What Are Your Guiding Principles?

What is our destination? We haven’t stopped for a moment to say, is this best? Does this further our family’s purpose? On a bad day, in the midst of tantrums and carpool, it can feel like we’re mustering every ounce of effort to survive until bedtime. But I don’t want to survive until the kids move out. What a waste of years with our beloved children. What do you want to accomplish with your kids during these short years? Step back and decide. These will be your family’s guiding principles. If we want our kids to believe this is true and worthwhile, we need to model this as parents every day. Some days we fall woefully short, and that leads us to the next point. When we mess up, we own it. Each person is wired a little differently with gifts and quirks. How can we discover our kids’ gifts and help share those with others? Over the lifetime of your relationship with your children, you will both be adults for the majority of those years. There is plenty of time for that kind of mutual relationship. But for now, for these few years, our job is to discipline and train up kids, creating loving and firm parameters.

Surprise Surprise

We are their parents. What are your guiding principles? They don’t need to be fancy. You ask him, Looking back, what principles guided our home? Based on how our home operated, both what we taught you and how we lived? In your detox journal, write what you hope he would say. We have our guiding principles. When you come out on the other side of this thing, you will have a clearer understanding of how to partner with technology so that it is a household tool. We are no longer okay with feeling like our kids are enslaved to tech. With your family’s purpose and goals in mind, let’s wade through the deluge of technology for kids. How should we proceed on a daily basis? Now it is time to step back. For two weeks, in a digital detox. An elimination diet. This is easier than you imagine and will yield better results than you could hope. You might be thinking, Wait a minute, I thought you said that some screens were okay.

Take It Easy

As you follow the four simple steps to a successful digital detox, you’ll read about fellow parents’ successes, hurdles, and tips along the way. You are not in this alone, and the path forward is surprisingly simple. Notice your kids’ interests, talents, opportunities for growth. By the age of seven years, a child born today will have spent one full year of 24 days watching screen media. She was in foster care and needed a home. Foster parents Julie and John said yes to the placement, and were so glad they did. Madison was friendly, kind to our kids, and openly shared her thoughts and questions about life, Julie told me with a smile. She opened up to us about her life and fears, favorite hobbies, funny stories, John recounted. One day, Madison’s social worker moved her to a different home, which happens in foster care for a variety of reasons. When Madison returned to their home a few months later, she brought a laptop and smartphone with her. But she didn’t leave her room much. She would leave our family movie to sit in her room on her own computer.

You're Never Alone

Instead of conversation happening naturally, I’d have to go into her room to hang out, but I was competing with the draw of her glowing screen. We didn’t enjoy half of the relational connection we had during her first stay with us, Julie told me. The differences in these two separate stays were stark. Madison’s first stay allowed for deep connection, the second did not. The only difference? The availability of screen entertainment. I was already a true believer in the power of unplugging our kids from devices because I’d seen the positive transformation in my own five children. But Julie and John’s story of Madison’s juxtaposing stays is a powerful reminder that screens can suffocate connection. Your digital detox will be like a relational defibrillator, reawakening connection with your kids. I know your stress, because I felt it too. Before we started, I assumed the process was going to suck the life out of me. I imagined that I’d become a triage nurse, overseeing a house of screen addicts going through withdrawal. I imagined every mom task would be met with five sets of eyes gawking at me, like those creepy little girls from The Shining, waiting for instructions. Asking for another snack. Does the idea of banning all screens cold turkey create a similar scene in your brain? Maybe warning signs have been popping up for some time, continually hinting that it’s time for a break. Perhaps the bleak visions of bored and whiny children prevent you from pulling the trigger on your actual digital detox. Screens are a magic weapon for Mom and Dad. If the kids can’t seem to hush for that important phone call, turn on the Xbox, and voilà! An instant electronic babysitter. Banishing the babysitter might sound more like punishing Mom than helping the kids. But it won’t take long to realize that your fears of a total boredom wasteland were a figment of your imagination. In fact, reality may prove the opposite. Truth be told, many kids enjoy the screenless time. I’ve helped a lot of families detox their kids. Most parents report that their kids shift into a kinder, gentler, and more cooperative attitude, almost immediately. Removal is a critical part of the detox, the bedrock on which your results rest. They will simply be passing time until their window of screen usage pops up. You’re going to become a student of your kids, carefully noticing the talents and skills that draw them in during lulls. To observe your kids most clearly, you need to remove all of the screens.