you

for being on the podcast because I have been watching your

work on Instagram and been really curious, you know, about

your Protect Our Kids and really in the

tech environment and what that means and what that looks like.

And I've done a lot of episodes on the podcast all

about screen free mindset or talking

about screen time and what the

pitfalls are and all of the topics. But what I wanted to talk to you

specifically today about is when you give

your kid, either teen or young person, a

cell phone for the first time. So introduce yourself a little bit, and

then we'll get into, like, all your strategies and just tell us a little

bit about yourself before we start. Yeah. So I've been a

licensed social worker for probably more years than I care

to admit. So I've always worked with

kids and families in some capacity. And about

10 years ago, I have 2 boys. 1 is

19 and one is about to be 18. Oh, that's like my kids.

Oh. I have 2 boys. Yeah. 2018. Very cool. So

you get it. Yeah. One's is about to be 18 and then that was going

to be 20 in May. So we have the same. Mhmm. So

you get it. We did have an incident to happen about

well, about 10 years ago. My oldest was 9. And I

already had sort of I mean, I clearly had the coaching and counseling background and

had public speaking background. And when this incident happened with my

son, I was like, that's it. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna help parents

not have to go through the same stuff that I just went through. You know,

he accessed something on accident. I was gonna say everyone is like, what

happened? We're all so curious. He came

across a video completely innocently. He was on a friend's device

that wasn't locked down, didn't have any restrictions on it.

That parent didn't know, you know, things were even still

kinda newish 10 years ago. You know, a lot of us, my kids are

outdoor kids. We just didn't do devices and tablets

and all that nonsense. And so I learned very quickly

what can happen. Well, I'll say one story about what happened to us. I

remember one of my best friends has 3 boys. I have 2 boys. And

we had got back from, like, the beach or something in the summer, and she

we had all been in her minivan. And the boys just pile out of the

car and go into the house, and she and I just sit as moms do

and just chat for a minute, like, getting our head on straight before we go

in and start the next whole thing. And

yeah, we come one of them comes running out, like,

so upset saying, you know, they're looking at

boobs. Just like I I we were like, what is going

on in there? And so we go in. They had gotten,

like, my friend's iPad or whatever it was. You know? And I don't even know

if there was a lock back then, honestly. And someone had told

them to look up wet t shirt. Oh, no.

Oh, no. And they were little, like, 98765 or whatever the

ages were, you know, because there was a bunch of little boys. And,

it then one was like, well, let's look it up. And they don't even know

what they're and then all of a sudden. So it's kinda like you tripped into

more than they were ready for. That's usually how it happens, and

that's how it happened with my son. They were just he had a turtle named

Snappy, and he was googling the word Snappy because he thought everybody had a

turtle named that. And, Google's a jerk, and when it's not

restricted, it really is a jerk and generated all this stuff that he

clicked on and that he saw. And I tell parents all the time, you know,

things like that are gonna happen. Kids are curious. They're supposed to be curious for

a reason. That's how they learn and grow and all this good stuff. But it

was a hard conversation, and I have part of my

past with a social worker. I was a child abuse investigator, and I know how

to have those really hard conversations. And then

I've got to sit in front of my 9 year old and have a very

adult conversation about the pornography that he just saw. And right then

that I was not gonna want, you know, us to have to go through that

again. I didn't want other parents to have to experience it. So I created

K and B Communications. I've traveled all over the country. I do tons and tons

of public speaking at schools and at professional conferences,

but combine research and science with storytelling to give the

sort of unique view of really what's going on and then how

do we protect our kids. Let's talk about what you do,

Christy, in best practices for introducing

giving a kid a phone? Because I was just thinking this is around the holidays,

and there may be a lot of people right now thinking that they wanna give

their kid a phone for Christmas or for Hanukkah. And

that kind of happens at graduation, I noticed, like, in June. There's a lot of

tendency to wanna do that or at the

holidays, you know, sometimes birthdays. But what I noticed in my

practice as a coach is that it's given as a gift. So I even

wanna talk about whether that's a good concept or not. And then is it

whose is it? Is it the kids or is it not? Their kids is the

parents, so who controls it? Then there's not really a lot of

guidelines, and then the parent finds that they have to backtrack

and put protections on and put boundaries in,

and your kid has already had access, unfettered

possibly or or a lot of access, and then the

parents, like, pulling away at a time where the kid really

wants more freedom and you're like, hey. Actually, you screwed up. We need to

give you less freedom. So I wondered if you could just start there with

what our best practices when when when and

how to give a kid a phone. Yeah. Because backtracking

never goes well. Yes. And I tell

parents, you can do it. Absolutely. And sometimes we need to,

but it never it never floats very well with the with the kids.

Just sort of in reference to what you're talking about, 100 percent

there's boundaries and guidelines before they get the phone. So if

you give your child a device or a game, even if it's a gaming

system for Christmas, they open it, we're excited about it, yay,

it's wonderful, we have it, and then they don't get to run to their room

with it, right? So we're glad that you have it. Before

mom and dad put it in the box and before they wrap it up, they've

already gotten into the phone and put all the settings on it.

They've already gotten into the phone and put all the passwords. They've already looked at

everything. They've already decided what kind of apps they want to have on the phone.

So before your child gets the phone, you've already

set your boundaries as a parent. So there's no

backtracking if you will. If you give them 30 seconds alone with

it, they're gonna download the entire world.

You're really good at that. And so you don't have to backtrack on that

either. This is such a good point. Like, I just wanna slow that

down because we're gonna give a bunch of strategies and good practices.

But that alone, I think, is something

I don't even know if I've recommended that, and I've been coaching parents for

15 years. You want them to unwrap it. Like, it's almost like

the unwrapping feeling of, like, open unsealing the box and

then, and there's a little bit of dopamine

about that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not it's not

necessary and nor is it good practice. It sounds like it's we're talking

about what to do with the thing when you open it up. But just the

fact that you've already and set it up in a way that fits

within your family values and your boundaries. That's so

good. I like that you also mentioned a gaming device. Can you talk for a

quick second about what are the pitfalls of a

gaming console? I'm curious.

Wow. There could be so many. Yeah.

I want there's a little bit of there's some positive research around it when

it's used correctly with boundaries, etcetera. But clearly, we're

seeing kids that are overstimulated that are on it, especially if

they're on it for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours a day, there's

an overstimulation issue that happens. You can

have connections with people that you don't know,

And so if the correct settings are not setting on the gaming console, if it's

not set on the game that they're playing, then they can chat with

whomever they wanna chat with, and that's an issue. Because we do know

there's predators out there that are absolutely using games to access

our kids, So that's another issue. What are some

just actual, like, tangible default settings you're gonna wanna change right

away on the console? Not so much about screen use or timing and dah dah

dah, but just kinda on the device itself right before you give it to them.

Settings is your friend. So and I tell every parent that I talk to about

this stuff, settings is your friend. Number 2, you're not gonna break

it. Right? I think I've I've coached so many parents that are afraid to kind

of go through and look at it and change things and move things because they're

like, well, what if I mess it up and what if I can't fix it

back? You're not going to break it, right? It's not that fragile.

Go through settings. If you mess something up, you can backtrack, you can redo it,

but settings is your friend because this is where you're

going to find a lot of the privacy. You're going to be able to find

a lot of the boundaries that you can set within the console, and the same

thing with games as well. But you really have to drill down through it

because the reality is every game is different, Every console

is like, everything is different. There's no one blanket. I wish I could

say, here's step 1 through 10, and I would like for you to follow this

for every game here forward, right, or for every console here

forward. It's like the iPhone. It updates, like, constantly.

So things are constantly in flux, which is another reason I think

parents get exhausted and frustrated because we want a one and

done. We want to go in Christmas day. We want to set our settings, we

want to be done with it, we want our kids to go play, we want

to know that they're safe, and then that's it. Well, we can't do

that. We have to go back. I tell parents once every 90 days truly,

even if it's not being updated, go take a look at it, drill down through

your settings, pay attention to what they're doing. Clearly, we're checking

we're checking what they're doing more often than that, you know, looking at their

gaming stuff, looking at their phone. But really do a hard deep

dive as when you first set up the phone and make sure

first set up the gaming console and make sure nothing's changed. Make

sure that your guidelines haven't been bumped off because of

an update, which happens all the time. And kids are not gonna

go, hey, mom. There's been a change to the game, and now I

have access to the world. I think you need to fix this. They're not gonna

do that. So we have to go in there and make sure that everything

is where we want it to be. What's one example of

a console change that you would like, it's kind of a

standard thing? Like, I honestly don't know and even what and I

think most of my listeners would be like, I don't know what you're asking what

you're saying. Yeah. Like, what just one example. Like, if a

like, you got a PS 5, what would be, like, your first go to? You

should probably Yeah. Limit this or change this or whatever. One of the things

I tell parents is kids access to the outside world. So look for

chat features. Look if they have access to be able to talk to anybody else.

And if they do have a chat feature, what does that look like? Can we

drill it down to where they can only chat with friends, or can

they chat with only 5 people or 5 family members, or is there a way

for you to be able to go in there and say, these are the 6

people we're gonna play with and you can't play with anybody else? And games are

like I said, every single one of them are different.

Drilling down into all of that tech is kinda crazy, which is why I tell

parents, take your settings, take your game. The other thing that I

tell parents is this, When your kid gets a

gaming console or they get games or they get a phone, they're

probably gonna say, I want to play Roblox and

Minecraft and have YouTube Kids or something like that. Like, they ask for

3 things off the bat. Right? These are the things that I want. Want. Don't

do that. Take the heart out of it as a parent and

do not give your kid 2, 3, 4, 5 games at a time

because you're gonna have to learn how to operate

5 different games, and that makes it hard for you. So what we do as

a family is we sit down and say, okay. YouTube

Kids feels safe for us as a family. I'm gonna

learn it as a parent as much as I can. I'm gonna feel as

safe as I can with it, and then this is what you're gonna have. And

we're not gonna add any games right now. We're not gonna add anything else. This

is your one thing you're gonna do. And then as a parent, we're gonna

become experts at that, unfortunately. We're gonna become experts at

looking at it, seeing what the, you know, the boundaries and the settings are. And

then later down the road, when we feel comfortable,

okay, let's take a look at Minecraft. Because what I find is

kids get excited, they want all the things, and so parents are like, okay,

it's fine. It's just Minecraft. You're just building things. It's just Roblox. You're just playing

with little people, you know, this kind of thing. Well, that's that's not the

case because there's access to the outside world, and you've got to

understand how to set all those settings to keep them from

access for all the world, and all of those are different across each game.

So make it easy for yourself as a parent by saying push the

brakes. I'm super excited you got a game. It's great we have a gaming

console. It's great that you have a phone. We're gonna have one thing.

One at a time. One thing at a time, and then, you know, you can

decide how they handle that and what it's very easy to get

bored and restless of one thing, and then maybe

your time is up and you're done anyway, and you move on. But if you

have access to 5 different games, you're gonna poke around at

all of them. It's gonna be harder to get restless and bored of the thing.

I mean, it's hard enough, but it's even harder if you have more opportunity

and more stimuli. Mhmm. Yes.

And more things can stick their fingers into. So So So that's a practical thing

right there. Like, limiting access to the outside world, that's a good takeaway

for anyone listening. It's like, that's what you wanna look for

first, chat features or even search

engines. I would imagine some of them have different access accesses,

you know, just to whatever, to the Internet or because what if they can download

games? Like, you probably don't want that, so you need to limit whether they can

download new games, whether they can change the password.

Everything when it comes to games, even when it comes to the phone, but

anything that has an email attached to it, use your email.

So if you've got a child that's in middle school, they probably already have populated

an email for whatever reason for themselves for school, and or they may just have

one in general. Do not allow them to go, we'll just use

mine. You'd lose access right then. You're done. Because

everything that's updated, everything that's coming through that game, all the changes that

need to be made, etcetera, that's gonna come through email is gonna come to your

kid instead of you. Let's just yep. So we're limiting

access to the outside world, and we're

saying that any changes need to be

associated the account needs to be associated with the parent's email. But now we

can get into the phone a little bit. When you first buy a phone, you

know, you put in information

about who who do who should the information be? The

kid? The parent? Like, I'm curious. Anything

that you can get coming to you through email,

passwords, your kids don't know passwords. Your kids do

not will not get access to passwords until they are in high

school, and then maybe we're switching some things because we're

getting them ready to move off and be on their own and be able to

handle all this stuff, and that's a whole another conversation. Anything that you can

have coming to you, but especially those passwords. The password to the phone is

your passwords, not theirs. The password to access anything

is yours. If they happen to have Snapchat, you've got passwords. Right? You've

got passwords to everything. There's places in there where they can hide videos that's

password encoded. You have the password or it's not on the phone.

This kind of stuff gives you control. And so I've had a lot

of parents say to me, I don't wanna invade their privacy. I'm

worried about, you know, them seeing me with too much control because I gave them

their phone. It's not their phone. Yeah. It's not their phone. It will

never be their phone. You are paying the bill. They are living in your home,

and I will say this. This is the hill that I would die on. It

will never be their phone till they leave your house and they make their own

payment. And then they can do whatever in the world they want to with it

because we've educated them, and we let it go. Right? But it is not

their phone. You're allowing them to borrow your phone. You're allowing them to

use your phone, so everything they do on that phone,

if parents can look at it like this, is for your

knowledge, for your consumption. Clearly, you're allowing them to use

it. Because I have so many kids that say, They're invading

my privacy. I don't want my parents taking my phone. I've had kids

had full out seizures when we removed them. What I tell parents is

this, it's not private. Everything they put

into a little device that is a computer that you're holding in your hand

is public. Texting is public. I mean, stuff you text

grandma is public. Right? I mean, it's it's out there. It floats around.

Gaming is public. Social media is public. If you want and

I tell kids this. If you wanna write your feelings down that you're having

in a journal that truly is private, that lives in your room on a piece

of paper, that's yours. As parents, I'm not gonna look at that. That's your private

thoughts. Have a conversation with your friends about your thoughts.

Your phone is public by nature. Everything we

do on that, no matter what Because it's connected to the Internet, which

isn't, like a the worldwide web. Right? It's

connected to everybody, everything. That's the whole point. It's a

web. And Yeah. You put it out there and it's now caught in

that web. When it's done, you lose control over

over it. Even if, you know, I tell kids all the time, I don't care

what your privacy button says. I don't care. They're useless, and here's

why they're useless. Anybody can screenshot anything. Anybody

can take a a video of a video. You know, I've got kids videoing

videos. Right? There's nothing that's private on there. So no matter what

it says, which is why as parents, we gotta keep our eyeballs on kind of

on what they're doing. That's another good thing to think about. Like, I'm

letting you use this phone. Right? So if we're giving a a

phone whether we could talk about the type of phone and some recommendations, but

whatever it is, a console or a phone or

any form of tech, you're

saying, hold the mindset for the parent. This is mine, and you're

borrowing it. I'm letting you use it. I pay for it.

It's mine. Yeah. And just hold that that it's

really a perspective that you kind of need to zone, and then it becomes

normalized in your family. Yeah. Mhmm. Okay. So

it's mine. I'm gonna let you use it. I have the passwords.

I set it up. I'm in charge of the

settings. You can't change them. And

limiting so for console, limiting the first game

or first x access to something. So let's talk

hardware for a minute. What age do you feel

or what circumstance do you feel like kids should have a

device on their person? At what point should

they carry a computer in their pocket? Yeah. And when you look at

look at it like that, it sounds really terrifying. Right? I think a good

rule of thumb is waiting till 8th grade. I do get

if you're on the bus or you're coming home or if you've got sports after

school, it's nice to know if they have something for protection with them to be

able to call you if there's a problem or if they're gonna be late or

if you need to be there, etcetera. In elementary school, I feel like it's

pretty clear that adults involved are gonna communicate to the

parents. In middle school, it gets a little bit messy where

the adults involved communicate to the children and or

parent. But then in high school, they really only communicate to the

student. We then need to rely on our student

communicating with us. So that can get a little mixed

up in middle school where you're all the way to 8, but you

may have something that you go to that you you

drop them off, or they're supposed to walk to Starbucks afterwards, and that's where

you pick them up. Like, you give them a little bit of freedom in the

world, and then they're standing around. It happened to me when I was little. I

didn't have a phone. And I'd be like, oh, I guess I just wait here

for an hour because my family's not coming. That's what we did. Right? I mean,

my husband talks about it all the time. He's like, I can't tell you how

many times mom got stuck at work, and an hour later, I was still sitting

on the football field without a phone just, like, twiddling my thumbs or kicking a

ball around. I'm not mad at letting a kid sit for 30 minutes

and be bored and wait on a parent and learn how to

navigate that while they're at school. I'm not mad at that. I think there's a

lot of skill building involved in that, but not everybody agrees with me. But some

people feel very anxious about it. So then if we're gonna wait till 8th,

we're saying wait till 8th for a smartphone is kind of what we're

saying is, like, in that movement. Is that computer in your pocket kinda

mindset? Or are you woah. I I

always wanna be as clear as I can because I do know

I have actual clients who were, like, have 5th graders or 6th

graders, and they're, like, really trying to figure out what do I do right

now. Do I give them something? If I do, what is it? Flip

phone, dumb phone, whatever. So a

couple things here. They do have some options, but I like to

preface this with when parents ask me what's the age, what should I do?

When you are ready for your relationship to change with your child.

Oh, that's great. Once you give your child a

phone, you were you will always wonder, are they

okay? What are they doing? Do they have access? Like it changes this whole

dynamic, right? So when you are ready for your relationship to change with

your child. When you're ready for unless you give them a

dumb phone, when you are ready to know they will have access to

some pretty serious things in the world that are living, breathing, moving that we

didn't have access to, that they're gonna see and that you're gonna have

to have adult conversations around, and or you're not gonna know

they saw it, but they're gonna live with it, see it, it's gonna sit with

them. So we're gonna Particularly pornography or,

predators. Right? Like, you know, or or bullying. It could be bullying that

they're experiencing that they don't wanna tell you about, like, peer to peer or

some stranger, or it could be somebody reaching out to them

as a predator in a way that they don't say. They maybe not even know

to tell you that this is feels off. How do they know if someone tells

them they're a 13 year old girl? They think they're a 13 year old girl.

And then, obviously, pornography is so accessible on the Internet. Yeah.

Yeah. We have both those. One of the their issues is things like TikTok

and that kind of stuff. Just showing videos that are of people committing

suicide of, parrex, and you see all this bad stuff,

people that are very, very ill. Now we have real time

war videos. You can get on Snapchat, see hot spots, and see

exactly what is happening in the middle of war. Not that your kids are

necessarily looking for that stuff, but because

social media is the beast that it is, it's gonna throw them a little bit

of stuff here and there and they're gonna click on it because they're curious. So

these are narratives that we don't want our children to have. When you're ready to

understand that your children are gonna have access to these things and they're

gonna see these things. That's the other thing that I tell parents. The

third thing is, where are they mentally, emotionally, no, psychologically? Where

are ways? I take my 2 boys as an example. I

could have given my youngest a phone at age 6,

and it wouldn't have mattered one bit. Right? He's always

been a very old soul, very mature, like, didn't care about that stuff. I

tried giving my oldest a phone in 8th grade, and he lost it in

24 hours because he was and that's just his brain.

Right? I have one of those.

And so he didn't get it again until, like, in high school. I did give

my kids flip phones before they ever got real phones. You have to take a

look at where's your child? Where are they? If they are

very involved in social media, it means a lot to them. If gaming is

like everything. If it that's just kind of their personality. And

if they've had a game, if they've been gamers, usually they

are before they get a cell phone typically, if you see an

obsessive personality with gaming, the cell

phone is not gonna be different. Right? If they're not gonna be, oh, I don't

care about that. It's gonna sort of trade off and kind of or move off

and kinda still be over there as well. I was happy with girls to

an indication of maybe some instability is, like,

really obsessed with what they look like and giving I've noticed that I

hadn't thought about this, but I had a client recently talk to me about this.

Like, how the camera how much the camera is influencing

the way that the child or the, you know, middle

schooler is interacting with the world, taking hundreds of

photos of themselves. Even if they don't have social media or

post them, they're obsessively looking at how they

look and posing and change

100, and that doesn't feel

healthy. Right? So if they're a kid who's already

struggling with maybe a lot of interest in what they look

like in middle school, it might not be great to hand

them a camera that they have access to all the time.

No. It's it's like a it's like gas and a mat you know, matching

gasoline, and it's just gonna explode on you a 100%. Yeah. So those

are good things to think about, like, where your kid is at. Are they,

like, that toxic gamer? I had one of those who just got

gaming probably a little bit too young, and then we did we pulled all the

way back huge screen reset on him.

But he was just screaming while playing the game and just you know,

they're just yelling in discord and screaming, and then just

so much, anger and frustration. I was like, woah. Woah.

Woah. This is not the emotional energy we want in

this family or in this house. So I was like, oh, too young. We're

like, not ready. Yeah. Pull that back. I tell parents all the time. I don't

care how old your kid is. I was like, if you come to a conference

of mine and you've got a 14 year old and you're like, oh my gosh,

I gotta pump the brakes because I had no idea. If you

need to go back and pump the brakes at your house, that's

okay. We're gonna do it in phases. Right? We're not gonna go home and go,

let's rip everything away, but we are gonna go home and have an open conversation

with our kid. Because here's what I want parents to understand. I have so many,

and I get it. Right? I totally get how we want our kids

to fit in and not be left behind and to be okay. But if I

ask parents back to talking about when to give them a phone, you know, when

did you give your child a phone? And did you feel okay with it? And

they're like, oh, I gave it, you know, in 5th grade. Well, did you feel

okay with it? No, I did not. And then why did you do it?

Well, because 90% of the class had it. I didn't want them to get

behind. I wanted them to be able to talk to your friends, but how did

you feel in your gut as a parent? No. I didn't I didn't wanna do

it, and I still feel bad about it today. Well, then that's what we need

to listen to. And social media and devices have

gotten so noisy, they're blocking out our ability to be able to

parent how we want to parent, to parent from our

just simple gut instincts around this junk. Right? There's not a 4th

grader that needs Snapchat for zero reasons. Zero reasons. Do they need to

have access to an app that disappears? Most adults don't need access to an

app that disappears. Right? The other thing that I tell parents when

talking about phones and talking about social media and apps, none of this

stuff was created for kids. 0. IPhone came out

really and Apple was, you know, kind of emerged in 2007.

We're looking at, you know, social media. Facebook coming out was created by

college students to talk to college students who are adults.

Snapchat was created specifically by adults,

college students, to be able to send pictures that disappeared to one

another. I've been doing this for 10 years. Things

got much worse after 2020. And by worse, I

mean my elementary school students that I speak to,

50% of them, 60% of them now have some sort of social media app,

TikTok. I'm talking 2nd graders, 3rd grader,

Snapchat. These things are very concerning in their development

and their ability to be able to relate to one another. And

we often talk about phone and social media, and it is one of my little

pet peeves is that we're not talking enough about giving

little kids iPad use all the time. I think about

tech in terms of the cost of it and

what are you not doing while you're doing that? When you're a little

kid, what are you not doing? Are you you're not playing. You're not

moving. You're not coloring. You're not creating. People are, will they color on the

iPad? I'm like, well, you're not using a crayon. Right? You know, birth to age

3 is such a huge, huge, huge time of development for

kids. And we're seeing so many issues, and part of

that is because they're getting devices by age 1. And

so I've interviewed so many pediatricians around this. It's really cool stuff. This is

where I nerd out. But anyway, a lot of them are saying how, and this

is one thing I've always told parents, is you have birth to age 3, kids

are having this trouble with communicating, they're having trouble with emotional,

emotion regulation. Part of that is because, like, trying to get

parents' attention, as a parent we're doing this. Yeah. We're staring at our

phones. Mhmm. And I'm getting a face to face reaction with your child, and they're

learning emotions by looking at our faces. Birth to age 3, that's how they learn

all that stuff. They're not seeing our faces. They're seeing the side of our head,

right? They're seeing the back of our head. They're not getting this emotional connection,

and all this research shows us that the stuff they get

from an iPad doesn't light up the brain the same way that a

conversation does, the same way that sitting with someone does. We know all of this.

Right? That that the research is showing us. So Yeah. It's a

temptation for sure because I I mean, I my work is around

overwhelmed moms. Right? Overwhelmed, stressed, anxious moms. My whole program is

calm mama coaching. And I would never wanna say to a mom, like, don't give

your kid the iPad, like, if you need a mental health

reset. Right? But I would rather than watch television. Like, I

would rather them sit on the couch

just a lot of distance away. If you're overwhelmed and you need a

little break and you need to I would rather use do something different. But if

scrolling's your quick release, dopamine and dopamine and,

oxytocin kit, go for it. Let's try to use it as

infrequently as we can. Let's replace

those strategies that we maybe have

with slightly healthier ones. Like, you know, we're gonna still need our

strategy. So no judgment to any parent who's doing it. No.

And just recognizing this is information for you to make a

more informed decision. That's it. Yeah. Well, the

reality is is what we saw or I saw definitely, you know, after 2020 or

during 2020 because things are drastically different since then. We were

surviving. We were in simple fight or flight. We were surviving, and so every kid

was on a computer for school. If your kid was not in school, you're working

from home. You had to have something because we're not getting daycare in

our home. We're distancing. It shifted

us probably 2 decades ahead of where

we would have been as far as the time. So

YouTube alone went up 300% the 1st month of lockdown.

300% never went back down. It's not

gonna go back down. We don't shove that toothpaste back in the tube. Right? We

don't go, oh, we're no longer social distancing. I'm gonna go play in the

yard, like, it because you it it's noisier and brighter and all the

things, and then we got really used to that sort of being there. But at

the same time, our lives are are drastically different. You know? The

stressors are different. The economy is different. Like,

everything is different. We're all very, very overwhelmed.

Yeah. We're all very stressed. And then we want the easy

the easy coping because doing

the like, finding access to some

other form of regulation is so challenging. It's

so it feels so far away and that I like how you

said when you were backing off how we do it in steps, and it's like,

just do it in steps as well, you know, for yourself.

Maybe you hand the kid the iPad, and then you're like, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Darlin and Christie said we should do it, in the

the TV instead. So I'm gonna put on a video

that's 20 minutes, and I'm not gonna let autoplay happen in my

house. And it'll pause, and I'll know and right? Yeah. When

our kids were little, they would use a DVD. Yeah. A DVD. And it would

end. Yep. You had the remote, and you would go press play, and you'd have

to yeah. I do tell parents if you've given

your kid a game, an iPad or whatever, the very

first thing that you give them, we don't wanna give it to them. And

granted, we we sometimes are using that for a few minutes of just us

to take a breath, but I also want you to sit with your child.

I want you to sit next to them while they're using it, and one of

the main reasons is because I want them to be used to you from day

1 being involved. I want them to be used to

you picking up their iPad, picking up their game, picking up their

cell phone, see this sort of progression that happens. So at 12, they're

not like, why are you touching my stuff? Mom

and dad have already been involved from day one. They're you're they're used to you

sitting beside them playing that game and looking at what they're doing and looking at

their computer, so it's not an out of the blue situation.

So there's an understanding out of the gate. I'm

gonna be involved in your tech life. I'm gonna be involved in your social media

life. I love you. I'm not saying you're doing things wrong. I'm

saying it's a really big world out there, and a lot of stuff can

come at you, and you're probably not quite ready for it yet. That's my job.

That's my job as your parent to kind of fend off all the junk. So

that way, start at age 2. You're sitting beside them. You're looking at what

they're playing. Play games with your kids. If your kid's on

Minecraft, I used to walk into my son's room. He, you know, would

have his little headphones on, and part of this

was sometimes I would play with him. Part of this was my check.

And I tell parents all the time because they wanna know what's the

best app monitoring system, what's the best way to make sure they're safe. And I

was like, your eyeballs are free and your hands are free. So I'd

walk into my son's room. I'd hold out my hand, and he would give me

he knew that. He had to give me his headset, and I would put it

on. And I would listen. I wouldn't say anything, but I

would listen to what other kids were saying. I would read if there was any

stuff sort of scrolling down the side of it. Free, easy way for me to

say, oh, I don't this is not cool. This there's a lot of inappropriate stuff

going on here. Or, yay. Great. Continue to, like, hang out, whatever, with your

friends. This is going well. Not every day. Just every now and

then. Right? He knew if he didn't hand it over, then I would quietly

just the game becomes, you know, in my room or goes to my room, and

then he move on with life. There's no fight. Yeah. We had, like,

a little desk safe or whatever, and it would we just put

cables in there, remotes in there, phones in there,

and they'd just be gone for a while. And, yeah, you're gonna have a big

feeling cycle. It's what I call a temper tantrum. You're gonna have a lot of

frustration and emotion. That's okay. It's part of the process. It

the more dysregulated your child is by losing it, the more

evidence you have that that was a good idea. Yes. I say that all the

time. My son ended up forgetting about having his game. Like, he had a

seizure for the 1st 2 days. Right? But he didn't have it because he had

done something. I don't know what it was. And then he didn't ask for

it, and I didn't offer it back for 4 months.

For 4 months. It was absolutely crazy to me, but he went back

to picking on his brother and to playing with the dog when we were a

baseball fan. Like, doing all the things that a 13 year old

does. I mean, he goes back to me and the teenagers. It's hard when you

have to remove stuff, but it's you know, sometimes can kinda work

out in their favor a little bit and in your favor, because

you don't have to listen to Kelly. This is so true. I was thinking when

you were talking about sitting close to them, and I was just thinking about how

that how we do that with food. Like, I eat with my children. I

prepare their food. I'm aware of what they're

eating. I'm I'm not obviously knowing everything as they get older,

which is true of tech. Right? You know, I'm at the birthday party. I'm like,

you can have one cupcake or whatever the situation is.

I'm just very involved, and they're not like, why are you making decisions about my

cupcakes? No one's saying that because they're so accustomed

to the I'm the gatekeeper. I decide what you eat, when you eat,

and where you eat. You decide whether you eat it or not and

and how much you eat. And so it's like tech is

kinda similar if we can get that mindset around it of, like,

yes, I'm always gonna be the gatekeeper of your technology

until you are responsible for your

just like your sleep. As you get older, you're responsible for your sleep. You're

responsible for your diet. You're responsible for your academics, all

these things. So, yes, someday you will be fully responsible for your tech,

not now. Yeah. It happened so fast. It's so

funny because my 19 year old will soon be anyway,

my oldest. We were all sitting outside the other day with his friends, and all

his friends are 19, these big old grown I mean, they're all grown. Right? They're

basically grown men. And we were sitting outside, and we were talking about TikTok. I

still talk to my son about his social media. Like, he still

Sure. Still have sometimes even more in-depth conversations.

But we were talking about something with his buddy sitting

around, and and then he just kinda got quiet. He goes, mom, but I get

it. And I said, you get what? He's like, I get it now. He said,

I get why he's that you did not allow me to have it. I

get now why you put the restrictions on there. He said, I was

mad. I was kinda salty for a really long time. He said,

but I get it now. He said, I see where things could have gone

sideways, and I'm thankful. I just cried and was

like, yes. And so that's one of the things that I want parents to understand,

in the middle sucks. Middle school and then beginning of high school,

and you're teaching them all this stuff, and you feel so marred in it like

you're never going to get out of it, but it is worth it when you

have a 19 year old to come back and say and that's our goal, right,

to say I like the things that you taught me. I have the skills

now, and I'm going to be okay. Right? I'm gonna be able to they're gonna

make some mistakes. They're supposed to make mistakes. Right? The

crappy part is, you know, we made mistakes when we were younger. Just nobody could

record it, and everybody can record what the crap they do. But it's one of

those things where I feel so good about him

and his habits and where he's at with his social media

because I sat in that mess and just kind

of, you know, which felt like forever, but kind of gutted it out

with him a little bit. And it's not always gutting it out. There's gonna be

days that are great, and you'll go for weeks or for months and no issues.

But because they're kids, they're gonna try your patience. They're gonna

ask for more. They're gonna screw up. But eventually, on

the other side, which is where I know, that's where you wanna get them

to. That was the goal. Right? This whole time was the goal for us to

get here, and we're here, and they're both doing great. I do want parents to

be encouraged in the fact that it is worth it to listen to

your gut. It is worth it if your kid's not doing

everything everybody else is doing. If your mom gut is

saying, my kid's not ready, eventually, you're gonna be

like, I'm so glad I did that. I'm so glad I stuck to my

guns. I'm so glad I didn't give them full access, you know, to

everything. So I don't know. It just kinda works out. But I

love your food analogy. They don't know what to feed themselves at age

10. They'd eat all the cupcakes in the world, and it's kinda like social media

and kinda like their advice in gaming. They don't they don't know. They don't know

till they know. Right? And that's our job. So Yeah. Okay.

So if let's just do a little bit of brass tacks before we

wrap. If someone is like, my kid in middle

school, I want them to have some access so they can communicate with

me. Would you say a flip phone? Is that kind of a good place to

start? How what is your I love flip phones because

they're cheap and they break them. Who cares? And it literally is a dumb phone.

Like, you really can't do anything. Gab makes a phone

that and so does Bark. It kinda looks like an iPhone,

but there's no Internet access. They can't get into anything. It's

kind of a dumb phone, if you will. So Gab and Bark, parents can take

a look at those too. One of the pushbacks parents get from kids is, well,

it doesn't look like an iPhone. So those phones are more

similar to iPhones than if you just get a flip phone. Okay.

I did get flip phones for my kids, but this was 10

I don't know how many years ago, long time ago, and they hated it. They

loved it at first because they could call or text, but then they

hated it because it didn't look the same, but that's just kinda what they had.

They had to prove they knew how to use it to get an expensive iPhone.

Mhmm. But there but there so there are options. There's options

for watches that they can wear as well,

that are you know, don't have access. All they have is, like, a list of

people that you can call, and that's it. Mhmm. You know, mom, grandma,

dad, whoever it is that you decide. Yeah. So the That sounds really

great for those parents who feel, like, quote,

unquote, for safety or whatever. They want their kid to

be able to connect with them or access them, and they wanna be able to

access their kid when they're away, that those seem

like good options because they essentially don't have access to the Internet.

That's kinda what we're the recommendation is like, don't give

them access to the world yet. Then when we do decide to do a

smartphone, which is essentially, access to the Internet, whatever

that version is, like, you know, to to get

it and put set up your own passwords, set up

limitations, what about

certain apps? Like, you had the the idea with the

console to only start with one game. Do you recommend that

with apps, or, like, how do you handle that? Just imagine

someone's like, I waited until 8. It's a winter

break before, you know, the end of 8th grade. I feel like I did a

good job. I'm all ready. And

they're like, I got the phone. Tell me what to do with it.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. What app? So you decide.

And here's the other thing that I tell parents that that this is gonna feel

a little bit frustrating, and we don't wanna do this because we're not interested in

all the things our kids are interested in. But whatever app your kid

wants, you can too make a fake account. Like, say, if your kid

I don't recommend starting out with TikTok. Say, you know, they I don't

let's just use Instagram. If they wanted What do they want? They want

Snapchat. Right? That's what they mostly want, from what like, yeah.

Well, like, a young a middle school girl seems to want TikTok,

and then the Snapchat seems to be the way that most of

the young people are communicating. These younger ones don't really

want Instagram that much. No. They don't.

Yeah. So let's see what like, what do they want? They want TikTok

and we're saying no until what? Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely

100% your kid is gonna want Snapchat probably before they want TikTok.

Yep. Snap where everybody's at, it is a 100% where we

communicate. It is a hard no for me, period, till high school, period. That's

not gonna happen though. The reality is is 99% of kids have

Snapchat by the time they are in 6th grade. It's a big

issue. It's a massive issue, and it makes

my face cave in, but it's one of those things where you don't want it

to give your child anything that they can use that

disappears ever. They are already in a

place of hormones and figuring out where they are

and just life stuff, middle school's hard enough, without

having something that disappears, that can short wire

their brain and make them think, well, this is fine. And they have such a

quick reaction response to stuff where they might be angry and send something, not mean

it, regret it 5 seconds later, but then you've got a resource officer at your

door. I see it all the time. Right? Have to coach parents

around it all the time because their kid has said something or said something that

it I have some clients who've had their kid has had a hardware ban

with Snapchat because they violated the agreement so

many times. And so that why we're here is trying to say,

hey. Yeah. You do have to become a little bit of the regulator.

And because the norms aren't here yet, what's normal, what's not.

It's not normal for a 13 year old to drive a vehicle anywhere in the

United States. And yet at some point, that became

where, like, oh, it's normal for a 16 year old. We all kinda think that

that that's the age. And then some kids don't pass and some kids do. They

get their driver's license, whatever. Some kids have to wait. And there's rules

around it, and there's social norms. But yet we need that

with tech. It's just not here yet. So we think it's normal at this point

for a 10 year old to be using Snapchat, and it's not. That's like a

10 year old driving a car. It's so mired in money. It's so

mired in, you know, the whistle blowers that happened a year and a

half ago around social media taught us so much

about what's going on behind the scenes with all this stuff and how our

children are targeted, that Facebook knew they were targeting our kids.

TikTok knew they were targeting our kids. It's proven by all of that

information that came out. And that's part of the

reason why things are not changing is because they our kids

are a big driver, massive driver of social media.

Yeah. So I think we've just obviously scratched the surface, but

to wrap, we're gonna if you give your kid a phone, remember it's yours,

and you're gonna, you know, put your own passwords in, get all the

emails associated with you. And then one

app recommendation of 1 for a 13 year old

today, Do you know what you would say?

I mean, maybe it's just the Internet. It's the Internet browser, and I don't even

know. Browser to start with and just see how they operate with

that. I don't I mean, YouTube Kids, I don't hate YouTube

Kids. I I want parents that are listening to this to understand I'm not anti

tech. I'm not anti social media. There's amazing, beautiful

things you can do with it, and our kids are doing that. They're not all

gonna do all these horrible things. And so finding something

that's usable, educational,

maybe that still allows us to have contact with our friends. The hard

part is most kids are Snapchat, most kids are

TikTok, and they're not gonna want anything else. But just

starting by giving them a little bit of access, controlled

access through your settings for appropriateness, and see how they

operate online, see how they operate having access to online.

And then talk about it as a family. Have open conversations

with your kids. I say that all the time, and be

vulnerable with your kids. I struggle with this. As adults, we struggle with

this. Let's just chat. We're not quite as different

as you think we are. You know, some of this stuff I still struggle

with as a mom too. And I think being honest with kids and telling

them, I don't wanna have to monitor this as

much as I do. This sucks for me. It sucks for you, but

this is where we are because sometimes as a parent, I have to do the

hard job and the stinky part because that's just my job

as a parent. And so you may get angry with me, and that's

okay, but I'm gonna make sure you're okay.

And so I think that vulnerability will sometimes translate as well. They're not

gonna go, oh, I get it. I love you. No big deal. But maybe

eventually. Mhmm. Eventually, they will. Both my kids have said that as

well to me, and we've had lots of conversations about their relationship with

tech and, yeah, decisions around it and what

yeah. And there is a lot of gratitude about the slow tech approach that

we had in our family and some honest conversations about maybe

areas that have held them back a little bit or delayed them slightly compared to

their peers. That's been interesting. And it

doesn't mean that they didn't catch up.

Right. Like, they might have been socially a little bit

on the outside because things were happening on their phones

that they didn't know about, like conversations and the way kids were

communicating and things. And then once they got one, they caught up

just fine. So

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda like the bathroom soap opera. No matter where you dip

into, you're gonna be. Yeah. You're gonna be fine. Exactly.

And they can get, yeah, get their skills that they need to connect with

their peers. Like, it's really okay. Some kids learn to read at 3 and some

kids learn to read at 7, and they all learn to read, and that's fine.

Some kids potty train early, some kids potty train late. They all potty train.

So it's like tech. You know? You give your kid a tech

at at 13 or 8th grade, great. If you wanna wait a

year, fine. Okay. Yeah. See where they're

at. Mhmm. I tell parents if they're not asking for it,

don't offer it. Like, you know what I mean? There are those kids that

really and truly just aren't as interested, so don't offer games.

Like, if they're not asking for a gaming console for Christmas, don't go, let's get

them a gaming console for Christmas. Right?

Let's not do that. Just thinking they would love it, which they probably would. But

if they're not asking, oh my gosh. That's your that's a win for

you as a parent. Right? And less stress is. So Spend your

money on going to, like, an amusement park or something like that as a family,

like some other different or a new bike or whatever. Yeah. Something

else. Well, Christy, I think people are gonna

definitely wanna follow you. So what's the best way to connect with you and

learn from you? So you have really great stuff. Yeah. So if

they're in the Instagram space, they can do protect underscore kids in this

space for me with Instagram. I find a lot of people are still in the

Facebook space. So if they're there as all the kids I

speak to, the old person space, But they can go

there, and it's called crack the code. Follow me there. I

give information there, and then I try to give updates on my website.

But if anyone is interested in if they would like for me to come

to their school and speak or their community and speak, if they're interesting in

coaching around it, clearly, you can go to my website, kandbcommunications.com.

And, it's got everything. It's got all the stuff. And we'll link all of

this in the show notes and on the email. Yeah. Well, thank

you. I know parents feel, really alone with tech and

just knowing there's voices out there like you who are giving some

lighthouse in the storm just to guide the way is really

beautiful. And I just thank you for your work and thank you for being on

the podcast. Absolutely. I loved it. Thank you for having me. You're

welcome.