Am I Too Strict To Parent?

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand: Episode Summary – "Am I Too Strict To Parent?"

Release Date: February 28, 2025

In the "Am I Too Strict To Parent?" episode of the Armstrong & Getty On Demand podcast, hosts Armstrong and Getty delve into the complexities of modern parenting, particularly focusing on managing teenagers' smartphone usage and the evolving landscape of youth sports. The discussion is both reflective and pragmatic, offering insights into maintaining family connections in an increasingly digital world.

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1. Introduction to Parenting Challenges

The episode opens with Armstrong raising a pertinent question about his parenting style: "Am I too strict to parent?" (02:31). This introspective inquiry sets the stage for a broader conversation on balancing discipline with understanding in the context of today's technological advancements.

2. The Rise of Girls Flag Football

Armstrong introduces the topic by sharing his son's positive experience with flag football and noting the sport's growing popularity among girls:
"Girls flag football is really growing across the country and it's becoming a pretty common high school sport." (02:41).

Getty adds, "Flag football is cool. It's got all of the strategy and skill level for the skill players of any other football. You just don't have the contact, the tackling, and so it's pretty cool." (03:00).

This segment highlights the progressive inclusion of girls in traditionally male-dominated sports, reflecting societal shifts towards gender equality in athletics.

3. Gender Dynamics and Sports Participation

The hosts engage in a critical discussion about the elimination of boys' teams in some areas, questioning the rationale behind such decisions:
"I noticed, unless I'm reading this wrong, this year, it's co-ed or girls. There's no boys team, co-ed or girls for flag football. Why eliminated the boys team? I don't know." (03:19).

Getty remarks on the potential repercussions, noting that "you’re going to have a lot of boys who get less playing time" due to rules limiting male participation (03:45). This leads to a broader contemplation on progressive policies potentially marginalizing certain groups.

4. Navigating Smartphone Usage with Teenagers

Transitioning to the core topic, Armstrong shares his experiences and strategies in managing his teenagers' smartphone usage:
"I'm trying to train them away from the idea that just because somebody texted you while we're eating dinner doesn't mean you need to look at it or respond or eating dinner." (07:21).

Getty echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face interactions:
"I say I'll wait till you're done. And it's a way of making it clear this is an interruption and I am not going to fight for attention." (08:28).

5. Impact on Family Conversations

The conversation delves into the challenges posed by constant connectivity, with Getty lamenting the erosion of meaningful dialogue:
"My son and his friends are together, but they're all looking at their phones, texting other people. These are all your best friends, so I don't know, I don't know how it works, but that's the way you do it." (09:08).

Katie adds a relatable anecdote:
"I would go to dinner with my parents and all of the rides. Thank you, Gladys. She had to just... All five of her things were. I played the harp when someone was reminiscing." (13:16).

6. Establishing Phone Etiquette and Rules

Armstrong discusses the establishment of clear rules regarding phone usage during family time:
"We got to put the phones, I'll put them in the center console and I'll close it until we drive home." (15:33).

He acknowledges that his rules are stricter than many parents', but underscores their effectiveness in fostering better communication:
"We saw something and ended up talking about it the rest of the way home, which would not have happened." (16:56).

7. Generational Perspectives on Technology

Getty reflects on the generational divide in technology usage:
"When I was a kid... I fell madly, madly in love with music. And I can still remember the songs that I loved at that age." (11:52).

This reminiscence contrasts sharply with today's youth, who are often engrossed in their devices, highlighting the shifting dynamics in interpersonal relationships.

8. Cultural Norms and the Future of Communication

The hosts express concern over the lack of universally agreed-upon cultural norms surrounding smartphone usage:
"I'm surprised we haven't come up with some more solid cultural guidelines around that." (18:06).

They debate whether the expectation of immediate responses is detrimental to genuine connections:
"Is the cultural norm including in the face of somebody you allegedly love or care about?" (18:47).

Katie emphasizes the emotional toll of perceived neglect:
"Back to me going, am I boring you? That's..." (19:08).

9. Concluding Thoughts: The Future of Parenting in a Digital Age

As the episode draws to a close, Armstrong and Getty ponder the sustainability of current trends:
"I think we're fighting a losing battle, unfortunately. I don't know how mankind survives this." (20:28).

They humorously conclude on a bleak note but underscore the urgency of addressing these challenges to preserve meaningful human connections.

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Final Reflections

"Am I Too Strict To Parent?" offers a candid exploration of modern parenting dilemmas, particularly the struggle to connect with teenagers amidst pervasive technology. Armstrong and Getty provide a thoughtful examination of how strict boundaries can foster deeper family bonds and encourage more meaningful interactions. Their dialogue serves as a mirror for many parents grappling with similar issues, offering both empathy and practical strategies for nurturing relationships in an increasingly digital world.

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Notable Quotes

• Armstrong (02:31): "Am I too strict to parent?"
• Getty (03:00): "Flag football is cool. It's got all of the strategy and skill level for the skill players of any other football. You just don't have the contact, the tackling, and so it's pretty cool."
• Armstrong (07:21): "I'm trying to train them away from the idea that just because somebody texted you while we're eating dinner doesn't mean you need to look at it or respond or eating dinner."
• Getty (08:28): "I say I'll wait till you're done. And it's a way of making it clear this is an interruption and I am not going to fight for attention."
• Getty (18:06): "I'm surprised we haven't come up with some more solid cultural guidelines around that."

---

Note: Timestamps correspond to the provided transcript segments and are denoted in MM:SS format.

Transcript

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[Unknown Male]

Am I too strict to parent? It's one more thing. Armstrong and Getty.

One more thing.

Before I get to that, I just noticed. So my son played flag football last year and really enjoyed it. And. And then I keep reading about how girls flag football is really growing across the country and it's becoming a pretty common high school sport to have girls flag football, which is awesome because football.

During the super bowl there was a commercial promoting it.

Yeah, well, flag football is cool. It's Got all of the, you know, the. The strategy and skill level for the skill players of. Of any other football. You just don't have the contact, the tackling, and so it's pretty cool.

[Katie]

Are they still calling it powder puff football?

[Unknown Male]

No, no, no.

That's something else that involves lingerie.

At least where I live. That would be highly unfortunate to pretend that the one sex is somehow or like, weaker than the other. But I noticed, unless I'm reading this wrong, this year, it's co ed or girls. There's no boys team, co ed or girls for flag football. Why eliminated the boys team? I don't know.

That's crazy. That strikes me as a very Portlandia thing to do.

I would agree. That does seem crazy. And obviously you're going to have a lot of boys who get less playing time, because I'm sure there are some rules. You have to have a certain number of girls on the field at all time.

This is the whole progressive we hate males thing. I have a feeling. I mean, there might be some underlying story, and if there is, great. But I mean, the whole. All right, now women are like the big majority of undergrads and grad school students and medical school school students and everything else, but we've still got to have up with girls programs and down with boys programs. Sickness.

Yeah. Anyway, I wasn't meaning to talk about that. Just came across it. Thought it was interesting. Co ed and girls only, but not boys.

Okay. In a sport that's traditionally been played by boys.

Right.

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So I'm dealing with this with my teenagers and smartphones. So only my high school or my freshman in high school has a smartphone. And so this has not become an issue yet with my seventh grader, although a little bit as he has a smartwatch. I'm trying to train them away from the idea that just because somebody texted you while we're eating dinner doesn't mean you need to look at it or respond or eating dinner. And I think that's perfectly reasonable. Although we all know that that is not enforced with your friends and work colleagues.

Right.

All. If you go out to eat with your friends, you can be in the middle of a conversation and serious conversation with a close friend, and if they get a text, they will look at it and quite possibly respond. And I have your conversation.

[Katie]

I always say something if I'm with somebody who does that.

[Unknown Male]

You do.

[Katie]

Oh, am I boring you?

[Unknown Male]

You do.

[Katie]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We're sitting there at the table and we're talking and then all of a sudden ping. And your attention immediately goes to that. I'm sorry. Hi. I'm still. I can go if that's important. Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

Oh, I love that. Katie, we need to hang out more. Yeah. I will say, certainly to relatives of mine, if that sort of thing happens, I say I'll wait till you're done. I just wait till they're done.

[Katie]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

Then we can talk. But it's a way of making it clear this is an interruption and I am not going to fight for attention.

Right. I'm surprised that we haven't come up with some more solid cultural guidelines around that that are more universally agreed upon, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case yet. And then, you know, the next generation, I feel like just from observing them are going to be okay with like, my son and his friends are together, but they're all looking at their phones, texting other people, I guess, I don't know. These are all your best friends, so I don't know, I don't even know how it works, but that's the way you do it. But particularly for me. And obviously I get to make my own rules, as for instance, in this case, it's my car, my car, my rules, you live in my house, etc. But we're driving home from the restaurant the other night, for instance, and, and we're not, we're just listening to music and we're driving, we just taken off, headed back, about a 30 minute drive and my son's texting and I said, I, I'd rather you didn't text in the car. And he said, why not? We're not doing anything. Well, I said, who are you texting? He said, I'm making plans to my friends. I said, well, I'd rather you didn't text while we're driving. And he said, well, why not? We were just sitting here. I said, I know we're just sitting here, but things can unfold if you're not paying attention to your phone. Like you could say, hey, look at that car, or what river is this? Or hey, a funny thing happened at school today or all kinds of different things could happen that won't happen if you're texting with your friends and like living in a different world. And he did the home run thing that teenagers do constantly, all day long about your various, you know, suggestions or whatever it is. But. Well, first of all, any comment on that before I get any further?

I would say that is a fairly conservative strict standard for kids. I do not disagree with it.

No, I.

Excellent point and well said.

I don't doubt that it's on the outside edge of being strict about it from other parents. I don't know, but that'd be my guess. But just I know that it's true. I just know that it's true that. So he's not listening to the song that Henry and I are listening to. So he's got no comment on it or it won't mean anything. I mean, I think about a lot of the music I know is because. Stuff my dad played, but so he won't have that experience because he's not listening to music that I play.

He.

He's busy texting his friends or obviously the. We've all had the experience of driving along. Sometimes there's a little quiet, a little low, then somebody says something, then you all engage in the conversation. But that can't happen if one or more of the participants is already having a conversation with different people, right?

Yeah. Agree 100%.

Are we just gonna. I guess that's the way we're all gonna live from here on out.

Two things. Number one, when I was probably four or five years old, Gladys just signed a new deal. Makes it clear she's got to be here for the podcast. Four or five years old, listening to music radio out of New York because we lived in New Jersey at the time. And I fell madly, madly in love with music. And I just. I can still remember the songs that I loved at that age, which is crazy because I can't remember anything else. Second thing. Teenager, 1970s, rolling along with the family. Stairway to Heaven. Dad turns it up a little bit, really enjoying it. Listening to the music with the family. Then it kicks into the rock part and Robert plants that, and then he thinks, what the hell? He turns it off. I said, dad, that's the same song. He says it changed into a different song. He was not having Bob Plant and screechings in our family car.

I. I don't know. I really. I think I'm. Well, Katie, you haven't commented. What's your comment, Katie?

[Katie]

Well, I'm.

[Unknown Male]

Hold nothing back.

[Katie]

Well, as you're saying all this, I'm thinking about all of the Friday nights. It was our thing. I would go to dinner with my parents and all of the rides. Thank you, Gladys.

[Unknown Male]

She had to just. She had to make a list of five things she did last week. And all five of her things were.

Right.

All five of her things were. I. I played the harp when someone was reminiscing. That's the only thing I do before.

[Katie]

And after I got yelled at. But I just. I was thinking about all those rides home after dinner and the. The jokes that we made that we still have little things, like my dad would make fun of my mom's laugh, or like I would get behind my dad while he was driving, and I'd flick the back of his ears if I had a cell phone.

[Unknown Male]

Oh, boy.

[Katie]

None of that And I still do it to him when he's driving. I'll, I'll give it.

[Unknown Male]

Oh, no.

[Katie]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[Unknown Male]

Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah. I will kill you.

[Katie]

I've heard that a few. I do that to him. But if I had a cell phone in my hands, none of that, none of the joke. I wouldn't have been hearing my. Any of that or playing around. It's just, I don't know, it's a sad time we're in.

[Unknown Male]

I think for what it's worth, for, for the good folks listening, trying to get a standard. Smartphones were strict verboten. All phones at the family dinner table still are with my wife and I. Occasionally it'll be like somebody needs to get a piece of information urgently because a bunch of people are waiting for it. And then it's like, do you mind if I have mine within sight in case, you know, Jim texts back, blah, blah, blah. But it's like it's a special case and it's, it's so, it's so clearly the endorphin thing. I mean, because. And again, certain close relatives, when asked, you know, while scanning the sky, I wonder if it's going to clear up later this afternoon immediately to the phone. And it's not because that information needs to be had. It's because the shiny screen and the information and the new thing, it's the endorphin thing. I know it is. I don't need to freaking know if the sun's gonna come out in the afternoon. What am I, some sort of alfalfa farmer? No, I'm just making conversation. Put your phone away.

[Katie]

I remember the time when we were at home having dinner and my mom would lose her mind if somebody called. She's like, it's dinner time. Who reaches out to people during dinner time?

[Unknown Male]

Well, I know now there's no limit. The idea of someone taking a phone call in the middle of dinner years ago would have been just crazy.

[Katie]

Yes.

[Unknown Male]

Unless you're waiting for cancer results or something, right? Well, yeah, I have the same rules at the dinner table. Those are pretty clear cut and have been from the beginning. But the driving places is a new one. And I said, I think I'm going to do like they did when we went to see David Copperfield in Las Vegas. You got to put the phones, I'll put them in the center console and I'll close it until we drive home. And yeah, I know that's way stricter than a lot of his friends, parents are doing, but it just, I don't want to lose all those other conversation opportunities. And to prove my point, which I didn't mention, which is rare for me to not mention when I turn out to be right. But to prove my point, after I made him put his phone away, we saw something and ended up talking about it the rest of the way home, which would not have happened. And I also am very aware that even though he's turning 15 in a couple of weeks, I get like three more years of this maybe, and then maybe never again in my life. Hardly. Depending on what he does with his life once he, you know, he turns 18. I left at 18. I've never really been back other than a day here and there.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. All for the little shots of endorphins.

Yeah. I, I, I, I don't know. And I don't know how to do it either. All or none for the most part, but I feel like if I, if I allow it, it's just gonna be when we ride in the car, it's him looking at his phone and me listening to what I'm gonna listen to on the radio, I guess.

[Katie]

What is that? I vote you don't allow it.

[Unknown Male]

Yeah.

I don't want to spend my. All my car rides with my dad and having conversations. And sometimes, you know, you don't bring up things until you've sat there in.

Silence for a while as you work up the courage to talk about them, for instance. Yeah. And just to prove that I'm not here to lecture anybody. I just, I think about these things. I have a couple of friends, one in particular who's a good friend, who is absolutely not tied to his phone. Texting him is a 1 in 3 proposition that you'll get a response in the next 12 hours. Maybe if I really need a response, I text his wife.

I know people like that. Yeah.

And I certainly, absolutely admire it. And it annoys me.

Yeah.

[Katie]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

So it's on both ends of the equation. I mean, not getting. And I don't need an immediate response to virtually anything. If I did, I would call minutes. But. Yeah, exactly. The whole, you know, I texted him and asked him if he can go, and I haven't heard anything back. It's an hour later. So it works both ways.

It's.

Yeah. The expectation of immediate response. I guarantee this is going on with your son. 100% sure he is concerned, whether he voiced this or not, that he would not be a friend of his friends anymore if he didn't engage in immediate response to their questions or statements or whatever. That's part of being in the group.

Yeah, I know. I don't. Yeah, I don't know. Like I said, I'm surprised we don't have more defined cultural norms around this yet. It seems like the defined cultural norm is going to be pick up your phone whenever you want, anywhere, all the time.

Is the cultural norm including in the face of somebody you allegedly love or care about.

Right.

[Katie]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

And just, hey, this is more interesting. Maybe that's the new cultural norm. You've got to say out loud something more interesting than you just happened, and you start touching your phone. I mean, because that's the unspoken truth.

[Katie]

Yeah. Back to me going, am I boring you? That's.

[Unknown Male]

Or urgent. Something more urgent than you has come up. But then it's certainly incumbent upon you to say, what is it? Yeah. Because if you don't have a good answer, we're not friends anymore.

The problem is, it's not the unspoken truth, because I know from my end, if I get. If my phone buzzes or I think I got a text, I could be talking to my son, which is really only like, two people on Earth would be more important. As important to talk to. I still am dying to check my phone. There's some. So I know intellectually it's not somebody more important or something more important, it's something weird with the device that makes us want to check.

[Katie]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

I'm not a monster. All right, we'll have three choices. Something more important than you just happened or something more urgent than this conversation just happened, or I'm a shameless, pathetic endorphin addict and I need to look at this. Bear with me.

The people.

[Katie]

The people I'm really close with are the ones that get the. Am I boring you? But if it's somebody that I'm not on that level with, I always go, is everything okay? Because then it's kind of like it.

[Unknown Male]

Obviously.

[Katie]

Obviously. Something just came up.

[Unknown Male]

That's a good one. Oh, must be the cancer results.

So you.

Subtle.

[Katie]

Yeah.

[Unknown Male]

So subtle. Katie. Genius.

I think we're fighting a losing battle, unfortunately. I don't know how mankind survives this.

We won't now. We're doomed. No sex, no babies. Planet of the Beavers.

That's how we end the podcast. The fact that we're doomed.

E, O, B. You know, when I was a kid.

[Katie]

I would be in the backseat doing.

[Unknown Male]

Backseat driving, yelling at my dad about.

[Katie]

His speed, his fuel gauge, why the car is flipping. The car next to us is flipping us off. I'm gonna miss, you know, people that's going away.

[Unknown Male]

You enjoyed the walk. That's going away.

[Katie]

Well, I guess that's it.

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