How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  Setting a Family Media Policy for Preteens and Teens

  Your control over limits—and how much control you should have over those limits—shifts again once your children have their own devices and particularly their own phones or networked tablets, which aren’t even limited by their ability to access a wireless network. The age at which that happens differs widely from family to family. In ours, children are required to purchase their own devices (using savings and their allowance) and, if the device is a phone or a networked tablet, pay their share of the family data plan. My oldest did this at thirteen, my next oldest at twelve, and as I write, I’m allowing my eleven-year-old a much freer hand with spending her allowance in silly ways (in-app purchases, nail polish kits) to ensure that she’s not able to afford a phone before I think she can handle one.

  Just because the kids purchase the devices (which includes laptops) doesn’t mean the devices don’t still have to adhere to our rules, but it’s around the point when a phone is acquired and homework begins to be done online that many families find limits need to evolve. What worked when you controlled access points loses its power once a child can do more for herself—witness the jump from two to three hours of screen time for younger kids up to six hours and more for eight- to twelve-year-olds, who are more likely to have their own devices or at least more able to work the remote. Older children need to respect the limits you’ve set, which means they need to believe in the importance of the rules and in your ability and willingness to enforce them.

  MAKE SCREEN BALANCE A FAMILY GOAL

  If you’re lucky, you’ve been having conversations about why you limit screen time all along, but if you haven’t, start. If you yourself struggle to set limits, own the challenge. Show your teenagers the apps you use to help resist the siren song of social media while working, and describe the temptation to answer emails (easy!) instead of drafting notes for a major project (hard!). Describe your own goals around screen time, and then ask them to talk about theirs. They might remember a vacation when you spent too much time working (which, while not screen time, can feel like it to a kid), and those memories can fuel a conversation about why it’s important to establish times when you’re in the online world and times when you’re not.

  The following questions can help you start that conversation, but remember the decision about what rules and limits your family should follow belongs with the adults, not the teenagers. Sometimes, you’ll need to tighten things up, and rein back in use that’s become too much. Other times, you may listen to a well-reasoned proposal for a loosening of the rules. Do listen to your children on the topic of screen time, but don’t give up your authority. Our kids need our honesty and our guidance. You may still be evolving in your own tech use, but you know a lot that they don’t about balance, relationships, and what’s truly important in life. Screen time is just another area in which all of the usual challenges play out.

  What is the screen for? It’s a good question—what do you want to do with your phone? What do you want it to help you do? What do you want from the computer or the television? Distraction, entertainment, background noise? Connection? Information? Is what you’re doing with the screen consistent with what you hoped you’d do? Is it helping you to be happier or better or to reach a goal? Or is it getting in your way?

  By the time they’re in their tweens and teens, most of our children have thoughts of their own about how they want to interact with screens. Many of their schools have digital manners and media literacy discussions, as do pediatricians and physical education or health classes. As well, they’re part of the same ongoing cultural conversation that we are. They know we’re all, as a society, working to balance life online and off, and they probably have stories about kids who spend too much time on their phones or gaming. What they actually do with their phones and devices may not appear at first glance to fit in with their feelings about kids who do nothing but text and Snapchat all day, but then, aren’t we the parents who spend seven-plus hours a day on personal screen time? This stuff is hard, and there’s no point in pretending it isn’t. Talking about the things we want our devices to help us do and feel in the real world helps us keep our daily small choices about when and if we pick them up in line with our larger goals.

  Even once you’ve agreed on the family values that are reflected in the ways you use technology, the devil is in the details. Homework certainly isn’t “screen time,” but is texting? How about watching a YouTube video your friend sent as a link? What about watching the video your friend made or making one yourself? Here are some questions you can use to start a discussion with your older child, whether it’s a dinner-table sit-down or a few assorted car talks. Their answers can help you work together to set a formal family media policy, or just talk about what is and isn’t working at your house.

  How much television or video or any form of screen watching or playing would you consider reasonable on a school night?

  Do you want to consume, or do you want to create?

  When is the latest you think you should be sending or receiving a text?

  Is it hard for you not to look at your phone while you do homework? What would help?

  What are some things you like to do on the weekend? How much of that time do you want to spend on watching things and video games?

  Should that be different if you have a friend over?

  What will you do if you get a text that’s scary or sexy or otherwise worries you?

  When your friends are angry with one another, how do you see them using their online connection? How will you use yours?

  It’s also fine to share your worst-case scenario concerns. If there’s media coverage of a particularly outrageous example of poor online behavior, talk about it. Say, directly, how you’d hope your child would behave, even as they’re shrieking, “My friends would never share nude pictures/live-post a rape/create a Facebook group for misogynist content about a women’s sports team.” Of course they wouldn’t. But when they do, you want your children to hear your words echoing in their ears as they refuse to join in.

  Where do the devices go at night? There’s a conventional right answer on this. Late-night device usage can interfere with sleep, both because of the light and because as we become more and more tired, it can become more and more difficult to turn off temptation. We also make bad choices at night. We’re our worst selves, saying the things we least want to have said, to the people we least want to hear them—not a good time to be on social media.

  All of this is prevented if the devices, whatever they are, don’t go to bed with us. Holly Buffington Stevens, a mother of a seventh grader and a ninth grader in Atlanta, requires her kids to leave their school laptops and phones in the charging cabinet in the kitchen when the family heads (admirably, all at about the same time) upstairs for reading and bedtime. “Same goes with friends when they sleep over—we take their phones before bedtime. I’m always amazed by the number of texts my kids receive from their friends relatively late at night.”

  I think that’s an excellent requirement, and I even went so far as to create a big public charging area for our many and varied family gadgetry—but at least as of this writing, we don’t require our kids to use it. Some do, some don’t, some vary. I use my phone as an alarm, and so does my husband. My daughter reads on an iPad at night (new settings allow you to adjust the light emitted so that it should not interfere as much with sleep). Sometimes my kids use a device as an alarm clock, too. We talk about late-night texting and surfing, and we periodically check to see if there’s a problem.

  I recognize, though, that it’s a heavy temptation, sitting there, all night. I’m not wholly convinced that ours is the right choice on this one. It’s just what works for us now, which is sometimes the best you can do.

  Should you keep tabs—and how? After all these conversations and choices, you’re still far from done. You and your child have to live with the plans you’ve mad
e, and if you’ve imposed any limits, you have to consider whether and how you’ll check on your child’s compliance. These decisions are all about building trust, but sometimes you need to trust—and verify.

  How we do that monitoring, though, varies greatly and isn’t necessarily what you’d expect. Relatively few parents rely on outside tools such as parental software controls or tracking programs to oversee their children’s lives online. I’ve explored many options for either limiting or monitoring various screens, only to reject them for two reasons: first, I haven’t found any that wouldn’t be fairly easy for a child to thwart, and second, I want my children to rely on their own self-control instead of mine. It’s tempting to imagine I could outsource this whole digital media thing in favor of yet another device or app that would enforce the limits I set, or fool myself into thinking I had an all-seeing eye on what my children were doing online, but there are no shortcuts for doing the hard work of teaching, talking, and, sometimes, enforcing.

  Instead, we must focus on our own ability to talk to and guide our children in what might seem like a new world but is in so many respects just an extension of the same culture we’ve always inhabited. That’s good for children (many experts, like Catherine Steiner-Adair and Devorah Heitner, advise against depending on external monitoring) and it’s good for parents. Parents who are actively involved in talking with their children about usage, content, and sharing describe themselves as more confident in their parenting abilities, which is generally correlated with overall life satisfaction. In this case, a sense of interaction and involvement—asking questions, offering opinions, and talking about what we all watch and play—makes us happier.

  How that looks in practice varies enormously. Considerations include a child’s age, his personality, and the social arena in which he moves. For most parents, the mentoring and monitoring process is an evolution, inevitably in the direction of less oversight (you won’t be checking up on them when they’re in college), but often with blips of more intense supervision, especially when mistakes are made. That evolution from parent monitoring to self-monitoring is an important one, and if you help them do it while they’re still under your roof, that will be one less transition to manage as they move into adulthood.

  ADDING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO THE MIX

  There are entire books dedicated to the topic of tweens, teens, and social media. (I recommend Screenwise, The Big Disconnect, and Social Media Wellness.) For many families, it’s a challenge, as kids experience an extension of their social lives with which we can’t directly relate but which many are finding is, ultimately, just another piece of the familiar puzzle that is growing up.

  Families make dramatically different decisions around children and social media, from four-year-olds who are “Instafamous” to fourteen-year-olds who have themselves decided to give the whole thing a miss. Whatever your choices, every time your child joins a new form of social media, that new platform should include a discussion of how your child plans to use it and a demonstration of the perils: “Look! Viral embarrassing YouTube video.” “Look! That disappearing Snapchat, captured forever with a screen shot! I can do that with that text you sent about your secret crush on Emma, too, you know.” “Hey, wanna hear about the time my friend Wendi’s kid posted his brother’s phone number on Instagram and said it belonged to Justin Bieber?” Discuss with your child if you’re going to check in on her use of the new network, how, and when.

  You can talk, too, about the things we can all feel when we’re watching other people’s carefully cultivated lives scroll by. We miss parties, we’re not invited to things, we aren’t taking a cool vacation, we don’t look like that in a swimsuit. Be blunt about how people’s shared images don’t always match their lives. It may not feel kind to use an example from among your friends and acquaintances, but kids need exactly that kind of dose of reality. “You know Finn’s mom almost never looks like that.” “Remember, you were at that birthday party, and the birthday girl had a temper tantrum and left crying right after the cake.” Remind them that you can look around and snap a beautiful Instagram image at any moment, no matter how much reality bites.

  TEACH TECH MANAGEMENT

  As your kids learn to self-monitor, they also need to learn to use their technology, but not to depend on it. That means understanding all the ways games and apps are set up to keep you coming back with notifications and alerts designed to pull a quick click (and that includes news, email, and messaging apps). Teenagers hate to be manipulated or told what to do—so make sure they know that’s exactly what the grown-ups at their favorite apps and games are attempting. As cool and edgy as things online may appear, they’re designed to make money and spread advertising. The real rebellion is in resisting the bait and making your own choices about what you want to do online and how. Help teenagers and older children decide which few things they actually need to flicker across the screen of their phone, and teach them to work and socialize with the phone facedown (and ideally silent) when that’s appropriate. Show them how to set up their own “do not disturb” preferences as well.

  RELAX

  Finally, whenever you find yourself caught up in all the stress and worry that our new connected world has brought, remember: this Internet thing is fun. Cat videos. Instant access to that Simpsons scene where they’re all in family therapy. That one friend you text with off and on all day long.

  We can binge watch an old or new favorite TV show with kids on a miserable wet weekend, download movies instantly, order up a favorite song to spark dinner cleanup, send a kid a picture of an elephant wearing colorful Indian pajamas when he emerges from his algebra final. We can make a family video holiday card, turn a toddler shouting “Yo Mama!” into a ringtone, and find a used copy of Anne of Green Gables with exactly the cover ours had as a kid.

  It’s not “digital life.” It’s just life. Let your kids waste time. Waste some with them. Find a screen to share. Dare to believe that it will be okay.

  seven

  DISCIPLINE: THIS HURTS ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU

  Discipline, that fine art of getting children to behave in a way that meets the standards of their family and community, is hard. So hard that when I invited the 1,050 people who responded to my research survey on parenting to fill in an open blank with the answer to “what they enjoyed least” when it came to raising kids, the largest grouping of answers, just under a third, offered some variation on “discipline”: “Enforcing rules, taking away privileges.” “I don’t like having to punish my children.” “Discipline. I know it’s important to have consequences, but it is still hard to discipline.” “When I have to be hard on my kids to teach them right from wrong.” “Having to make rules for them and stick with it.” “Having to take stuff away for bad behavior.” “Punishing my child, even though I know it’s for his own good.”

  There’s the minor stuff: run-of-the-mill issues such as reining in the child who would prefer to run amok in the grocery store, tear across the parking lot, skip the homework, and stay out late with her friends. Then there’s the major stuff. No child, no matter how well and tenderly taught right from wrong, gets through childhood without blowing it big-time, and suddenly, the guidance that is everyday parenting does not feel like enough. There must be consequences. Time-outs. Lost privileges. Lectures. Grounding. And there will be recriminations—yours, at a minimum. Did you not teach this child right? Tell her not to draw on the back of the couch, bite her brother until he bleeds, put the dog in the wagon and push it down the driveway, use your iTunes password to spend $243 on in-app purchases, smoke pot?

  Of course you did. Or you tried. And while tomorrow may be the day to review those lessons (and tonight the night to think about how you’re conveying them), first comes the moment when the child who has really done wrong is standing in front of you, and that moment is hard. For that matter, all those little moments in the grocery stores, parking lots, and at dining room tables don’t feel so great, e
ither.

  That kind of discipline—the things-are-going-wrong kind—is just one small piece of a much larger picture. Yet here we are, so many of us, all balled up about the same thing. I called one of my favorite thinkers on parenthood, Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, to ask why. He’s a pediatrician and an author. He’s also a happy parent himself. “What’s the first thing you would say,” I asked him, “to a parent who told you discipline was his ‘least favorite thing’?”

  “Oh, no!” he shouted into the phone with his trademark enthusiasm. “You have to remember what the word means—to teach or to guide in a loving way. Not to punish, not to control, never to harm. Its root is ‘disciple.’ When you understand that your role is to be a teacher, everything changes.” Those dreaded moments? Yes, they show up, he agreed, but most of discipline, he argued, is role modeling. “It’s not a taking away. It’s not punishment. It’s guiding a kid to navigate the world safely.”

  In other words, if you think of discipline as an iceberg, what we dislike about it is just the 10 percent that’s sticking up above the water. We hate the enforcement. But it’s the 90 percent of what we do to teach our children how to be, both at home and in the world, that really matters. It’s also that 90 percent that gives the pointy, frosty 10 percent strength. If we can shift our narrative around the 10 percent moments to make them just part of a larger whole, we might be able to feel better about discipline overall.

  For Dr. Ginsburg, that change in how we think and talk about discipline is key to improving our entire approach. “We’ve got a cultural and a personal narrative around this that needs to change,” he said. Not only is most of our job in this area positive, as we model personal responsibility and guide our children toward self-control, but even the piece we dread shouldn’t worry us the way it does. We see the moment when our child doesn’t live up to our expectations as a sign that our normal approach has failed—after all, if it had worked to teach them right from wrong in the first place, we wouldn’t be having to enforce the lesson, right? But this is when we fail ourselves, because those moments, because children, whether they’re toddlers or tweens or teens, don’t get everything right the first time, and they don’t learn just by listening. They learn by exploring, pushing the boundaries, and having things go wrong—and that last part, where things go wrong, doesn’t really mean the larger process has hit a wall. Instead, big strikeouts are part of the game. Our job as parents isn’t to prevent them from happening. It’s to help our children see what happened and learn to navigate so that things go better next time.