Episode 99: Mindful Tech Use for Parents and Kids with Sophie Brickman
/The episodes on this month for The Balanced Parent Podcast will all be about PLAY! And so, for this week's episode, I am joined by Sophie Brickman. She is a writer, reporter, and editor who has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, and other outlets.
Nowadays, play does not only happen through the use of toys and that as we move forward in time, our kids adapt more and more with technology. Hence, play also happens through the use of phones and other gadgets. Sophie will be helping us know how to use technology mindfully.
Here is a summary of our conversation:
Smart toys vs analog blocks
Choosing the right thing to watch without forever scarring our kids
The right age for screen time
Mindful tech use
For more information, visit www.sophiebrickman.com.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic overwhelm. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do; not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast we are going to be talking about how technology affects both parenting and kids.
To help me with this conversation, I'm bringing in an amazing human and writer, Sophie Brickman. She wrote a book called Baby Unplugged and it is delightful and filled with a lot of good information and interesting questions.
So Sophie, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here. Will you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Sophie: Sure, Laura, it’s so so lovely to be here. So I'm a journalist. I'm based in New York. I am the mom of three, relatively newly–the mom of my third. So I have a five and a half year old, and a two and a half year old, and a 4 month old. And I wrote this book mostly because I live with my husband who a, who loves technology.
So we lived in San Francisco for a while, he worked at a startup and he started his own company and now he works very closely with startups and he just loves technology and the power of technology to kind of, you know, make our world a better place. And he himself really likes gadgets and tracking his own metrics and stuff.
So he has, you know, various devices strapped to his body throughout the day and I didn't really, you know, faze me until my oldest daughter was born and she's now five and a half as I said, but her third day on this planet, she came home and Dave strapped a little sock onto her; some sort of smart sort of device that was supposed to track her heart rate or her oxygen level or something.
And you know, I've never taken care of a newborn before. I was a new parent, I hadn't slept in, you know, 72 hours plus or minus however many months that you don't sleep when you're pregnant and I was like okay sure technology can help me parent and make me calmer, like great let's do it.
And then that night in the middle of the night, the alarm went off from this device and was like bleeping through my house and I thought something horrible had happened and Ella was fine. And it had lost connection to our Wi-Fi; we lived in like a you know, crappy walk up with bad Wi-Fi.
And I thought okay this is like a very crystallizing moment where I need to figure out how am I gonna let technology infiltrate her life? And like I've been really thoughtless about it on my own. So I sort of selfishly embarked on this journey to try to figure out where technology could help and where it really, you know, it's just making us more stressed out.
Laura: Yeah, I think you're speaking to something that a lot of us experience in parenting, especially that we engage with certain pieces of technology, whether it's for ourselves, you know, Facebook groups, you know Dr. Google or for their kids–things that are supposed to make things easier, supposed to calm us down, supposed to reassure us, and they end up doing the opposite. At least that's what the data is showing, right?
Sophie: Totally. And I mean like it really is a personal relationship with technology and some people I spoke to really loved the peace of mind that various pieces of technology brought to their house.
For me, I found that by and large a lot of the technology was very, it's all about optimizing things–either optimizing your kid or optimizing that moment. And it made me very anxious because I was like, oh my God, I'm doing something wrong. I could be doing something better. You know, I could be enriching her more, I could be more efficiently changing her diaper or whatever it is.
And you know, you're very vulnerable as parents and you're open to advice like you want information. And so it's sort of, it feels like there's a firehose of information coming at you and a firehose of products being, like I can simplify this for you and so it's very hard to look away.
What I found out doing a research is that it's not necessarily needed and that, you know, on a case by case basis, it might make you much more nervous than you think.
Laura: Yeah, I think you're speaking to something that I've absolutely seen in my Facebook group. So I run a couple of very large Facebook groups and I think I do a pretty decent job in them because most of my, the folks who post in there indicate that they're the only groups that they go into, that they're the ones that they really enjoy being in and that's through design and on purpose.
But I do see things happening where folks are going to the group with questions, when really what I would want to–and invite them to do–is to actually turn inward and sit with themselves for a minute to really sit with what's going on and get in touch with how they are thinking and feeling.
I think that we go for the quick fix; we go through the kind of attempt to defuse the anxiety or the worry of whatever scenario is coming up that we're going to the group for and I think you're speaking to this, like, need to be really intentional with our use of technology and and really aware of, is it serving me? Is the way I'm interacting with it serving me? Or is it hindering something?
Sophie: Absolutely. And I think, I mean like more power to you that people are coming to your groups and really finding those to be a place of solace and care because I find there's a lot of uncurated groups out there that are online.
I wrote a chapter about social media and kind of the question being, you know, can virtual villages either stand in the place of real villages or how best to have them enrich your life, you know, add to your life as a parent.
I'm a member of a bunch of them and I became a member of them even before my daughter was born and it can be incredibly comforting to know that there are however many thousands of strangers out there, what you're going through, you know, if you're up at three in the morning nursing and you're tired and you're this and you go on your phone and there are other people around the world that are going the rest of this with you.
It feels like you're less isolated and you really are in a lot of ways, but I think you need to know what you're going to the groups for and like you said, you know, crowdsourcing information is not always the best for every question.
Laura: Yeah, I think parents today and you know, I know you've done your research, I interact with hundreds of parents every day and so many of them have gotten so conditioned to look for answers outside of themselves.
We don't come up in the same, you know, village environment where we are looking after, you know, cousins and little siblings or we're interacting with lots of different parenting styles kind of, you know, throughout our childhoods were in these like tight knit communities and so we become parents and we really don't know what we're doing.
You know, there's no manual and so we look to the experts, we look for gurus, we look for people to tell us what to do and we are also hyper aware of that what we're doing matters. I think this generation of parents is more aware of the fact that what we're doing with these kids matters for their outcomes.
I think it creates a lot of anxiety and the, you know, the overarching like research on parenting is that good enough parenting is where it's at, you know, the mistakes, you know, balancing it, you know, some good stuff, some bad stuff that's good enough is great and wonderful.
And that one of the biggest things you can do to help a parent is to increase their self efficacy or their self trust in their own skills as a parent. And I think that sometimes when we're conditioned to look outside of ourselves, it really gets in the way of that.
Sophie: Absolutely. And you know, it's interesting that you're talking about this because the, after you finish the book and you send it into the publisher and you're like crossing your T’s and dotting your I's you're trying to figure out you know, both what the title should be and what the subtitle should be.
And so I like agonized over the subtitle and I wanted it to be something that really spoke to this feeling and I'm very happy with what we landed on, but for a while it was about trusting your gut and it's like how do you trust your gut in the age of tech driven parenting when there is so much information coming at you that you feel like you think, you know what to do and then all of a sudden there are another 10,000 people saying like, well why don't you consider this?
And you're like, okay, this is only the most important thing in my life, is raising this child to be successful. Like sure I'll listen, like I'll take a look and then it's very, very hard to pull back, you know the pole frankly like the evolutionary pull towards gathering more information. It is deeply rooted in us. And so it's really hard to look away and it's really at our fingertips.
So I do believe that there are many moments where if you did stop and you took a breath, you would likely know what to do.
The reason I wrote the book is because I thought I knew what to do, but I was like why don't I go to the experts and get legit validation that this is actually what I should be doing? And that was very comforting for me.
Laura: So has there been a point in your own personal parenting journey, Sophie, where you have stopped crowdsourcing and really, you know, moved beyond the like, oh I think this is what I'm going to do. Maybe I should just check in and get some validation and some confirmation and moved into a place of like yeah, I know what to do, I know how to handle this situation.
Sophie: I mean I'm still there and I think that's probably like a journey that we will be on with my kids because every, you know, every two months it feels like there's a whole new ballgame and you're like, wait a second now you're going to kindergarten and now you like have a friend that's doing this thing and you're not, I mean like if you're constantly learning.
But I did have a very good friend who has a child. Her first kid was born in a couple of years before my first and so she's like just ahead of me in this journey and I started going online and getting all this information about all sorts of things like medical stuff, people to look for, you know what, whether or not to use the pacifier, like all sorts of things.
And she said, look if I could give you one piece of advice, it would be to pick a rabbi and what she meant. She was like, just pick one person who's gonna be your person that you go to for advice and just try to stick with them.
And so I thought about it and I was like, okay. And I picked two people because I like couldn't just pick one and I picked the pediatrician who I really adore and who I know is a medical professional. And then I picked my mom and I'm very close with my mom and she's gone through this twice before and I, you know, she was and of course I have my WhatsApp group with very close friends and I will text about little things for sure. But for real advice about that kind of stuff, I found that a couple of curated answers get way more for me and made me much calmer than crowdsourcing.
Laura: Absolutely, I love that. And I love this idea to picking with someone and sticking with them. I think that there's you know, so folks who are in my world are moving away from kind of mainstream, punitive parenting and more into connection-based and respectful parenting. And it's an isolating world when you're doing that. It's a lonely thing; it can be especially if you're in parts of the country in the world where there's limited in-person communities and when your family did things differently.
So when you are making big changes, you know, lots of the folks in my family or sorry, in my–they are kind of like a family in my community–are making really big intergenerational change, you know, that the first people who are not choosing to spank their children for example.
And it's big and isolating cause then they can't go to their mom or that one aunt, you know, because the stuff moves in families and I just want to like see the people who are struggling with that.
Sophie: I'm glad you brought that up. So it's part of the research that I did for that, for the social media chapter involved going to many, many different types of virtual villages and some of them are solely online and some of them are anonymous online and some of them are kind of a hybrid model of trying to get people virtually and then to meet me together.
And one of the most surprising things that I came out about it; I don't know how familiar you are with Reddit, but I was not really on Reddit very much for many things and I had this sort of idea of Reddit as being very like Black Ops and like like the different types of people that that I usually think that would go on it.
And I went to the parenting communities on Reddit and it's very, some of them are just plainly anonymous and then there's kind of another level of anonymity if you want to be like completely anonymous and just be able to share whatever and have nobody have any contact with you.
And there was an enormous amount of warmth in these online communities because people were sharing these grievances and airing these traumas and airing things about parenting that they really didn't feel comfortable talking about with anybody, but they found so much love and support in these communities. And I spoke to a researcher who found that kind of the ability to air taboo subjects often would encourage people to come out of anonymity.
So they were like, look this is my–whatever the case may be–I found out that my child is not really my child, I found out all sorts of traumatic things and they found other people like them and then they came out of anonymity and sort of got a different bond, you know, the online of which can be incredibly powerful. I do not mean to to say that, you know, virtual villages do not stand in the way of it. There's a wonderful power in being able to reach people at the far reaches of the world that are like
Laura: Yeah, and I'm really enjoying the balance in this conversation, you know, so this is The Balanced Parent Podcast and we approach all aspects of the world looking for balance and I really love that there's a place and a time and then there's conscious awareness on, you know, is it actually serving the purpose and looking for it to serve and are there other opportunities? I really appreciated that.
And I also like I really appreciate that, I feel like most books that are about technology and kids really focus on the kids aspect of the technology and I, you know, as a systems thinker. So I see kids as embedded in their contexts and so the parents' experience with technology absolutely trickles down and affects the child. And so I really appreciate it and that you included kind of both sides of that coin.
Sophie: For sure. And I mean, I think just, you know, to speak more to the balance aspect of it. Part of the reason that I wanted to write the book myself is that there are books out there about technology and parenting and there's a lot of information out there about technology engineering, but it's often very there on either end of the extremes.
Often, often it's technology is both the fact of modern life and an unequivocally good thing. And look at all the amazing things you can do with technology and so let's like plug our kids into the wall and have them be particularly enriched and wonderful.
And then on the other side, if like if you show your kids screen, if you're on your phone in front of your screen for your kids, like they will not succeed in life and so like live off the grid and just let your kids wild. And I was like I live in New York City, I can't let my kids run wild, you know, the west side and I'm a modern mother, so I need, you know, I do have my phone and every once in a while I do need to put my kid in front of a screen and I'm interested in this stuff.
How do I do it in a way that feels smart? And how do I do it in a way that feels reasoned and research back, frankly? So that's the kind of balance I needed to do–I'm not saying that it would be wonderful if we all, you know, have kids running around in the wild and with wonderful subsidized child care, you know, that might be wonderful, but that's not my reality. I think there is a need and a want that parents have to figure out how to be balanced with that.
Laura: I so, so agree. I mean there's definitely times where I, like fantasize about like moving to a remote farm with my best friend and just raising our kids together, you know, but that isn't the reality of what our situation is right now. So, but I totally appreciate that.
Okay, so I'm super curious and I know my listeners are, what did you learn about balancing technology for kids? What are some of the big take home points that you found?
Sophie: I mean, I think specifically I think we should talk. You know, we should see the way the book is split up. It's technology for the parents and the technology for the kids half and half.
So like in terms of technology for the parents, there's a lot of technology out there for parents that pushes the idea that if you have a lot of data on your kids, you can somehow make the act of parenting simpler. Or you can, if you know more about your kid and how often they throw their pacifier out of the crib, you can make them sleep longer or whatever. And also that you should be packing all this stuff and crunching numbers on your kid and some people love it.
When I spoke to my pediatrician who was one of my like two people in my corner, he said, you know, we have pediatric visits at certain intervals because that's when we need to be weighing them, measuring their length and measuring their head circumference. And like we're doing the monitoring for you essentially.
So that was something that was very freeing for me. I was like, yeah, maybe it's interesting to be tracking some of this data for her, but do I need to be doing it? Is it critical? No. And then I talked about a lot of different things in the first half of the book.
The second half of the book about technology for kids, which is really a lot about screen time, you know, be that programs that kids are watching or interactive apps that they're playing or e-books. And then there's a chapter about smart toys, like toys that do more than, you know, a box that will be kind of like sexy things for them.
You know, I guess what I found was, you know, there's specific and pragmatic takeaways that you can absolutely get into about how to evaluate the programs that they're going on, how to choose the right television show for them to watch by and large for young kids. You know, less is more.
When you get them, when you agonize about what toy to get and then they end up playing with the cardboard box. You know, that sort of is them telling you like this is what I need, like I need this box and the act, that care that goes into them, turning that box into a spaceship or a sport or whatever it is that they're doing is so beneficial for them. So much more so than various toys or apps that will sort of quote unquote enrich them for you.
Laura: Absolutely. You're reminding me of one of my favorite quotes by Magda Gerber, who is a respectful parenting expert, and she says that active toys make for passive babies and passive toys make for active babies. I think that that has always been a guiding principle when it comes to the toys that we bring into our home.
Sophie: I researched her at length and I spoke to who was the head of Rye, which is you know, the you know, when I started and I was really taken with their philosophy. And there are some extreme versions, like some extreme right practitioners who are like, oh I spoke to and I had like a little doctor's jacket for my daughter because she liked to prepare the pretend doctor. And they were like, no, you can't do that because like the doctor's coat is, can only be a doctor's coat. You want her to be able to put like all of the imagination to everything, that was too extreme for me.
What was an extreme for me was like go into your kitchen, get some bowls, get some things that your kids will have a blast. You probably have all of the toys that you need, you know, in your house already. You don't have to go and buy them.
Laura: Veterinarian. There's lots of things, a dentist coat, there's lots of things, a lab coat. My brother in law is a chemist and so my kids play chemistry professor sometimes, you know, like there's lots of things that a white coat can be used for. So I think that yeah, yeah. No, of course it's okay.
I think this is the balanced piece of it, right? But I did, I used to run a play group pre Covid and absolutely the favorite toy in my like a pack of toys for these babies who were all under a year was a small aluminum bowl. Like that was it. They always, everybody just jump right to it. They would, you know, have baby tussles over who gets to hold it and bang it on the floor. It's.. yeah, I agree. The less is definitely more when it comes to our kids.
Sophie: And it's when you go deep as you have in the Developmental Psychology and it's not just like a phrase, less is more, it's like, it's better for the kid, it's better for their brain, it's better for their gross motor skills, it's better for their fine motor skills. Like the more the baby can do, the more active the baby can be, the better it is for him or her, which is very free and concept for a parent in terms of the anxiety over what it is that your kids should be doing.
Like your kids should be playing with a cardboard box and the movement of goal at a very young age, like that's appropriate for them developmentally and it does, it works wonders for them. to exercise their creativity. It does all sorts of things like the less the toy does for the baby, the better it is.
Laura: Yeah. And what's beautiful about this too, like I can geek out about play all day long, but what I've noticed and you know, and what research says is that kids who have access to passive toys to open-ended toys, they play deeper and longer. And that's something that's really good for parents, you know, once kids, you know, start building in their independent play skills and it is a skill that gives parents a lot of opportunity for self care, for peace and quiet to kind of be off duty while their kids are doing a very important job of playing.
And you know, when kids get used to being entertained either by their toys or by screens, then they do come to expect entertainment in their interactions, right? And we use screens in my family as needed, you know, and absolutely, and has a wonderful benefit to them at, you know, at times and places. But there's absolutely a time where kids come to expect the entertainment value that can get in the way of other things.
Sophie: Totally. And you're circling around something that I spoke about. I was, you know, I was talking to a group of parents about this and there's this question of stamina, it's like, kids need to learn, they need to build the stamina to play on their own.
Laura: Yeah. Capacity.
Sophie: They need to learn to learn to do it; it's a skill, as you said. And so, like I said at the beginning, there's an idea in this technological age that every moment, like that instant gratification is at our fingertips. We should, we should have it, we should give it to our kids. And so if kids start to get agitated off and you'll see a parent throw a screen in front of them or, or, or try to like quash that moment.
If you look at that moment in a totally different way, which is, this is my little kid working through something, getting stronger, learning how to play on their own or handle disappointment or whatever it is that they're working through, like, that's a good thing for me as a parent to be instilling in them. It completely changes the moment in your head. You don't think you need to quash it. If you wash it, you kind of obliterate that moment of them learning.
Laura: And you steal the learning opportunity from them.
Sophie: You know that boredom can be where all the magic happens, you know, calm down a little bit. Like let them work through it for a little bit. Maybe they're gonna cry, maybe they're going to get agitated, but maybe tomorrow they'll give you an extra five minutes where you can do whatever it is that you want to be doing and they can be playing by themselves very happily.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely beautiful. Okay. So now let's talk a little bit about the eBooks piece of things. I think that is something I'm seeing more and more and I I feel kind of curious about what you found in your research.
Sophie: Sure. So as part of my research I spoke to a lot of developmental psychologists, a lot of neurologists, pediatricians and time and time again they would say to me, you know, like books, you can't improve upon a book.
You know, one of my favorite quotes that I got from doing research was a pediatrician who deals with early literacy and he said, and I asked a lot of the same questions to different people and one of the questions I always ask was like what is the single best piece of tech? You know, because that's like a sexy question and you want to be like, okay, if I'm only gonna have one thing I'm gonna have that.
And he said he thought for a while he said, you know, if I went to the smartest minds in the world and I asked them to build me something that would make it smarter and more resilient and more socio emotionally connected. It's like better modern citizens, what would they come back with? They would come back with a book. And they wouldn't come back with an e-book, they'd come back with a print book.
And the reason that books are so good are, there are many reasons. One of them is that it is built for young kids–at least who can't read. It's built to be a shared object; like a kid can't read on their own, they want to look at the pictures, they want to be read to.
And so in the moment of reading to a kid, you're doing a million things at the same time. You're telling them that books are fun and that you can do it together. You're saying this is a sweet, unhurried time, like you can't speed read Goodnight Moon, like the kids just won't pay attention, you know, and so, and you know, verbal exposure has been shown to be very, very important for future success.
There are a million benefits. But I really wanted to understand what's the difference between reading Goodnight Moon on a book in a book and reading Goodnight Moon on your iPad? And there are a lot of differences for very, very young kids.
One of them is that the device that you're reading on is not designed to be a shared object. You know, your iPad or your iPhone as you'll see, like you can't really do the thing with your kids. They, you know, at least with my kids, it's like a lot of elbows come out when you're like, can I take that? And you're like, no get away. So it's very hard to do it together. And also there are a lot of distractions and reading is, you know, it's hard to read. It's hard to figure out what's going on on the page and it is a skill and it's enjoyable.
There's a lot going on in the kid's brain when they're seeing words on a page and pictures on a page. And so distracting–it is not beneficial. I don't know, we could go in a number of different directions, but by and large, if you're able to give your child a print book, that is really a wonderful tool for them.
Laura: Yeah, I just want to highlight some pieces too, this is what I did my PhD. So I love that you're talking about this and you know, really, when it comes to shared book reading, which is one of the biggest things that parents can do for their kids. The research on it is actually that it's more about the relationship that it builds; the closeness and the connection and the attachment relationship benefits than anything that they're really doing.
I mean those print concepts are learned as they're turning the page and learning the direction that, you know, the text flows. But really that relationship that you're building; the warmth and the snuggled up-ness of it is so important too and it doesn't go away with age. You know, my kids are nine, and six and a half and we still, as a family lay in our big bed every night and read a story together and that closeness is just a beautiful thing to keep going in.
Sophie: I'll bring up something that came up after the book was published. But that, there is something called the NAEP, which is like kind of the national report card. And so the government takes, does surveys, kids who are nine and thirteen about various things to get a sense for how they're doing academically. And one of the questions that they started asking in 1984 was, how often do you read for joy?
And this past year where the data had been collected pre-pandemic, so it was a 2020 NAEP, but all the data came from before the pandemic hit, was that the lowest number of kids ever reported reading for fun. This year was a historical loan. And so kids nine and thirteen are not looking to books as much as an object for fun and joy.
And that is that you know, you cannot draw a direct line between screen time and books at all. There are many, many factors. It's multifactorial. But using screens does displace other activities and one of those activities that it displaces is reading and I think, you know, when you look at academic success and how they, directly related it is to reading and being read to, it gets very scary and very damning as a society that you know, I think it's, I have to look this up, but I think it's 1 in 3 eight graders do not ever throughout the week one time pick up a book for fun and that's when
Laura: Oh gosh it's heartbreaking.
Sophie: It's awful and so you can start habits early, like habits do start early. And so the earlier you can start reading to your kids, the better.
I mean the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends reading to your kid from birth, which like feels really silly because they're like there's like a burrito here who they can barely see what are we doing. So they can feel the warmth, they can feel the love. It's about, as you said, it's about at the young ages, it's about this broadband connection that they're feeling around this activity.
Laura: Yeah. You know, there's even research that babies who were read certain books in utero prefer the cadences of those books outside. So I mean, yeah, we read while I was pregnant to both of the kids, which we're I think we're on board, you know, I feel like we're kind of, you know, let's bring some balance into the conversation. What did you find around when technology is really useful and positive to bring into your home and into your kids’ lives?
Sophie: I think one very specific positive that we found was FaceTime, particularly during the pandemic. Like we lived seven blocks from my parents, so we didn't make it very far, but during the pandemic and in the early days of the pandemic, when everybody was very, very anxious. You know, my parents didn't leave their house and we hardly left our house, we were in lockdown and we FaceTime every day.
And you know, there is something about the verbal back and forth that makes FaceTime and video chatting in general, not as negative at all in the eyes of researchers as other types of screen time. And so that's something that we employ all the time.
I think, you know, similarly like sharing photos and the photo stream was an amazing way to connect with my parents and, and my husband's parents and let them know what was going on in their kids' lives. And then we are absolutely, we’re not an anti-tech family at all. And so we watch movies and we, you know, we let the kids watch screens every once in a while.
And I think, you know, one of my big takeaways from this was that if you can watch something together with your kids and use whatever is on the screen the same way that you might with a book, what you're doing is you're having a shared experience.
And you know, we watched Willy Wonka or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the other day, which I don't remember watching since I was very very little, but like, it was wonderful and a lot of fun. And now we listen to the soundtrack and Gene Wilder is like singing all over the house. and I think, I think there are ways to use technology in a way that's really magical and wonderful.
You know, something that I'm sure you're familiar with and in your research and background is you know this this term ‘serve and return interactions’, which is something coming up against, which is having a conversation with your kid, you know, at whatever, meeting them at whatever age they are.
So like my my son is four months old. He just started smiling, like he smiles, I smile. Like that's our serve and return interactions. With my two year old, it was different. With my five year old, it's different.
But the idea is if you can have as many serve and return interactions as possible, it's really good for your kids. And one of the ways to do that is to kind of share whatever is going on in the screen. And so we try to watch things together. Of course you want to put your kid in front of the screen often so that you don't have to watch with them. You know, I haven't watched Frozen all 900 times that my daughters have watched it, but you know, I know what's going on. I know some of the songs, we can sort of like talk about it after they watch it. All of that is good stuff for them.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so many opportunities for shared experiences too. You know, just, yeah, it definitely can be very mindful and especially as kids get older and start, you know, wanting to, you know, interact with social media and technology more independently or more with their peers, having built the practice of being involved in sharing the technological experience that, you know, in our family, we keep iPads in the living room, you know, and not in rooms. In our family, you know, when we're, you know, playing games, mom's nearby, you know, and here to help.
Having a culture of that, I think as kids move into the teen years, lets you be, continue to be more present and aware of what's going on in terms of their technology. I'm not looking forward to those days when my kids enter the teen years and I have to start learning how to like set parent controls. I don't have to do that yet. It's so overwhelming.
Sophie: I'm like, I'm just like hopeful that maybe something will be figured out by the time that she hits on anyone, but like God, I don't know, I don't know one day at a time.
Laura: Yeah, right. I think like the folks who are in that place, the general, you know, kind of takeaway is that kids will always be able to get around your parenting, your parent controls on your apps and devices. And so it's far better to invest our time in building trusting relationships with our children so that there isn't a need, you know, a felt need for moving around controls.
Sophie: One of the doctors that I spoke to, who has done an enormous amount of research on, I think I interviewed him about the importance of play and you know, how smart choice might not be as enriching as, as they are marketed as being.
He likened early parenting to a bank, and he was like thinking about investing the time in your kids when they're younger. And he's like the door doesn't shut at any point, but it gets smaller and smaller and so when they're younger, if you can kind of put the time in and invest in them then later on when they're 13, 14 when they're having a fight about whatever, or you can sort of pull on that as an investment. Like it'll look through over time.
And I like that idea. It's like you have these years, you know, it pertains to like quashing the moment with the screen or letting them work through it. If you let them work through it and you learn what takes them off or you learn more about them, you're building that foundation. And you're learning more about who they are as people and how they interact with you in the world around them.
And later on when you have that rock solid foundation, when they wanna, you know, skirt something on the screen and go do something bad, like maybe they won't, or maybe they'll come talk to you about it or or what have you, you know
Laura: I totally agree. All of this stuff seems really small now, but it does pay out dividends later. For sure.
Well, Sophie, I really appreciate this conversation that you've had with us. Thank you so much for being here. Why don't you make sure everybody knows where they can get your book. It’s a great one to check out.
Sophie: Thank you. You can get it wherever books are sold, like hopefully at your local independent retailer, but you can get it at Amazon or anywhere else too. My website is just my name .com. If you want to, you can reach out to me there directly.
And my hope with the book–one little parting thing is–a lot of parenting books out there, which can be very helpful and wonderful or kind of more self help or like how to’ books and this absolutely has to have a lot of practical takeaways–how do you navigate this, what programs are better, and how to evaluate it–but it really was a personal story.
It's kind of part memoir, part research and so my hope is that parents who leave this will feel some sort of solidarity and like comfort in the fact that I'm going through all of this stuff with you.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
Alright, that's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!