Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Susan Stiffelman, your host and the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. I'm a marriage, family and child therapist, a teacher, a long time parent educator, and a mom. This podcast is all about helping you raise confident, caring children with more joy and with fewer power struggles. It's my honor to share with you some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years, doing this work with thousands of families around the world. But before we get started, I want to make sure that you're getting all of our updates by visiting Susanstiffelman.com and signing up for the newsletter. So you'll receive all of our inspiration and updates, including the great programs we have coming up like Raising Money-Smart Kids with Chelsea Brennan from Smart Money Mamas. That's going to be outstanding.

Speaker 1:
So be sure to stay in touch Susanstiffelman.com. 

Hello, and welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman. I'm the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. And I'm so glad that you're here in this podcast. I aim to help you raise confident, caring kids with more joy and with fewer power struggles. And it's really such a pleasure to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years as a marriage and family therapist and educator, a teacher. And of course a mom, before we get started a few things, make sure that you're getting our updates by visiting Susanstiffelman.com and signing up for our newsletter. So you'll get lots of free inspiration. We have some really great programs coming up, including a class on children, and self-regulation based on neuroscience with Dr. Mona Delahooke. So be sure to stay in touch if you're a subscriber to this podcast, which I hope you are.

Speaker 1:
And if you're listening as it's been released, just as it's been launched head over to Susanstiffelman.com because we're having a huge sale on every masterclass I've done for the past several years. And that's good until July 18th at midnight, it includes everything mealtimes without power struggles, chores, slow tech, parenting, raising sensitive kids, anxious kids, mindful kids, kids with challenges with collaborators, including Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Ross Greene, just the list goes on and on, Tina Bryson, Maggie Dent. So I hope you'll take advantage of that sale, which is on now until July 18th. Today, I'm going to be talking about kids and screens. And the first thing I want to say is that whatever I say and share is meant to support you. It's not meant to make you feel bad, or to feel that you're doing anything wrong. My policy, my firm belief, everything I build my work on is that you as the parent or the expert for your child and that you should do what's right for you and for your family.

Speaker 1:
So with that understanding, I also want to support you in choosing and deciding rather than just following along with what everyone else is doing. So today I'm going to talk about screens, kind of how we've become so reliant and some of my concerns and some suggestions for maybe making different decisions, not only for our own sanity, but also in the best interest of our kids. So here goes, I want to talk first about this reliance or dependence that we've all grown to have on our digital devices. It's not just kids, it's parents believe me. I have my own challenges. And it's very interesting because every year, twice a year, I completely unplugged for two or occasionally for three weeks. And I've noticed in the couple of years that it's gotten harder, because even if I want to look up a phone number or something, it's going to be on a device.

Speaker 1:
So it's not, you know, it's so integrated into our daily lives. Now that the idea that we would, you know, not have access to so many wonderful resources. Well, first of all, it's not really my goal. It's really about kids who are fixated. And if you think about the behavior of an addict, correct, where the attic who is physically psychologically dependent on a substance alcohol drugs, pills, whatever it might be, even when they're not using there tends to be a fixation on the next use. And I see that a lot with kids, even when we set limits and we say, okay, your time is up. You'll get another 30 minutes at this particular time. A lot of kids really flounder. They don't know what to do with themselves. They're really kind of lost and focused on how many minutes or seconds until they can get back online.

Speaker 1:
I don't think this is such a good idea. Again, I'm not judging anyone. If you are, depending on screens to get you through the day, because you have other responsibilities, you have challenging children. You, you yourself are, are not well or, or not just able to kind of show up in a way that you might prefer. Please, please, don't be hard on yourself. That's not what we're about, but I just want to kind of call it out because I go to the park and I watch parents with their children, and I see how happy children are when they're playing. And this is kind of my, my goal is to help us raise happy kids who are creative and confident and comfortable in their skin and able to be by themselves and able to play well with others. And I do think for some of us, we have lost kind of a w we've lost a sense of what, where the ground is and what's healthy and what what we're doing with our kids or what our kids are doing, just because everyone else is because, you know, I'm seeing two to three year old children who can't ride in a car unless they're holding mommy or daddy's phone or who can't sit at a restaurant without a tablet of some kind.

Speaker 1:
And I do want to remind you that for thousands of years, children have entertained themselves. So that the question on my mind is what are we believing as a society about children's capabilities, their ability to entertain themselves, to be happy to come up with fun and interesting things to do that don't involve a battery or a plug. What are we believing that have led us to where we are now? And I know that the story I'm about to tell you has been debunked. So forgive me for telling a story that actually apparently isn't thought to be entirely true, but it's a good analogy. I'm guessing you've heard it before, but the, the, the notion is that if there's boiling water, a frog, isn't gonna, you know, if you drop a frog in and it had the, the wherewithal to out, it would immediately jump out of the boiling water, that water that's too hot.

Speaker 1:
But if you gradually in small, small increments, you put a frog in cool water and you gradually, gradually slowly increase the temperature until it is that hot. The frog, according to the legend would be boiled alive. Now that's a terrible image, but I think it's kind of an interesting analogy to where we are now and how we got to the place where we actually, many parents don't believe that their children can drive from a to B or sit in a restaurant without having a device in their hand. So here's a question for you to answer, honestly, again, without judgment incrimination, any of that stuff, because listen, it happens to the best of us that we hand our device over to our kids, because it's just easier and they're happy. But the question is when you're quiet, when you're really honest with yourself, putting aside all the reasons that you might not want to limit your children's screen any more than you have already.

Speaker 1:
And certainly the pandemic played a big part in increasing our kids dependence. But when you ask yourself, are your kids too dependent on digital devices? And then again, are you, are you too dependent or are you believing their claim that there's nothing else to do? Or do you operate with the idea that if they aren't on their screens, they'll be bored. And then you're going to have to entertain them. You're going to have to take them places or play games with them. So it's a huge, huge topic. It came to the forefront again during the pandemic, because this was our children's only way to socialize, to learn, to engage, to be entertained. And so most parents, and we have tens of thousands of parents in our community did rely much more heavily on screens. And it's a little bit harder now to disengage. Once those habits are entrenched, I've done some really good deep dives on this topic.

Speaker 1:
So I'm going to, I'm going to touch on some basic ideas today, but if you want to go further, I've done classes with Dr. Dan Siegel with Janell, Burley, Hoffman, Devorah Hytner, and all of those classes by the way, are on sale right now, as I said, for the summer sale. So go to Susanstiffelman.com for details, but let me just sort of start with some ideas for you that you can take away right away in today's podcast. And these ideas are informed by who I am. I mean, I can't separate who I am in my own childhood, from what I understand and believe and know I'm in my sixties. I grew up in the Midwest. I'm very happy about that. And my parents didn't really play with me. My older brothers didn't much play with me. They weren't much interested. So if I didn't have friends to play with, I entertain myself, no screens, no computers, no laptops, no devices, no social media, no cell phones, none of that.

Speaker 1:
And I'm convinced that figuring out fun things to do was really a big factor in my creativity and my ability to enjoy my own company, to think outside the box, to be comfortable when I didn't have a distraction, I can remember playing with marbles for hours. And I had the bigger verbals, I guess they're the shooters. And they would be the parents. And I had all these little marbles and I would organize them in different ways, or I would climb trees. I would read, I would teach myself little crafts and those things would never have happened if I had had access to a screen because frankly, screens are really fun and incredibly stimulating. And the possibilities of what you can read about or play or learn, or all those kinds of interactive activities. They're endless. So I'm not saying that you should cut screen time in your life or that there's something wrong if your kids use them every day.

Speaker 1:
But I am saying because of what I lived through and what I know so many of my friends and peers lived through when we see children who seem so profoundly unhappy, if they're denied a tablet, it can be helpful to step back and consider whether things are out of balance because ultimately the goal, well, there's a few goals. One is for you to have fewer power struggles. And sometimes of course, the shortcut to have a cure power struggles is to just let your kids do what they want. And sometimes that's called for you just don't have the bandwidth to take on anything new, including your child unhappiness or disappointment. Sometimes we want to see our kids happy and they're happy when they're playing on their devices or they're on social media. So there's a lot of reasons why things can get out of balance.

Speaker 1:
Oftentimes it's also because we tend to do what we see our friends and neighbors doing, and if that's what kids do and it's become accepted that this is how children entertain themselves, then it's easy to, to, you know, using sixties term to drink the Kool-Aid and think it's okay, but I encourage you to think for yourself to trust yourself. And it's not easy. It's not always easy. Again, for some parents, these are some of the things that might get in the way of, of creating more of a, a pause in their children's use of screens. It's just, they have a lot of their own work to do or other responsibilities. And they, they feel that they would have to find things for their children to do. If they told them to turn off the device. Other parents are legitimately afraid of their children's complaints and push-backs or major meltdowns.

Speaker 1:
So they're just avoiding that kind of drama and conflict. And of course, if kids seem happy, it's not very appealing to tell them to turn off the switch and knowing that they'll probably be unhappy or wandering around complaining. I get it. I get it. I get it. I really do. And keep the big picture in mind. Keep the big picture in mind as you're raising your children. This is what I always encourage parents in my community to do is to remember that we're not just raising children, we're raising adults. And I think one of the hallmark characteristics of a well adjusted, happy, healthy adult is someone who has the ability to be comfortable without constant distraction, who can come up with their own fun, who has a sense of joy in creating, you know, whether it's cooking or painting or making music that these outlets are so human and many of our kids, they're just not getting enough of that, of those offline, real world, ways of engaging with the world that they're living in.

Speaker 1:
So I encourage you to just notice what might be getting in the way of setting aside more time for your family, not just your children, but that's one of the other drawbacks is that we have to model for our kids. What we're preaching. Some families take a weekend off. Now that it's summer, you might want to consider a week, or at least a few days where everybody's unplugged. And of course you can have your emergency phones and all that. If you need it, you might want to think about a project that you can drop in and out of with your children. So it might be building a Ford or learning how to bake something really interesting. So that depending of course, on your children's age, you can support them in this project without necessarily being in the midst of it all the time. Because ultimately, even though I strongly urge parents to have fun with their children, to do lots of activities with them, so that the joy and connection and memories are all being created together.

Speaker 1:
I actually think it's really important for children to find their own ways of entertaining themselves. And more often than not, kids have to be bored first and we have to be willing to sustain their complaining. There's nothing to do. I'm so bored. Why won't you take me to this house? Go, you take me to the swimming pool. Will you take me to the mall? We have to be willing to kind of ride that phase so that our kids ultimately come around to figuring something out. And I know that not all of you can do that, or can't do that right now. And if you know my work and I hope you're becoming more and more familiar visit Susanstiffelman.com, you can find out about this idea that I teach called captain of the ship, being willing for our kids to go through the little storms of life, holding that space for them as a loving, connected, compassionate grown-up to support them through their disappointment, without always rushing in, to fix their complaints or make things the way they want them to be and trusting our children and conveying our trust that when left to their own devices, they will do what children have done for thousands of years, which is find something to engage them.

Speaker 1:
So again, for some of you, this isn't the right time for that for others. It's the perfect time. Many, many times I've had clients in my office who have told me that they were about to go on a trip with their family, that something they've planned for, maybe it's camping and their kids are so angry when they discovered that there's no internet, there's no reception at the camp site and it's a big problem. And the kids are just not wanting to go. And it's a huge, you know, lots of drama and pushback. And then I see the family when they've come back from the trip and they tell me that the kids were never happier than when they were unplugged. It might've taken them a couple of days, but that they did what kids do played. They built, they ran around, they climbed, they created, and this is what I'm after.

Speaker 1:
You know, that summer can be for many, an ideal time to take a few steps back reevaluate some of our guidelines and the ideas that we've come up with, especially as we come off of the pandemic and start to look at making some adjustments if necessary. So that screen time in our family's life works for everybody. It works for our responsibilities. It works for who our children are, and it allows us to be nourished in these very ancient human ways that sometimes go away or get denied when everything we do is on a screen. So here's one thing that you might want to try this week. Just start noticing, just start noticing your own use. And if you're picking up a screen or turning on the TV, when perhaps you could be painting or taking a walk or inventing a new dessert, because of course your children are watching and then consider, consider maybe just picking a day, a 24 hour period, or even a six hour period or an evening where there's no device on where everybody gets out art materials or craft supplies or books, and you Institute that as a ritual in your family.

Speaker 1:
So I hope I've given you something to think about. And again, always from a non-judgemental positive frame of mind, nobody's doing anything wrong. There isn't a right and wrong. It's just trusting yourself, listening to your own inner guidance and doing what's right for you and your kids. If you're enjoying this podcast, please, please, please leave a rating or review or tell a friend or all of the above. It just helps us so much get the word out and you can, of course hit the subscribe button. And that way you'll be notified just as soon as a new episode is released. Remember to sign up for your regular doses of inspiration at Susanstiffelman.com. There's some great programs happening in our community, including our big summer sale that's on right now. So I encourage you to head over to Susan stifelman.com for all the scoop on that.

Speaker 1:
So, all right, then that's it for today, winding down. Thank you so much for being here for listening, for wanting to grow and learn. As a parent, I wrote in my most recent newsletter that my mother just turned 100 years old and I can't even believe it truly. I just can't believe it. We had such a sweet conversation last night and she can't believe it. And one of the things that I know, no I inherited from my mother was a passion for learning. And I'm such a lifelong learner. I have I think about 10 books next to the couch table on the couch table. And so those of you who are listening, you're in alignment with that idea that we can always learn and grow. And certainly in the realm of parenting, it gives me so much joy that you're here and that your wanting to grow along with me. So thanks for being here. Remember no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness, okay. Enjoy, stay safe, stay well. And I'll see you next time.