Kids + Screen Time (Screen Series: Part 1 of 3)

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 4: Welcome to best of both worlds, this says Laura. In this episode, Sarah and I are going to be discussing kids and screens, the topic of screen time, the content, the various rules we have in our house, or general philosophies, what we've seen other people do and are thinking on that. So lots of different topics in there to discuss. So Sarah, well, first, this is going to be part of a series of episodes on screen time, so we'll get to adults and screens later, and we've got a great guest coming up as well to talk about you know, young adults and screens as well. So Sarah, you just had a screen free month experiment in your house. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that, what led to it, and sort of how it went, any discoveries you had in the course of doing so.

00:01:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess I want to preface this episode by noting that this is one of those areas where there is no obvious right answer, and you can even see that illustrated in the fact that Laura and I definitely handle screen time a bit differently, part of that due to the ages of our kids, and partly just due to the choices we've made with our partners and other stakeholders. And we're hoping that this episode does not come off as prescriptive, but rather that it will help demonstrate that it's an area which does require some thought if you haven't put that into it, and probably many of you have, and just maybe some examples of what's worked, what hasn't you know, things you might not have thought about.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: Et cetera.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: So this is a little bit of a complex topic, but one that's on so many of our minds, and that's why we decided that it deserved its own place as perhaps our very first series, yes.

00:02:18
Speaker 4: Our series, because it's a topic that parents do need to deal with these days, and particularly as your kids get into the age range where they start to deal with the world independently and pretty much everyone does have electronic access of some variety or another. It's also an area I think a lot of people's thoughts may change as their children get older and as they experience parenthood and all its ups and downs, and how children interact with.

00:02:49
Speaker 1: The world these days as well.

00:02:50
Speaker 4: I mean, I know Sarah and I both find it somewhat hilarious the number of people who do not have children, or you know, don't have children, who would have independent access to screen, who have very very strong feelings about this. So my sort of general thought is somebody without children maybe needs to not be quite so vocally.

00:03:15
Speaker 3: Hardcore about all this, right, Yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you, And that's that's been a criticism I've seen of some There was a childless author who wrote a very very screen damning book and that was part of the critique, and it was a fair one. So all right, I'm not going to name names there, but let's get into screen free may So why did I decide to do this? So, just to refresh, my kids are five, nine and eleven, We're not middle school yet. We're still finishing up elementary school and about will be in middle school next year. And we had done a screen free month before in twenty twenty two. I believe it was screen free March, and somewhere in the interval between then and now, we just did find ourselves at a crossroad where the kids were spending more time on screens that we felt was good and a lot of the content of what they were doing seemed to have negative consequences with respect to their emotional regulation, behavior, etc. And we absolutely take responsibility for that. Were the ones that have provided the screens, were the ones that have given them the time to do that. Often that could be relaxing time for us, So that needs to be said that, you know, it's not like, oh my kids were sucked into a.

00:04:31
Speaker 1: Vacuum, like we enabled the vacuum to happen.

00:04:34
Speaker 3: And I think there was like a day where we actually decided a while ago that YouTube was not a great content for a kid Genevieve's age for us, because everything moves very very quickly, there's all this kind of like content being made by different families. We felt like a lot of it was felt very selling to them, even whether they didn't realize it, and Genevieve made some comment like their lives are better than ours, so we hadn't even been allowing that.

00:05:05
Speaker 1: We allowed her to.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: Watch PBS Kids and play some games, most of them kind of like world building games. Cameron and Annabel have a switch and they have access to different video games, and then there's they don't do social media, but Annabel will do like some group texts and like Facebook Messenger kids, not to a huge extent, which I think is important because screen free may felt okay and felt right because I don't have a kid whose entire social life depends on use of the screen. Yet people with older kids have pointed out they couldn't do that, and I totally get that, and I'm not even suggesting that we would do that when maybe two years from now it wouldn't make any sense. But for us, at this juncture, it just felt like we had gotten to an excessive point and it was easier to just draw a very hard line because I felt like the kids needed practice doing other things and finding other ways to entertain themselves, because they had really just kind of like lost any desire to do non screen activities for the most part. I mean, with some exceptions like organized sports and stuff like that, but if they were given any second screen of free time, they wanted to be on a screen. So screen free may there wasn't a lot of pushback. I think they just kind of accepted that it wasn't pushback wasn't going to really work, So it wasn't like we were having to fight protests every day. We did have some exceptions built in, like they were allowed to watch movies all together on various Friday and Saturday nights. We especially if we had a babysitter. We didn't want to punish the babysitter by saying they have to be entirely screen free.

00:06:41
Speaker 1: And there was one two day period where Josh and.

00:06:43
Speaker 3: I went away and they were with our nanny, and I'm like, you know what, they can have screens during that time, because again I didn't want to make it harder for somebody else, And it was honestly not nearly as hard as I thought it might be from a parenting perspective. They really did find other stuff to do. They read more books than they have read in a long time. One kid in particular did a lot more outside. Another kid ironically got a flip phone during this time, and that's anna all. She's again fifth grade, so we can get into that in a little bit, but has been enjoying some more independence and like going for walks with a friend with her phone around the neighborhood and feeling more grown up. And I'm not sure they would have wanted to do these activities, these building activities, these sport activities, reading more if they had such an easy alternative ubiquitously available, and so that was really really nice to see. I also felt like they were overall calmer. Were they easy and calm? No, my kids are not easy and calm. Sorry kids, if you're listening, I mean, you're wonderful. But we're like, we're not one of those super quiet households. There's a lot of energy and that was still there, but the edge was taken off. And I don't think there were any negative social consequences again, because it wasn't really that long. It was one month, not a year, and because of the ages of the kids and now I've talked for a really long time, but I will say I'm glad we did it.

00:08:13
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll do it again.

00:08:15
Speaker 3: I think As the kids get older, it will feel less appropriate. But it really worked for us right now, and I think that we're going to be able to help kind of bring back screens in moderation. That's the tricky part, to help them still enjoy some of that screen time, but maintaining the desire to read and go for walks with friends and do other things.

00:08:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.

00:08:38
Speaker 4: We wouldn't do a screen free months just I mean, for many reasons. But yeah, I mean with older kids, that is how they plan their social lives. I mean they're on their phones to text and set stuff up. You know, there's group video game type things that happen as well. And I think you know you can't, as you said, going phone free in twenty twenty three does not make it nineteen ninety five. You can't recreate that world just by taking your own kids screens away. So our approach is always a little bit more. I don't know, limit when people can have their devices, and if there has been a specific issue with a child being unable to deal with something, then we will take away that particular kid's stuff.

00:09:35
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, with.

00:09:37
Speaker 4: Five you can kind of do that when they're all different ages. So that's been sort of our philosophy in the rule in our house is on weeknights, the big kids need to have no devices, no screens in their rooms at nine and.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: Then lights out as ten.

00:09:59
Speaker 4: That kind of works from the sequence that when people need to wake up in the morning. Weekend's probably a little bit more of a free for all. But the honest traits were also just busy, so there's less time.

00:10:12
Speaker 1: Available for screens.

00:10:15
Speaker 4: Then you know, it's not like one hundred and sixty eight hours that they're available.

00:10:20
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what we kind of do.

00:10:23
Speaker 3: See, the busyness is great. I think that should be emphasized as like the ideal strategy to you know, for kids and adults alike. Now that we're talking about adults today, but if you're doing other stuff, you're getting together with people in real life, you are doing some kind of activities, you are you still can have enough attention span to read a book, et cetera, then probably spending whatever time is left also barring for getting enough sleep and not having blue light in your eyes, maybe right before you go to sleep, although I know that's debated, then you're probably good. Because my observation with some kids, And I'm not even necessarily talking about my kids, but obviously I see a lot of kids at work as well. There are some kids that would choose not to do any activities and maybe not to do their homework and not to see friends because they prefer whatever the online modality is, and like a thirteen or fourteen year old brain lacks that frontal cortex reasoning ability to say like, well, if I don't do my homework, then my future won't be great. I do feel like some of these technologies are they have an incredible pull, and when you have like an immature reasoning system like that, that's not a great combination for some kids. And I don't have an answer for that, because again, I don't think cold turkey or abstinence is going to work for your average tenth grader. But at the same time, I'm kind of looking ahead to like what if that is the scenario, And I don't have a great answer, but I think it would look something like sort of requiring that you have the other elements of life in place to maintain your screen privileges.

00:12:10
Speaker 1: If that makes sense.

00:12:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, Well we're going to take a quick ad break. We'll be more back with more on kids and screens. So we are back talking about kids and screens, and Sarah was bringing up the point of some children not being able to regulate and not doing well with the independence of being able to choose when they can be on it. And I think this is really just part of getting to know your own children and figuring out what works for them. And I mean, we have some house rules and we also do some things differently within individual kids. You know that they're different people, have different needs, different things work for different kids, and I think you can definitely have stricter guidelines in place for a child who needs more support versus one who doesn't. And that's you know, you can explain it too, like I mean, somebody's grades are better than someone else's. I mean that is a pretty straightforward thing, and you can say, well, I mean it may be that one child is more.

00:13:28
Speaker 1: Academically oriented than another.

00:13:30
Speaker 4: Again, you want to celebrate whatever is great about each individual child, but given that you probably do have some minimum standard for how you perform in school, it would totally be reasonable to say, well, child A always gets his or her homework done, So we just need to broadly say take away screens at this time before you go to bed, trusting it will get done. Child B needs to sit at the kitchen table and do his or her homework after a short decompression time after school. But I have this time that they have to sit down and work on it because otherwise it won't get done.

00:14:06
Speaker 1: And I don't think that's unfair. I think it's just based on individual children being who they are. And if child BE over.

00:14:15
Speaker 4: Time decides that they want to establish a system where they do it better and check in with you and show that they can handle it, then maybe child BE could get more freedom and privileges over time.

00:14:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that.

00:14:29
Speaker 3: I like the customizability and keeping each kid in mind because absolutely I can think. I mean, my kids are younger, so I'm not like as into that world, but I feel like on the online world, I have a lot of blogger friends who have kids in that middle school, high school age grange, and some of them seem like they have beautifully adjusted approaches to screens like they do some screens, but they're also playing two varsity level sports and they have a social life and like to make a blanket statement that like phones are evil and they shouldn't have one, Like it doesn't seem, at least outwardly, that kid to be doing any harm. So I think the blanket statements and generalizations can be really difficult to make in this realm.

00:15:09
Speaker 4: You had a kind of process of thinking about it, like when kids are little, it's more you can tell them when they can have screens, right.

00:15:15
Speaker 1: And yeah, it kind of like I think it was.

00:15:19
Speaker 3: It was actually a blog comment from a reader and Patreon member Ka that kind of like this light bulb went on, which is like at some point you go from telling your kids when they can have screens to perhaps the next step being when they're older, you tell them when they can't have screens because they've kind of demonstrated a readiness to regulate it on their own. They're doing other things, and maybe they still need a little help knowing not to have their phone with notifications with them as they're doing homework because that's going to be a lot more fun than homework and probably very distracting. Or to like you do in your house, stop using screens a certain amount of time before bed because you know it can impact sleep and cause stress, etc. It's just nice to have like kind of a boundary to that activity. So when you've got your four year old, it's like, oh, you can have your screen on like two to four on Saturday afternoons or whatever you've decided. I'm not prescribing to anybody what their limits should be, but when they're they're twelve, it's or maybe fifteen, it's like, oh, you know, you can have your phone except for XYZ. And I think that could be like an interesting, interesting way to think about things.

00:16:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, so would you wound up buying, as you said, a dumb phone for Annabel? Like what went into that decision? Why did you get the product that you got, and what are some other things that you looked at?

00:16:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean there's so many different options, and it also, I think really depends on what the other families are doing and what the school environment looks like. I mean, if you have a robust network of parents that are doing the wait until eighth thing because you're trying to make it nineteen ninety five in the middle school, and you have like a large proportion of kids doing that, it might work. I Mean I kind of think like the more people are going a less tech route, the less frustrating. That's going to be for the kids. But that's not really, that's not where I live, that's not my situation. So we felt like it was time to get our almost middle school or some kind of device to be able to reach us in certain cases and also you know, to text and stuff like that. Although she has an iPad, and really it's almost like we just don't want her to have the ability to whip out that entertainment machine at any impulse or any moment, because we still want her to be able to do those group chats and whatever, you know, when she's home, and like when we have said it's like, okay, time to do that, if that makes sense, we just didn't. We weren't ready to like to kind of be like, okay, free for all, go for it. So we went with the kind of dumb phone idea, which is it's like a Nokia flip phone. It still has internet. You can get Google Maps, but it's like not very fast to use. We're not allowing social media at this juncture. But she can text, she can call, she could take pictures, she could send pictures, et cetera. Other people have gone the gab or gizmo device, which is kind of like very similar to that kind of like a lockdown smartphone that only has certain features and is very safe and very monitored. A lot of those also come with like GPS tracking so that parents can like know where their kids are in the neighborhood. There's also the Apple Watch route. Actually that's been I've heard more and more kind of fifth grade, sixth grade parents say they just get their kid an Apple Watch with data because you know, there's very limited distraction potential with that, but it's still a good and fairly reliable communication device.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: So I've seen that like more and more.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: And then you know, they may have again a laptop or an iPad at home to do other things, but they're not able to just do everything wherever. And then there are parents that go the smartphone route, of course, and I think different levels of involvement and monitoring of what goes on on that phone, and I think there's no one right solution for every single kid. We've actually not worried as much of about the monitoring, which hopefully that won't come to be an error, but instead kept lines of communication very very open, Like you know, if you see anything on the screen that like confuses you or you want to talk about and like just we're not the kind of parents that I think are scary to talk.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: About that kind of stuff.

00:19:18
Speaker 3: So I'm hoping that that will allow us prevent us from having to use alternative means of being surveillance.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm mean.

00:19:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, our family policy so far has been that you can get a phone for your eleventh birthday, which is roughly what you did then too, that she turned eleven and she got a phone. We've generally gotten the kids an older model smartphone, so not the newest one, but often getting them refurbished a couple of years old, because the goal is not to spend too much money on something that I feel is highly likely to get lost.

00:19:57
Speaker 1: Although less so we actually have not had that much right.

00:20:00
Speaker 4: You know, I assume that children who would like leave their coats on buses and you know, leave glasses wherever, would lose their smartphones too, But it turns out it's like glued to them.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: I don't know, they don't lose those quite as easily.

00:20:14
Speaker 4: So that's when they get that, and then after two years or so of responsible usage thereof can upgrade to a newer model that's generally been it's they've used them differently. I mean, yeah, everyone watches videos on it and texts with their friends. Ruth has not really used her phone as much. She hasn't liked having it with her. I think she has her iPad and so it turned out she could text friends from that as well.

00:20:46
Speaker 1: That's actually been.

00:20:47
Speaker 4: Something that I hadn't thought as much about needing to monitor versus social media because everyone's like, oh, social media, and to make sure they're not.

00:20:56
Speaker 1: Exposed to it.

00:20:57
Speaker 4: But you can give your kids private accounts or be very explicit like you are not allowed to follow anything like they ever say something that is does X, Y or z. These are all things like red flags that you absolutely cannot follow.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: Don't do it, you know. And those are very.

00:21:13
Speaker 4: Easy rules to at least explain, I mean hopefully whether they follow through them it is a different matter, but you could you can kind of be more clear on stuff like that. But the children that you interact with and that you do group texts with, they're your kid's peers, and they have good days and they have bad days, and they have some have stricter rules on when and what they can text, and some don't, and some have more You know that frontal lobe thing of thought through whether this is a good idea.

00:21:45
Speaker 1: To send this message versus not.

00:21:48
Speaker 4: And so that's something that I've found a need to monitor more and remind kids that you can exit a group chat or just silence it if you don't want people to know that you exit, you know, just say or even just that if something happens in the group chat that you are uncomfortable with, that you absolutely can tell an adult and that would be a good idea. And so that's something that I've you know, I hadn't really thought about as much, but is more something that I think parents will need to think about than what strangers are telling your kid on the internet.

00:22:25
Speaker 3: I will admit one of the reasons we didn't just we actually have like an old iPhone lying around that we could have just stuck a SIM card in, But somebody warned me about air drop being used really indiscriminately in like middle school and high school settings, and like I wasn't ready to navigate that yet. Like the idea that someone I mean, I guess someone could also text, but someone the ability to like just like dump whatever photos onto your kid's phone at any time that like I wasn't quite ready for that, and that was something I wasn't aware of. But apparently there's a lot of like crulty and uncomfortable stuff that happens. But I think again lines of communication, like if that happens, like it should be no more secret than if they dropped a photo on your desk, like a physical photo, right, Like it's it's still real. Just because it's in your phone doesn't It doesn't mean it's like governed in some separate online universe.

00:23:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, But the thing is we have to help kids learn to navigate this stuff in general.

00:23:23
Speaker 1: Because they are going to be in this world. And so you can.

00:23:31
Speaker 4: Pretend that it's nineteen ninety five, but then you're launching a kid out into the world where they're going to need a phone for their job or whatever, and they completely have had.

00:23:43
Speaker 1: No experience with how to deal with the world.

00:23:47
Speaker 4: And I think learning it through you it's just it's like learning to drive. It's something that yes, you can learn as as an adult, and maybe there are your brain is more developed at that point, but you also you can learn those skills over time under your parents, as well as a chance to share some of your values and one of the you know, we've got a great interview coming up I think next week in that screen episode. But we talk about oftentimes people are like, well, don't post X, don't say X online because you won't get into a good college, you won't get into you know, you won't get a good job later or something like that, which that's its own separate thing to navigate.

00:24:33
Speaker 1: But the truth.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: It's not that shouldn't be why you don't want your kids doing it. It says you don't want people to be cruel, and they can be cruel online and they can be cruel in person, and you, as a parent want to be sharing the value of like, we do not behave cruelly to people in this family, and that's this is what it means in person, and this is what it means online. And that stems from there. You know that you wouldn't post mean pictures of someone or say something that was insensitive to somebody because of I don't know, you know, whatever their disability or where they're from or anything, because you're not a cruel person and that would make them feel bad.

00:25:16
Speaker 1: And regardless of whether you're not.

00:25:18
Speaker 4: Going to get into college because you did it, is that we want to be empathetic human beings, and that's the message you are trying to convey.

00:25:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tough though, because you know, as you were saying that and about the driving part of me is like again going back to the level of neurological development and like unleashing all of these early.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: Pupertal brains with these systems.

00:25:41
Speaker 3: It's a lot, and there might be something to be said for like being more mature by the time you're able to interact in that way, but again we can't. There's not really anything we can do like that cat is out of the bag, unfortunately, And unless there is a society wide shift in what people are going to all other kids to do, which I don't necessarily see happening, especially not on a like a widespread basis, then we don't really have a choice anyway.

00:26:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, let's take a quick ad break and we will be back with more on kids and screens. Well, we are back talking kids and screens. So, Sarah, how do you see your kids and screens sort of? How do you see this evolving over time? I mean, kids do cool stuff online as well.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, we're I mean we're definitely not going to like stay a ludite, screen free.

00:26:40
Speaker 1: Family or anything like that.

00:26:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't evolve too many years in advance because my kids are going to change. I don't know what they're going to need. I don't know how they can respond to different things. So I don't even want to like put myself into the prediction of like what I'll do when they're in high school or something like that. I think in the next year or so we will kind of. I think some kids in my family might be ready to like move towards that, Like this is when you can't have screen situation, and others are not going to be ready for that, and they're still going to be stuck with the this is when you can have.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: Screens kind of a situation.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: And I agree some screen time can be Again, the social screen time is great YouTube, like when it's used in a non five year old phonetically browsing kind of a way. If you're using it to like learn how to do something, do a craft, or like learn some science concept. There's some like really great creators out there, so I'm not knocking all of it at all. I enjoy watching Planner videos with Nabel, so you know there's that, Yeah.

00:27:38
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:27:39
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's just going to be a more moderate version of what we were doing before, and remaining open to what my kids need going forward, and also staying in communication with other parents. I think this is a topic where it is really really good to talk to the other middle school parents about how they're handling it. Because as much as your kid will come home and say, oh, everyone has, you know, an iPhone twenty, not that that exists yet, but.

00:28:02
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, I'm sure it'll be here eventually.

00:28:06
Speaker 3: It may be really helpful to get the story of how others are helping their kids navigate this as well.

00:28:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have been told that other parents don't take away their kids devices at night, and I'm like, well, that's great for them. And I know because sometimes the phones which sleep in my husband in my bedroom area are not where I can hear them, but they do. In fact, we've silenced them because they will ding in the middle of the.

00:28:32
Speaker 1: Night with kids who are texting.

00:28:35
Speaker 4: You know, somebody didn't think about it and thought they'd do it, you know. I don't know, So I know that some people have not taken them away, or perhaps their children have sneakily gotten them back.

00:28:46
Speaker 1: I don't really know.

00:28:47
Speaker 4: What's going on in other people's households, but yeah, you absolutely can figure out what rules work for your family, and I think that I would prefer to just not have that battle every single night, and so because of that, the phones can stay with me. And there are certain trade offs then you have to make, Like I generally do need to go check that people are up in the morning or wake them up, because that's what you would automatically use as an alarm clock. And you can get old fashioned alarm clocks, but they're often a little bit more complicated to.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: Shift around or whatever.

00:29:17
Speaker 4: So you know, because of that, I do wind up going to get them in the morning, but that's fine. I think that the community aspect is I like that the kids set up their own get togethers, you know, by texting, they can create their own social life. One thing I'm definitely cognizant of with lots of little boys is that many young men and boys in general really enjoy video gaming and do it as a social group activity.

00:29:48
Speaker 1: Right that you are all playing a game together, you are I don't know what, I don't entirely.

00:29:53
Speaker 4: Follow it, but you know, you're all battling on the team and it's a strategy thing together. And just because I didn't do that growing up doesn't mean it's less valid as a way of interacting with your friends and having a social life than whatever I would have come up with. So I certainly don't want to come in being like, ooh, this is bad because they're on screens and that's not really interacting with your friends. So I'm very aware of that. And you know, we're really not that much on social media yet. Only only Jasper has very limited social media that he does, and it I just he.

00:30:27
Speaker 1: Doesn't do that much of it.

00:30:28
Speaker 4: Even we follow each other, and I'm aware of what he's posting, but I'm not sure that that's entirely what Some kids are probably more into it than others, but I'm sure they'll come up with stuff that's totally different than what we would be. I'm sure they all think that like Facebook is for geezers at this point.

00:30:47
Speaker 3: No, they definitely don't use I mean, they still use Snapchat. It seems like in the middle school age group they like TikTok, they like us to sort of. I don't know.

00:30:55
Speaker 1: I think they like TikTok more.

00:30:57
Speaker 3: I mean, there does seem to be some fairly copelling data that, especially for teenage girls, that heavier use of social media may be associated with like more mental health issues and a lot of body image stuff, confidence stuff, And that is a category of content that I'd like to push off for as long as possible and make sure that again open lines of communication around them, because I think you can end up like in like a very compelling, like fake world in social media, particularly if you're suffering from certain mental health issues, that could be very unhealthy because it breaks off communication from others who might be able to help you in the real world.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: So I don't know.

00:31:40
Speaker 3: I mean, there's certainly some helpful resources as well, and I feel like TikTok especially, I don't use TikTok, but from what I've heard, like there's a lot positive about like being open about mental health struggles and like where to find help and things like that.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: So I get it.

00:31:54
Speaker 3: This is not all black and white, but I do feel like to me that that's where the mind fields seem like they are. And I'm not gonna pretend like I know what I'm doing at this point. With the ages of my kids. I just I know I'm going to have my guard up. Let's just put it that way, Oh.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Your guard up.

00:32:11
Speaker 4: But everything is the world we create with our our online you know, what we choose to follow, and that's you know, partly what it shows us. And with young girls in particular, I think what's kind of cool as all this has developed is when we were growing up, there were only the newstand magazines that and whatever you saw on TV was the image of beauty.

00:32:36
Speaker 1: And because of that, it was fairly narrow.

00:32:40
Speaker 4: You know, at least in the eighties and nineties, people were starting to recognize that there were not only white women in the world, but they were still all very very skinny, right, and you know, it was this one one body shape and that's what you see and compare yourself to. Whereas I think the precisely because social media has a lowed for more content creators to be out there, you see a wider variety of attractive people and they're just it wouldn't have made it over the gatekeepers, what they would have allowed into these narrow range of magazines. But because it's whatever people click on, whatever they view, you just have more diversity in that and because of that, you get different body shapes, you get people with birthmarks of all things, you know, our freckles or teeth that look different or you know whatever. Then obviously diversity in terms of skin color and background and all that.

00:33:38
Speaker 1: So I think that's one of the cooler things about it. So you know, it's there are upsides.

00:33:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I take that with a little bit of a grain of salt, because every teenager I see trying to take a picture of themselves is still trying to contort themselves into as thin appearing as possible. Like, I don't think just because there are more and it's wonderful, I agree with you that there's more creators out there, does it mean that people haven't still have like abandoned the prior quote unquote ideals and that social media can't be a tool for people to kind of test out different looks and see what people quote unquote like and like become very upset if they don't like this or like I just yeah, you can tell. I mean, I think there are some great things. I think it's also a minefield and I don't think I'm going to change my thoughts about that.

00:34:27
Speaker 4: Well, and you know, and then there's also the question of, like, if kids are creative like and have things that they want to share with the world, there's also.

00:34:34
Speaker 1: Some upsides there.

00:34:35
Speaker 4: There was briefly a period where Jasper was thinking of starting a podcast, and yeah, that's just something like you wouldn't have even had ability to do twenty thirty years ago. That you have this idea that you can put out there, or you know kids who are into photography or art, or you know, that you can share your writing with the world.

00:34:54
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when I was learning.

00:34:56
Speaker 4: To write, it was very much you had to go through the gatekeepers, and so there's a limited amount of stuff that can get out there, and it's harder to get a start, and that's less less the case now and so I think that's you know, a.

00:35:08
Speaker 1: Cool upside too.

00:35:09
Speaker 4: Or or making friends with people who are like you but who aren't in your geographic location, and I think that is the ability to find online communities of like minded people is another really cool thing. So any child who has, you know, a neurological difference or who you know has some sort of special need that there are communities of people like that that you might be the only person like you in your school but you're certainly not the only person like you in the world, and you can make friends with other children who are going through similar things and be part of these online communities as well.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's an upside too. That one's an upside. I can I can get behind that one. I can get both of them. I just there's both. That's just a mixed picture.

00:35:53
Speaker 4: Nothing is all good or bad, right, I mean, technology is it's a tool, and you can use it for good, you could use it for evil. Most of us are somewhere in the you know, banality of the middle right.

00:36:04
Speaker 1: And and that's that's how we tend to act or interact with these things. And I think our kids will will find that as well.

00:36:11
Speaker 4: So pivoting to today's question, So this is from a listener who was thinking about planning and such and then listen to us talk about what was it our was this our list of.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: One hundred dreams episode dreams?

00:36:27
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:36:27
Speaker 4: And I mentioned the Highlights Retreat Highlights Foundation Retreats Center in the Polkados as a place that I would like to do a writing retreat sometime that somebody suggested to me, but it was booked when I was looking but anyway, it wasn't booked for when this listener was looking, so she heard it, found it, went loved it. But anyway, she asked us going into this event of how she should structure her days at a retreat in order to you know, have realistic expectations, but also make the most of this deep thing time. And she says specifically she had sort of Monday to Thursday. She had two full days in the middle and two half days on either side. How would you structure a retreat where you're trying to get some stuff done also relax and enjoy yourself use the deep thinking time, Sarah, what would you do?

00:37:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would definitely go in with a bit of a plan, and I would not be too ambitious with your plan. Like, I think that is the way to kill the mood on your retreat is give yourself fifty things to do and then be like frustrated when you can't get them done. I also think you should kind of decide or think about deciding in advance that like you're going to be done at a certain time so you really can have that deep rest and like, you know, if you've decided that shut down is four pm, then of course, if the meuse strikes you and you end up going farther, fine, but it gives you a nice out and then you kind of know, like, Okay, I've already given myself derision to just enjoy like a walk in the woods and like a really RESTful night of sleep, and you know, whatever it is, and I would try to. I mean, if it were me, i'd probably do some sort of like combination of like concrete work and like more dreamy work, like you know, editing some draft, but then also like give myself freedom to take a walk and think.

00:38:05
Speaker 1: About my next project. So yeah, this sounds amazing. I'm very excited for you.

00:38:10
Speaker 3: I just think the biggest pitfall would be going in with like the idea that you're going to get like an unrealistic number of things done that will kill your mood and then we'll do a new relaxation.

00:38:19
Speaker 1: So don't do that. Yeah, don't do that.

00:38:21
Speaker 4: When I have taken these sorts of retreats, it has always been because I have a project that is in a specific state whereas that it is close to done, it's pretty good, but I would like to fully get myself in the brain space of editing it and meaning that I'm not dealing with family matters. I don't have to stop at a specific time. I can just sort of keep going as I need to.

00:38:50
Speaker 1: And so, you know, that's when I've got a book in that stage.

00:38:53
Speaker 4: And it doesn't take long to get through these books when you're like it, because I'm just editing fairly quickly as I'm going through. But it's I'm absorbing chapter after another. I'm not like artificially stopping because like Monday, I do chapter two, and then Tuesday I do chapter three, and well, you know, who knows is the chapter the transition between chapter two and chapter three good. But I've had a whole day, so what do I know? You know, whereas the reader won't have that if they aren't stopping in between each chapter. So that's when I have generally taken those And so because of that, it is primarily driven.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: By the work. You know, what I do. I need to eat, but I try.

00:39:28
Speaker 4: To kind of minimize the Ti've devoted to that I'll off and have stuff in my room. Even I do tend to like run in the morning just because it's a good way to get up and get moving, and then we'll work and work and then at some point you still do need a break, so that's like a good time to get like a sandwich out and then go for a little walk. I find that if I didn't have kind of my family around me in the structure and the times when I haven't had my ideal work is, you know, I start in the morning and go to sort of mid afternoon, take some time off, and then kind of go in the afternoon maybe you know, eat something, but possibly even eat it at my computer and go into the night, like go to eleven o'clock at night with it. And so that's what I try to do on those retreats, is have the kind of midday break and then do the work around it at the times when I would do it if I didn't have the sort of family responsibilities that I have.

00:40:22
Speaker 1: But yeah, make sure that.

00:40:23
Speaker 4: You can do what you're going to do, because you want to come out of this retreat feeling successful.

00:40:28
Speaker 1: So I guess I wouldn't really take.

00:40:29
Speaker 4: A retreat saying I want to think deep thoughts because that's a little bit of pressure, Like what are those deep thoughts?

00:40:36
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, maybe you'll think deep thoughts, but.

00:40:39
Speaker 4: I would give yourself a specific thought that you want to think deeply about, Like I want to come up with three things I could pursue, like three research projects I could pursue over the next year, Right, Like those that would be a question you could have a more focused look at or else something like I did, like I want to get through this project and finish it over the.

00:41:00
Speaker 1: Course of the retreat. So yeah, that's what I would do.

00:41:03
Speaker 3: Love it Yours definitely sounds more grueling than hers, but different goals, right, you were like, this is my chance getting it done, and she said she wanted to.

00:41:11
Speaker 1: Recuperate and work on a little research.

00:41:13
Speaker 3: So yes, maybe slightly different agenda, but and I love that, Like give yourself permission to like deep thoughts, but with a structure. With this structure, think of I want to have three like deliverables by the end.

00:41:28
Speaker 1: That sounds good, all right.

00:41:29
Speaker 4: So Love of the Week, Sarah, I'm gonna say, I just put a white noise app on my phone. We were in a place we were just recording this after a holiday weekend and had multiple ones of us in one room, and it just helps with everyone sleeping because if somebody is making noise while sleeping, then the white noise kind of drowns it all out, and you know, it's just you can turn it out quite loud and it doesn't keep people from sleeping if it sounds like wind or a fan or something like that. So yeah, it was I paid for an app that makes white noise, but I felt like then it would keep going, whereas I don't trying and pull it up on YouTube.

00:42:07
Speaker 1: Who knows, we'll be listening to some ad in the middle of the night and that would destroy the whole benefit to it. So there you go.

00:42:14
Speaker 3: I've done that on Apple Music, and it's bad because it would be like white noise. Then it will stop and do like a different kind of white noise.

00:42:20
Speaker 1: No, that's not I didn't want that different kind of white noise.

00:42:23
Speaker 3: So I think that's a worthwhile app definitely, especially because like it's replacing a whole machine that you could buy, so it's probably cheaper than that. My love of the week is are you there, God, It's Me Margaret, which I'm sure will be available for streaming soon, maybe by the time The Stairs because it's kind of on its way out of theaters.

00:42:38
Speaker 1: But Saw with Annabel and which your kids could then have on screens. Yes, it's such a good movie.

00:42:45
Speaker 3: Like I just I read the book twenty times, as I did with most of her books growing up, and they were really really true, Like I mean, I remembered specific lines like they did an amazing job adapting that, and it's such a great book anyway, So I'm just glad I got to do that while it was still in theaters.

00:43:02
Speaker 1: Yay, yay.

00:43:04
Speaker 4: Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about kids and screens. This is the first part in our three part series on kids. Well I'm on screens. We're doing kids and screens this time. I'm going to be talking to Devora Heidner next week on growing up in public and her expert opinion on kids and screens and such, and then we'll be talking about our own screen time habits in a later episode. So please keep tuning in and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:43:34
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both Worlds Podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.