June 19, 2025 • 18 mins
Things reached breaking point. And then… everything changed.
This week on the Happy Families Podcast, Justin and Kylie share a raw and transformative parenting story from their own home—a story of tough love, compassion, and the unexpected joy that emerged when one of their children went screen-free.
If you've ever wrestled with screen-time battles, wondered whether stepping in might do more harm than good, or felt at a loss watching your child withdraw behind a phone… this is the episode you need to hear.
KEY POINTS:
- Not all kids respond to screens the same way—some are more deeply affected mentally, socially, and physically.
- Despite multiple conversations, one of Justin and Kylie’s children struggled to reduce screen use on her own.
- Justin made the tough call to temporarily remove the smartphone, despite knowing it would be met with resistance.
- The decision was supported with compassion, calm, and a consistent message of love and presence.
- Within days, they saw remarkable emotional and relational transformation.
- The child herself later initiated a conversation to renegotiate her phone use, ultimately choosing to remove social media apps and suggest her own boundaries.
- The family experienced a visible increase in connection, laughter, and joy—without screens.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"With enough scaffolding, with enough support, with enough conversation around why sometimes we as parents are going to make decisions that the children may not agree with… the children are able to deal with and respond to these challenges in much more productive ways." – Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- “The Doctor’s Desk” podcast episode #1270 mentioned a study on improved wellbeing after removing smartphone internet access.
- Study from 'Nature'
- happyfamilies.com.au for more resources on parenting and screen time.
- Parental Guidance Season 3 starts Monday June 30 on Channel 9 — new episodes discussed throughout the week on the podcast.
✅ ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Trust your instincts – If screen use is affecting your child’s wellbeing, don't ignore the signs.
- Lead with compassion – Any intervention should be anchored in calm, empathy, and connection.
- Scaffold the change – Offer alternatives, create structure, and maintain open communication.
- Invite their input – When emotions settle, include your child in designing new tech boundaries.
- Watch for the joy – Pay attention to the surprising upside: more laughter, connection, and peace.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Screen time. It's an enduring issue and in the Colson
family with six daughters, Oh my goodness, do we go
over this a lot? Or what today? On the Happy
Families Podcast I'll Do Better Tomorrow, we tackle screen time
in a way that we never have before, because things
have erupted in a way that they never have before.
Could they Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting
(00:28):
Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie Calson. Before we talk about
old do Better Tomorrow and the things we've learned about
parenting this week and our adventures with the kids. I've
got the best, the biggest, the most exciting twenty twenty
five announcement and I'm just so excited about it. Here
we go. Our kids are growing up in the world
(00:52):
we never imagine.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Take a breath.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is confronting content.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Young people. We say that we've got it under control.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
We don't. Over four powerful nights of event television in
an increasingly online world. There are so many risks that
are emerging. Eight usy families tackle the biggest challenges.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is Judy.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
No one knows it was luring her in four nights.
Four major issues, three times, peer pressure, forty image and
mental health, one chance to get it right. We should
be very careful not to feminoze our males. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
(01:39):
here we go. Good conversation all of Australia. Those two
words support seeking say lives must have. We're diving into
the biggest parenting mine field. Yes, New Parental Guidance Monday
June thirty on nine. I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's a pretty awesome promo.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm so excited. So if you missed the details the news,
it's coming up Monday June thirty on Channel nine. Friend
of Guidance season three. It's official. We can talk about it.
We are so stoked for it, and we hope that
you will join us and watch it. We'll be talking
about it right through the entire series. So the episodes
will drop on a Monday night and then you and
(02:22):
I are going to pull them apart on Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday of that week. So much, so much good stuff.
And I may have just received a preview episode for
episode one.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Way, okay, all right, let's let's move on. I'll do
about it tomorrow, Kylie. This is the bit where we
talk about the stuff that we've learned and the stuff
we've been challenged by, so that we can be more
intentional as parents moving into the weekend and into a
new week. Do you want to go first or should I?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well? No, Actually I wanted to share a quick little
anecdote that happened the other day around the dinner table.
One of our girls brought a friend home to share
a meal with us the other night, and as we
were talking, the podcast came up and she looked at
us and she said, what's your podcast about? And in unison,
all of the kids said, Emily.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Not parenting, It's not a parent of podcasts. Emily, Well,
today's podcast is not about Emily. For those of you
who are new to the pot, Emily is our youngestries
were changing it up today. Yeah, we're going to talk
about our shop.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No we're not.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
No, you can't say that. Okay, we're going to talk
about one of our children who is not Emily. So's
here's the deal. We have been talking about screens in
our home for a long time, and specifically we've been
pointing out that things aren't great, like there are some
people who can use screens and they are barely affected
(03:47):
by them. There are some people who use screens and
have really significant impacts, probably because of a handful of
other things that could be going on in their lives.
And one of our kids has been really struggling from
a mental health perspective, and a social perspective, and a
physical health perspective, I mean kind of from all the perspectives,
and consistently we've been saying, let's help you to be healthy,
(04:08):
let's help you to make wise choices, safe choices, healthy choices,
and let's help you to get screens out of your
life a little bit, because we know that this is
going to make a difference, it is going to have
an impact, and she understands what we're saying, but there's
no response, there's no change in behavior. And over the
last little while, I think it's fair to say that
things have been getting increasingly challenging for her, and her
(04:30):
mental health has really plummeted. This is not the only issue,
but I know that it's a predictor. I know it's
one of the central issues. And so a couple of
weeks ago, I sat down and I said, no matter
how many times we've talked, there has been no corresponding
change in behavior. So you don't want me to do this.
I know you're going to be upset about it. But
as your dad, and as the person with the prefrontal
(04:52):
cortex that is functioning and the one who's watching it
happen and seeing your life become more challenging, and also
the remainder of your relationships like in our home, becoming
more challenging, I'm going to do something that neither you
nor I want, and that is I am going to
take the phone away from you just for a short while.
I described to her that study that we talked about
just last week on the Doctor's Desk episode where researchers
(05:17):
blocked internet access on smartphones for a couple of weeks
and people's well being increased, And I said, we're just
going to do two, three, maybe four weeks without a smartphone,
and we've got other options for you if you want them,
so you can still stay in touch with people, and
you can still use your laptop, but we're just going
to minimize your access to a smartphone and internet access
(05:39):
on that device. It would be an understatement to say
that things were challenging. Over the next couple of days,
For two or three days, it was really difficult, low
mood followed by very high, very unpleasant mood. Lots of
big swings, but none of it really good. It was
(06:00):
just a really, really hard couple of days. And we
were about two days in and I was just thinking,
this is why I always say to people, you've got
to work with your kids, don't do things to them.
But the whole way through, even when she was cranky,
we were really calm. We were really patient, and we
were saying, we know this is hard for you, and
we know it doesn't seem fair, but we really believe
that we're acting your best interests and we're here to
(06:21):
talk to you at any point. So anyway, by about
i don't know, three or four days in, I noticed
a shift. And this is the thing that I really
want to emphasize. We're not big on force. Force creates resistance,
but with enough scaffolding, with enough support, with enough conversation
around why sometimes we as parents are going to make
decisions that the children may not agree with. The Research
(06:44):
and our experience certainly support the idea that the children
able to deal with and respond to these challenges and
these issues in much more productive ways. I think I
took the phone offer on Monday morning. Maybe it was
Sunday night, I'm pretty sure it was Monday morning, And
by Thursday the shift was complete. By Thursday afternoon, I
(07:06):
walked into the house and she was laughing her head
off with her sisters. By Friday, we had a day
of pure delight. By Saturday we will It was just
just joy. That's the only word I can describe. And
even on Sunday, fully a week in, I felt like
we had a different daughter. And the most incredible thing
of all to me was that somewhere around Saturday, I said,
(07:30):
what are you noticing? And she said not much? I said, yeah, really,
what are you actually noticing? No pride here, Let's actually
talk about it. And she didn't really want to talk
about it. I said, okay, well, here's the thing. I
know that you're going to want to phone back eventually.
You know that I'm looking for somewhere between two to
four weeks to really push the reset button on this.
But when you're ready to have a chat about what
life looks like with a phone back in your life,
(07:53):
let me know, no pressure. We can do it today, tomorrow,
we can do it next week, just when you're ready.
And the thing that was it's the most startling, was
that on Sunday afternoon, out of nowhere, she just wandered
over and said, hey, can we have that chat? And
I said, sure, so long as you understand the phone's
not coming back to you today and she said no, no, no,
I know. And as a result of the conversation, we
sat down, we pulled her phone out, we went through
(08:14):
the apps. She just started deleting them. She said, I
don't need TikTok anymore. I'm not going to have TikTok.
I'm going to get rid of Snapchat. And we went
through app by app by app. She deleted so many
apps that are just unhelpful. And then I said, so,
what are the boundaries, the guidelines, what's the framework going
to be by which you use your phone? How are
we going to set this up moving forward? And Kylie
(08:35):
I didn't tell her anything. She just said, I am
noticing that I'm better without it. I don't think that
I need these social media platforms particularly, and I don't
have any games anyway. And sure enough, we went through
the whole phone and she just made so many incredible decisions,
so many wise decisions. I talked about limits, time limits,
when she will and when she won't have access to
(08:57):
the device. She even said this, She said, so with
her school, she does five weeks of indust replacement followed
by five weeks of a learning block at school. She said,
on placement, I really need the phone, Dad, but during
learning block, you can actually have the phone. I don't
need it, and life's actually kind of better without it.
One thing after another after another, she just said everything
(09:19):
that any parent could ever dream of. In fact, I
think that she was a little bit more strict on
herself than I probably would have been. But as she
was saying it and explaining why she wanted to do
the things she was doing, it just felt good. It
felt right. And then she had the phone back to
me and she said, a week, two weeks. I don't
really mind. I'm happy to go without it until the
end of school term, but I'd really like to have
(09:41):
it when I'm doing this activity, in this activity during
the holidays. For these reasons, and I just thought, she's
a different kid. She is a different kid. I keep
on making a big deal about it on the podcast
that screens are the great unhappiness machine that they have
been designed to addict our children, and the extraordinary loss
of human ten, the loss of relationships, the loss of
(10:02):
well being that they create is just catastrophic. I think
that's criminal. And I've watched this wonderful kid come back
into our lives in the most wonderful ways. So that
is my older better tomorrow. I don't like the forceful approach,
and I don't think that it was, but certainly I
did take control because we just weren't getting anywhere. But
with the right support and scaffolding around it, you can
(10:24):
still get great results, and sometimes as a parent it's
just necessary.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
To step in. You share the analogy in one of
your books in relation to your kids swimming in the
swimming pool and how as parents we actually are the
boundary that holds the body of water. But when they're young,
(10:50):
we keep them close to the edge. They want to
be safe, they want to know that they've got a
stronghold right there, And as they get older, we start
to let them move to the middle where there isn't
an edge to grab onto, because they're starting to learn
and grow and swim for themselves without us being right there.
But they still need the boundary of the pool. And
(11:15):
I love that because our teenagers need that boundary more
than ever. And yet they're screaming to swim in the
ocean because they think they've got it. They think they've
got it all together, they think they know all the answers.
They think that we're just being too protective of them.
And what this situation has just again proven is that
(11:37):
they desperately need the boundaries in place because they can't
see what we can see firstly, and they can't moderate
for themselves. And as the week has gone on, a
couple of things have really stood out to me. The
first thing is that as a parent, sometimes you have
to play the bad guy, and in this instance, making
(11:58):
a decision that went counter do everything she wanted made
you the bad guy in that moment. But the way
you did it was.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Just say it masterful. I nailed it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I was going to say perfection. I was going to
say perfection.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I didn't see that coming at all. I'm so sorry.
I was being up myself, and then you've gone and
proven that I should be there We go. I got
it right, like it felt right.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Not only did it feel right because of her behavior,
I was really wrestling with my own emotions around it all,
and was really struggling to be compassionate. I didn't interact
with her, but in my own personal body, I was
really wrestling.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I've got to jump in really quickly on that. Just
the word compassion, I've talked about it on the pod before.
The word compassion comes from two Latin woods that I
don't know how to say. But comm and passion com
is together in imunity, community, combination, common communicate that it's together, right,
that's calm, and passion is not actually what we think
(13:09):
it is get excited about something. Passion is literally to suffer.
So when you say you found it hard to be compassionate,
what you're saying is you found it hard to step
into her suffering and suffer with her.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, totally, because she had been creating so much drama in.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Our space, emotional earthquakes everywhere, and I was.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Just I was over it, and so I really let
you take the lead on this one, and you asked
me to come in and be a part of it.
And the more I sat there, the more frustrated I got.
And I was literally I was just speechless. I can't
(13:48):
I actually can't put into words, as I watched you
not only sit in a place of a desire to
understand where she was, but then I literally watched you
suffer with her as she just fell apart in her
desperation and need to not only be understood, but to
(14:10):
have what she thought she needed. And throughout the next
few days, as emotions continued to ramp in really challenging ways,
I just watched you turn toward her a time and
time again. And so when we talk about being the
(14:30):
bad guy, the bad guy is making hard choices, right,
that's the essence of that choice. But the way we
do it determines whether or not we're seen as the
bad guy. And what's so crazy about this is that
in every situation, you would be seen as the bad
(14:53):
guy because you enforced something that she didn't want you
to enforce. But she absolutely, hands down knew that you
knew that she was hurting and that you understood why
she was hurting, and she actually turned towards you as well.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, I would actually go so far as to say
that our relationship is closer now because I haven't been saying, well,
you just need to learn your lesson or I've had enough.
And that's the consequence of you not doing as you
were told. Rather, I've gone to her and held when
she's been upset and just said, I know, and it
doesn't feel fair and this is so hard, and I
(15:28):
love you so much. I don't want to do this either,
but here's what I'm seeing, and i'm your dad and I've.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Got to look after you.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I've got to protect you. So that's kind of been
the that's been the approach. That's been the compassion, the
suffering with kind of idea.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And while we're not out of the woods by any stretch,
come the end of the week, Sunday, we'd gone for
a walk and we came home and I saw all
of the girls, including a friend, sitting out baking in
the sun. There wasn't a screen insight.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
When you say baking. It was seventeen degrees, it was freezing,
but they were enjoying being outdoors on the grass anywhere,
feeling some sunlight on their skin.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And the difference that I witnessed in that moment as
these girls just reveled in each other's company, was absolutely
it was heaven. But it was counter to anything I
think we've experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
That There's been more laughter in our home as we've
been increasingly screen free than I can remember in I
was going to say days, weeks, months, but maybe even years.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
The level of connection. And here's the challenge. When we're
in it, we actually don't recognize and see that the
very thing we want, we're actually hindering by this tiny
little screen that's with us twenty four to seven and
is just constantly begging for our time and attention. We
don't see the other people in our space who are
(17:02):
begging for our time and attention.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So the take home message is it's not so much
what you do, it's how you do it. And if
you can do it with compassion, if you can step
into suffering and suffer together, you just get better outcomes.
I guess it's second take home message is that sometimes
as a parent, you do know better, and contrary to
all of the very best ideas that are out there,
sometimes you do just have to step up and say
we're going to wear this. It's going to be some
(17:26):
stormy weather for a few days. But if we can
do it the right way, we will get through this
and we'll be better for it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And I think the most important thing is when we're
making these tough decisions, kind of having that emotional barometer
that says, am I coming from a place of love?
Do I have compassion in this moment? Because if you
can feel those two emotions in the very act of
doing what you need to do without anger, without you know,
kind of the intensity of all of those negative and
(17:54):
challenging emotions, then you can almost certainly guarantee that your
delivery is going to be a totally different experience for
both of you.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Parenting is such an adventure. We really hope that there's
some helpful ideas in today's podcast for you. We also
thank our daughter for allowing us, with permission, the opportunity
to share this element of what's been going on, because
it's a bit of an invasion of privacy for her,
but we just felt that there was so much in
what we've been experiencing that we wanted to share it.
(18:24):
We hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend with
your family. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Rulan from Bridge Media. More information and resources to make
your family happier can be found at happy families dot
com dot au and remember not this Monday, but next Monday.
Parental guidance. Season three on nine
Screen time. It's an enduring issue and in the Colson
family with six daughters, Oh my goodness, do we go
over this a lot? Or what today? On the Happy
Families Podcast I'll Do Better Tomorrow, we tackle screen time
in a way that we never have before, because things
have erupted in a way that they never have before.
Could they Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting
(00:28):
Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie Calson. Before we talk about
old do Better Tomorrow and the things we've learned about
parenting this week and our adventures with the kids. I've
got the best, the biggest, the most exciting twenty twenty
five announcement and I'm just so excited about it. Here
we go. Our kids are growing up in the world
(00:52):
we never imagine.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Take a breath.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is confronting content.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Young people. We say that we've got it under control.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
We don't. Over four powerful nights of event television in
an increasingly online world. There are so many risks that
are emerging. Eight usy families tackle the biggest challenges.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is Judy.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
No one knows it was luring her in four nights.
Four major issues, three times, peer pressure, forty image and
mental health, one chance to get it right. We should
be very careful not to feminoze our males. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
(01:39):
here we go. Good conversation all of Australia. Those two
words support seeking say lives must have. We're diving into
the biggest parenting mine field. Yes, New Parental Guidance Monday
June thirty on nine. I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's a pretty awesome promo.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm so excited. So if you missed the details the news,
it's coming up Monday June thirty on Channel nine. Friend
of Guidance season three. It's official. We can talk about it.
We are so stoked for it, and we hope that
you will join us and watch it. We'll be talking
about it right through the entire series. So the episodes
will drop on a Monday night and then you and
(02:22):
I are going to pull them apart on Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday of that week. So much, so much good stuff.
And I may have just received a preview episode for
episode one.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Way, okay, all right, let's let's move on. I'll do
about it tomorrow, Kylie. This is the bit where we
talk about the stuff that we've learned and the stuff
we've been challenged by, so that we can be more
intentional as parents moving into the weekend and into a
new week. Do you want to go first or should I?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well? No, Actually I wanted to share a quick little
anecdote that happened the other day around the dinner table.
One of our girls brought a friend home to share
a meal with us the other night, and as we
were talking, the podcast came up and she looked at
us and she said, what's your podcast about? And in unison,
all of the kids said, Emily.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Not parenting, It's not a parent of podcasts. Emily, Well,
today's podcast is not about Emily. For those of you
who are new to the pot, Emily is our youngestries
were changing it up today. Yeah, we're going to talk
about our shop.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No we're not.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
No, you can't say that. Okay, we're going to talk
about one of our children who is not Emily. So's
here's the deal. We have been talking about screens in
our home for a long time, and specifically we've been
pointing out that things aren't great, like there are some
people who can use screens and they are barely affected
(03:47):
by them. There are some people who use screens and
have really significant impacts, probably because of a handful of
other things that could be going on in their lives.
And one of our kids has been really struggling from
a mental health perspective, and a social perspective, and a
physical health perspective, I mean kind of from all the perspectives,
and consistently we've been saying, let's help you to be healthy,
(04:08):
let's help you to make wise choices, safe choices, healthy choices,
and let's help you to get screens out of your
life a little bit, because we know that this is
going to make a difference, it is going to have
an impact, and she understands what we're saying, but there's
no response, there's no change in behavior. And over the
last little while, I think it's fair to say that
things have been getting increasingly challenging for her, and her
(04:30):
mental health has really plummeted. This is not the only issue,
but I know that it's a predictor. I know it's
one of the central issues. And so a couple of
weeks ago, I sat down and I said, no matter
how many times we've talked, there has been no corresponding
change in behavior. So you don't want me to do this.
I know you're going to be upset about it. But
as your dad, and as the person with the prefrontal
(04:52):
cortex that is functioning and the one who's watching it
happen and seeing your life become more challenging, and also
the remainder of your relationships like in our home, becoming
more challenging, I'm going to do something that neither you
nor I want, and that is I am going to
take the phone away from you just for a short while.
I described to her that study that we talked about
just last week on the Doctor's Desk episode where researchers
(05:17):
blocked internet access on smartphones for a couple of weeks
and people's well being increased, And I said, we're just
going to do two, three, maybe four weeks without a smartphone,
and we've got other options for you if you want them,
so you can still stay in touch with people, and
you can still use your laptop, but we're just going
to minimize your access to a smartphone and internet access
(05:39):
on that device. It would be an understatement to say
that things were challenging. Over the next couple of days,
For two or three days, it was really difficult, low
mood followed by very high, very unpleasant mood. Lots of
big swings, but none of it really good. It was
(06:00):
just a really, really hard couple of days. And we
were about two days in and I was just thinking,
this is why I always say to people, you've got
to work with your kids, don't do things to them.
But the whole way through, even when she was cranky,
we were really calm. We were really patient, and we
were saying, we know this is hard for you, and
we know it doesn't seem fair, but we really believe
that we're acting your best interests and we're here to
(06:21):
talk to you at any point. So anyway, by about
i don't know, three or four days in, I noticed
a shift. And this is the thing that I really
want to emphasize. We're not big on force. Force creates resistance,
but with enough scaffolding, with enough support, with enough conversation
around why sometimes we as parents are going to make
decisions that the children may not agree with. The Research
(06:44):
and our experience certainly support the idea that the children
able to deal with and respond to these challenges and
these issues in much more productive ways. I think I
took the phone offer on Monday morning. Maybe it was
Sunday night, I'm pretty sure it was Monday morning, And
by Thursday the shift was complete. By Thursday afternoon, I
(07:06):
walked into the house and she was laughing her head
off with her sisters. By Friday, we had a day
of pure delight. By Saturday we will It was just
just joy. That's the only word I can describe. And
even on Sunday, fully a week in, I felt like
we had a different daughter. And the most incredible thing
of all to me was that somewhere around Saturday, I said,
(07:30):
what are you noticing? And she said not much? I said, yeah, really,
what are you actually noticing? No pride here, Let's actually
talk about it. And she didn't really want to talk
about it. I said, okay, well, here's the thing. I
know that you're going to want to phone back eventually.
You know that I'm looking for somewhere between two to
four weeks to really push the reset button on this.
But when you're ready to have a chat about what
life looks like with a phone back in your life,
(07:53):
let me know, no pressure. We can do it today, tomorrow,
we can do it next week, just when you're ready.
And the thing that was it's the most startling, was
that on Sunday afternoon, out of nowhere, she just wandered
over and said, hey, can we have that chat? And
I said, sure, so long as you understand the phone's
not coming back to you today and she said no, no, no,
I know. And as a result of the conversation, we
sat down, we pulled her phone out, we went through
(08:14):
the apps. She just started deleting them. She said, I
don't need TikTok anymore. I'm not going to have TikTok.
I'm going to get rid of Snapchat. And we went
through app by app by app. She deleted so many
apps that are just unhelpful. And then I said, so,
what are the boundaries, the guidelines, what's the framework going
to be by which you use your phone? How are
we going to set this up moving forward? And Kylie
(08:35):
I didn't tell her anything. She just said, I am
noticing that I'm better without it. I don't think that
I need these social media platforms particularly, and I don't
have any games anyway. And sure enough, we went through
the whole phone and she just made so many incredible decisions,
so many wise decisions. I talked about limits, time limits,
when she will and when she won't have access to
(08:57):
the device. She even said this, She said, so with
her school, she does five weeks of indust replacement followed
by five weeks of a learning block at school. She said,
on placement, I really need the phone, Dad, but during
learning block, you can actually have the phone. I don't
need it, and life's actually kind of better without it.
One thing after another after another, she just said everything
(09:19):
that any parent could ever dream of. In fact, I
think that she was a little bit more strict on
herself than I probably would have been. But as she
was saying it and explaining why she wanted to do
the things she was doing, it just felt good. It
felt right. And then she had the phone back to
me and she said, a week, two weeks. I don't
really mind. I'm happy to go without it until the
end of school term, but I'd really like to have
(09:41):
it when I'm doing this activity, in this activity during
the holidays. For these reasons, and I just thought, she's
a different kid. She is a different kid. I keep
on making a big deal about it on the podcast
that screens are the great unhappiness machine that they have
been designed to addict our children, and the extraordinary loss
of human ten, the loss of relationships, the loss of
(10:02):
well being that they create is just catastrophic. I think
that's criminal. And I've watched this wonderful kid come back
into our lives in the most wonderful ways. So that
is my older better tomorrow. I don't like the forceful approach,
and I don't think that it was, but certainly I
did take control because we just weren't getting anywhere. But
with the right support and scaffolding around it, you can
(10:24):
still get great results, and sometimes as a parent it's
just necessary.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
To step in. You share the analogy in one of
your books in relation to your kids swimming in the
swimming pool and how as parents we actually are the
boundary that holds the body of water. But when they're young,
(10:50):
we keep them close to the edge. They want to
be safe, they want to know that they've got a
stronghold right there, And as they get older, we start
to let them move to the middle where there isn't
an edge to grab onto, because they're starting to learn
and grow and swim for themselves without us being right there.
But they still need the boundary of the pool. And
(11:15):
I love that because our teenagers need that boundary more
than ever. And yet they're screaming to swim in the
ocean because they think they've got it. They think they've
got it all together, they think they know all the answers.
They think that we're just being too protective of them.
And what this situation has just again proven is that
(11:37):
they desperately need the boundaries in place because they can't
see what we can see firstly, and they can't moderate
for themselves. And as the week has gone on, a
couple of things have really stood out to me. The
first thing is that as a parent, sometimes you have
to play the bad guy, and in this instance, making
(11:58):
a decision that went counter do everything she wanted made
you the bad guy in that moment. But the way
you did it was.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Just say it masterful. I nailed it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I was going to say perfection. I was going to
say perfection.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I didn't see that coming at all. I'm so sorry.
I was being up myself, and then you've gone and
proven that I should be there We go. I got
it right, like it felt right.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Not only did it feel right because of her behavior,
I was really wrestling with my own emotions around it all,
and was really struggling to be compassionate. I didn't interact
with her, but in my own personal body, I was
really wrestling.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I've got to jump in really quickly on that. Just
the word compassion, I've talked about it on the pod before.
The word compassion comes from two Latin woods that I
don't know how to say. But comm and passion com
is together in imunity, community, combination, common communicate that it's together, right,
that's calm, and passion is not actually what we think
(13:09):
it is get excited about something. Passion is literally to suffer.
So when you say you found it hard to be compassionate,
what you're saying is you found it hard to step
into her suffering and suffer with her.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, totally, because she had been creating so much drama in.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Our space, emotional earthquakes everywhere, and I was.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Just I was over it, and so I really let
you take the lead on this one, and you asked
me to come in and be a part of it.
And the more I sat there, the more frustrated I got.
And I was literally I was just speechless. I can't
(13:48):
I actually can't put into words, as I watched you
not only sit in a place of a desire to
understand where she was, but then I literally watched you
suffer with her as she just fell apart in her
desperation and need to not only be understood, but to
(14:10):
have what she thought she needed. And throughout the next
few days, as emotions continued to ramp in really challenging ways,
I just watched you turn toward her a time and
time again. And so when we talk about being the
(14:30):
bad guy, the bad guy is making hard choices, right,
that's the essence of that choice. But the way we
do it determines whether or not we're seen as the
bad guy. And what's so crazy about this is that
in every situation, you would be seen as the bad
(14:53):
guy because you enforced something that she didn't want you
to enforce. But she absolutely, hands down knew that you
knew that she was hurting and that you understood why
she was hurting, and she actually turned towards you as well.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, I would actually go so far as to say
that our relationship is closer now because I haven't been saying, well,
you just need to learn your lesson or I've had enough.
And that's the consequence of you not doing as you
were told. Rather, I've gone to her and held when
she's been upset and just said, I know, and it
doesn't feel fair and this is so hard, and I
(15:28):
love you so much. I don't want to do this either,
but here's what I'm seeing, and i'm your dad and I've.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Got to look after you.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I've got to protect you. So that's kind of been
the that's been the approach. That's been the compassion, the
suffering with kind of idea.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And while we're not out of the woods by any stretch,
come the end of the week, Sunday, we'd gone for
a walk and we came home and I saw all
of the girls, including a friend, sitting out baking in
the sun. There wasn't a screen insight.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
When you say baking. It was seventeen degrees, it was freezing,
but they were enjoying being outdoors on the grass anywhere,
feeling some sunlight on their skin.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And the difference that I witnessed in that moment as
these girls just reveled in each other's company, was absolutely
it was heaven. But it was counter to anything I
think we've experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
That There's been more laughter in our home as we've
been increasingly screen free than I can remember in I
was going to say days, weeks, months, but maybe even years.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
The level of connection. And here's the challenge. When we're
in it, we actually don't recognize and see that the
very thing we want, we're actually hindering by this tiny
little screen that's with us twenty four to seven and
is just constantly begging for our time and attention. We
don't see the other people in our space who are
(17:02):
begging for our time and attention.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So the take home message is it's not so much
what you do, it's how you do it. And if
you can do it with compassion, if you can step
into suffering and suffer together, you just get better outcomes.
I guess it's second take home message is that sometimes
as a parent, you do know better, and contrary to
all of the very best ideas that are out there,
sometimes you do just have to step up and say
we're going to wear this. It's going to be some
(17:26):
stormy weather for a few days. But if we can
do it the right way, we will get through this
and we'll be better for it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And I think the most important thing is when we're
making these tough decisions, kind of having that emotional barometer
that says, am I coming from a place of love?
Do I have compassion in this moment? Because if you
can feel those two emotions in the very act of
doing what you need to do without anger, without you know,
kind of the intensity of all of those negative and
(17:54):
challenging emotions, then you can almost certainly guarantee that your
delivery is going to be a totally different experience for
both of you.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Parenting is such an adventure. We really hope that there's
some helpful ideas in today's podcast for you. We also
thank our daughter for allowing us, with permission, the opportunity
to share this element of what's been going on, because
it's a bit of an invasion of privacy for her,
but we just felt that there was so much in
what we've been experiencing that we wanted to share it.
(18:24):
We hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend with
your family. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Rulan from Bridge Media. More information and resources to make
your family happier can be found at happy families dot
com dot au and remember not this Monday, but next Monday.
Parental guidance. Season three on nine
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