← ScreenStrong Families
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the ScreenStrong Families Podcast, bringing you the best solutions for parents who are serious about eliminating screen conflicts in their homes. This is Melanie Hempe, and I'm so glad you're joining us today. If you're one of our regular listeners, welcome back. And if you're a new friend, we are so glad you found us. You are no longer alone on this journey of navigating screens in your home, especially during the Christmas season. I'm just here with you today to give you some tips based off all the years of experience I've had having four kids in the house through all the wonderful holiday seasons that we have had and just all the Christmas mornings and the Christmas days. And I will tell you today, I'm going to just share some things about what we did that worked and what made maybe we did that didn't work. And maybe, you know, screens have found a way to creep into your holidays too. Or maybe you've seen the meltdowns after too much gaming at grandma's. Or, or maybe you've just been trying to keep things simple and connected this year. That's sort of the theme my of my year. This year we are just having a more simple Christmas. I'm not putting every single decoration I own out this year, but we still have our tree and we still have a lot of fun things going on. So let's just jump in. I just wanted to share some practical tips that can help you protect the peace in your home and just slow everything down so you can enjoy Christmas this year and your kids can enjoy Christmas and it will actually be one that they'll remember, you know, not the one where they disappear into all their devices in their separate rooms and where no one talks to each other and, you know, we lose track of what this season is, is really all about. We need to talk about being more connected and rested and regulated and just happy, I guess. So let's just jump in. Okay, so tip 1. Give presents, not screens. And when I say presents, I mean time with, with each other. So Christmas morning is really magical, right until the dopamine hits. So this happens on a new device, whether, whether it's a phone or a gaming console, even just a game. You know, I remember with my oldest son, Adam, that he would always put video games on his Christmas list. And, you know, it was a sign of kind of what was most important to him, but it would always hijack the holiday. In fact, I can remember with, with him when he was in high school, I remember going down into the basement just to find Adam during Christmas morning because he would get up and go down there and play his video games. And one year I took a string of Christmas lights and I draped it all over his computer. I will never forget this. I'm like, Adam, we are having Christmas upstairs. And he would not come. And he was in high school, so it was a little, he was a little bit older. You know, it's harder to get them to comply when they're older. So I decided I would just take the Christmas lights down to him. So that was really sad. That was back when I didn't really understand what was happening with all the gaming. But anyway, that that screen certainly would hijack our holiday. But when you give your child a screen on Christmas morning, their focus immediately shifts from the family to the device. And that's before the arguments over screen time limits even get started. So I always tell parents this tip. Do not ever give a gift that removes your child from your celebration. And don't give a device at Christmas ever. Devices are not gifts. They are addictive things that likely will need to be taken away. So it's really not smart to give a gift that you know that you're going to have to take away. So and the other thing with your gifts is to give what you value, of course. And we have a fabulous gift guide on our, our site that you can get to that. I'll put in the show notes here. Again, if you're struggling with non tech gifts, we have that. So you definitely want to think about things and gifts that pull your kids into your family, not away from it. So you want to think of things like adventure gifts and experience gifts or even board games and puzzles, crafts, musical instruments, sports gear. All these things that pull your, your kids away from their screens. Of course, books. And I know that books are the first thing to go when your child gets dependent on screens, but Christmas is a great time to give things that you value. We love giving our kids gifts to sporting events, NFL football game or even baseball tickets, or even just going out to a family movie together. Just anything that will get the family out together. These are the gifts that truly build your family culture and they, they spark interest. Again, our gift guide has some wonderful ideas in there. But you want to spark their interest and their creativity and their responsibility and joy and not create the power struggle. So give presence, you know your time with them. When I say presence, that's what I mean instead of gifts. And don't give them a gift that hijacks their brain chemistry. Just Only things that help them connect with you or really connect with them themselves. That's the whole point of Christmas morning. But I promise, the minute they rip open that screen, you're going to lose your child on Christmas morning. So hit the pause button on that idea. In fact, if you have already bought that phone or bought that video game, guess what? You can take it back. Phones, I know you typically have at least 30 days to take it back and just kind of rethink that for another time. So tip number two, plan tech free traditions before the Christmas day hits. Okay, so, and that's why I want to do this podcast right now. You still have a couple weeks here to think about what you can, can do as far as your traditions. And one of the best ways to avoid the screen stress and you know, over Christmas is to plan ahead for the types of connections that you want to form. So this means structure and this means scheduling because screens creep in and steal time. So we have to protect it. Right? I know a lot of people think, and I have talked with plenty of parents who think that they don't want to put too much structure in their holiday because they want everybody just to have fun. But I'm telling you, based off years and years of experience, that you have to have a little structure. You have to structure the things that your kids are going to be doing and you know, just sort of a gentle prodding, I guess. It doesn't have to be like an army sergeant, but you do need to have, in the back of your mind, as the parent, you need to be, remember, the coach of your team. And this means you have thought ahead and you have planned accordingly. Kids do not know how to do this very easy and they do much better when they know what to expect. So when you create simple, predictable, tech free traditions, you take away the temptation to always jump to their screen to fill that time and, and your conflict goes down. In fact, it kind of gets removed altogether before the whole thing even starts. So you want to think about things like even decorating the house. There's still time to do that. And it's a really good thing to have your kids involved with decorating the house. It may not be perfect the way that, that you would do it, but you need to give them the autonomy around that and some little jobs around that. So that's one tradition. And you know, in our house we, we always get a live tree. We go every day, the, the day after, I mean, we go every year the day after Thanksgiving. And that's just a big tradition. For us. And there's certain family members that do certain things. There's certain, you know, one of our kids does all the wreaths outside and the other one will help with the tree. And we just have a different decorations out in the yard that we do that the kids help with. And that's all just a tradition. So that's a, that's one tradition that's really easy and it actually takes some work off of you. The other tradition that we have that works really well every year, and this has been growing since they were. Since the kids were probably in middle school or even a little bit earlier than that, where they all are in charge of a couple dishes and things to make over Christmas. Whether it's making candy or caramel or toffee or certain pies, or even some of the main dishes during the Christmas dinner. This idea of baking together and sort of turning over the reins to your kids on this. I talked to one family, in fact, I need to do this this year. I totally need to do this. But she taught her boys how to make cinnamon rolls. And they are just unbelievable. They're huge, big, wonderful cinnamon rolls. And so she said when she had taken their video games away, this was one thing she taught them to do. So now over the holidays, you know, they start baking and they give them to neighbors and you know, they give them as presents and again, they don't have to just bake on Christmas day. You can start this tradition from the minute they get outta school. You can, you know, for the holidays you can have them start their baking. Another thing that you can do that's really simple is, is to teach your kids how to bake bread. And I know that sounds like it can be confusing, but this past year we actually discovered this fabulous, wonderful easy bread recipe that is just beautiful. And they love making that. So that's been kind of fun. But whenever you can get your kids, you know, around helping you in the kitchen, that's wonderful. Other things you can do for your family traditions. As I think back through our years, of course we do love to watch Christmas movies, you know, all the popular ones. So we have different nights that we traditionally have certain dinner that we make with a certain movie. We enjoy all that together as a family. And even as the kids get older, it is still really fun. We all get together on certain days to watch certain movies. That kind of marks the beginning of the Christmas season or the mid midway through or even, you know, the day before Christmas. We also have, you've heard me talk about our Christmas Party that the boys started doing when they were in high school or actually, yeah, I think it was. They were like in ninth grade and they started the movie, the Christmas vacation movie. They started doing the Christmas vacation Christmas party. And it's so funny. Everybody gets dressed up and we make all the food that kind of goes with the movie. And that has just become a really fun tradition in our home. They see their friends every year at the same time. Everybody grows to expect it. They have even certain coaches that come and it's really fun. And this year, of course, we're planning it again. And that's just a really fun tradition. That is a non tech tradition that everybody has, you know, has grown to love. In fact, it's, you know, the gift that keeps on giving with that party. And every year I just kind of add different things to it to help out. Another tradition is to drive to look at lights. And again, these things we think are so simple and, but they have to be planned because before you know it, time's up and you know, you don't have time to do this. So we already have our particular evening that we're going to go to a, a little town close to us that is known for its Christmas lights and it's about a 30 minute drive and we already have that on the calendar. So everybody knows ahead of time that that's the night we're doing that and we'll probably go out to dinner ahead of time. Other traditions that we have for sure are board games. A lot of families do board game tournaments. I know one family that has a ping pong tournament in the garage every year with all the family that comes in. Over Christmas you can have a gingerbread house competition. When my kids were little, we made the gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. I, that was sort of a hack, you know, because I wasn't really good at baking all the stuff for the graham cracker house, I mean for the gingerbread house. So if you google it, you can find graham cracker gingerbread houses. It only takes a minute to get all the supplies together and you don't have to bake anything. And that, that was a big hit. The Christmas puzzle on our dining room table or in, on the card table actually in the den is a huge hit. Everyone expects us to pull that puzzle out. We, we usually have puzzles out all during the year, but at Christmas I have certain puzzles that we do in the den. And so these are just a couple of the traditions that we do. But my main point here and my main tip is that these things have to be thought through ahead of time. So when you're a mom of little kids, what this means is you have certain things in the back of your head when the cousins come over or when friends come over, or when you know that you need to, you know, be busy in the kitchen or, you know, wrap presents or do something where you need to have some time. You've got to plan things for your kids to do. So it's just a matter of thinking ahead, planning ahead, and that provides the structure that they need. I promise you, this is such a big lifesaver when it comes to trying to reduce the stress in, during your, your Christmas with everybody home. Okay, so let's talk about the third tip. Okay. The third tip is protecting sleep. And I know this sounds kind of weird. Why are we talking about sleep? We're, we're talking about Christmas right now. But this is a huge tip that I learned kind of the hard way when my kids were younger that what tends to happen during the holidays is the bedtime starts to go crazy, right? It just goes off the edge here. And if we're not careful, our kids are not going to bed till 11 or 12 o'. Clock. You know, you start doing something, even if you're playing a game or watching a movie and something happens, and all of a sudden the little ones and even your teenagers are staying up way too late. So your job here as the, the, the Christmas screen coach here, I guess, of your house during the holiday seasons is to protect sleep. So easy to forget how overstimulated kids are, first of all, during the holidays in general. And then, of course, if you start adding screens in, they're going to actually end up with way more screen time because it's just hard to manage everything because all of our normal natural flow and schedules are, you know, just out the door when they're out of school. So there's also sugar that gets mixed into this. A lot of desserts, a lot of candy, a lot of cookies, all that kind of stuff. And like I said, with the late nights with movies, maybe you have company, you have your cousins all in, or maybe you're traveling, there's just a lot of excitement. And then you layer screen time on top of that, and it's just the perfect storm. But you have to remember that sleep is a foundation for the good days ahead. It's going to be very hard to have a peaceful Christmas when you have really cranky kids. So when they are rested, they are regulated, they are much calmer, they're more flexible, which is the big word over here in our house, we talk about being flexible a lot. They're more helpful. They're more compliant with helping you in the kitchen or helping you clean or helping you pick up things. And actually they're just more pleasant to be around. So let's talk about creating peaceful evening rhythms with the kids, even though it is the holidays. And one good thing is that it does get dark a lot earlier. So for your younger kids, it gets, you know, it's not like they're having to go to bed when it's still light outside. But speaking of light, what you want to do in your home, and this is a perfect time to do this, is to dim the lights when. When evening hits. You want to keep the lights in your home on low. You want to, of course, dim them if you can. We have little white lights in our kitchen, in our eating area that actually I leave up all year round because it adds such a great sort of mood to the evening. You want to turn on some soft music. In fact, we always have soft instrumental sort of music playing in the background, especially during the holidays. Evan, actually, one of my sons actually did a Spotify album and it is fabulous. It's Christmas music and it's all piano music and it's very easy listening and we keep that on in the background even if we're doing other things. That music really helps fill the air, if you will, or fill the space. So it doesn't always feel like you have to just grab a screen to fill that downtime. When you have the soft lights at night, you have the soft music and just sort of set the mood to start that bedtime routine. Reading certain books for your younger kids and just trying to wind down even with your older kids, to get them to go to bed a little bit early. Not so crazy just because it's the holidays. You definitely, of course, want to keep your devices out of the bedrooms and really try to wind down to. For your older kids to maybe some game time, get those TVs off. And of course, reading is the best way to unwind, and it's really healthy to do that. So a lot of holiday meltdowns disappear when kids are well rested. So tip number four, okay, you already know what I'm going to say, because I haven't said it yet, is to keep phones and the gaming consoles out of your space and your gathering and your den and all the spaces where people are. You definitely want to keep them out of the kitchen. You want to keep them out at the areas where you are visiting with your family. And really they just need to be kept out of Christmas. There's really no reason for kids to be disappearing on a screen, especially during the holiday week in, in Christmas when there's so many more things to do. You think, you know what happens though? You think, oh, my kids are finding something to do. They're being so quiet and they're getting along so well and three hours later everyone is cranky and irritable and checked out and arguing and then because they have been on Roblox or Minecraft or social media, YouTube or all afternoo. And it's really easy. As a parent who's home busy trying to get all the things I just this week I'm so reminded of the layers of extra work that come with getting ready for Christmas. So it's really easy to just kind of blank out and not realize what your kids are doing. It's really, really important to make sure they're not hiding away. You know, they're out of school, they're trying to figure out what to do. You really got to structure this. And this goes back to my previous tip about structuring. And maybe you want to just say to everyone, you know, we're going to have a screen free Christmas. I mean, yeah, you can watch some family movies together, but Christmas movies. But let's not have, let's just take a break from Roblox and Minecraft and all the social media and YouTube all afternoon. Let's just take a break. And then when you have extended family over, it can just be the natural thing to say, you know, we're taking a break. This is part of the gift that we're giving ourselves is the gift of no extra phone time and no game time online, you know, just in isolation, that we're having a low tech Christmas this year. And you'd be amazed at how receptive most people are when you lead with that very confidently. Even when your extended family comes in, you can do it in a way where you know, you're not sounding better than them. You can do it in a way where you're not sounding judgmental. You can just say, you know, we've realized we've just really have struggled some with all the screens in our home. So we're just taking a break and we're just going to have a more of a peaceful Christmas this year. I know it is hard with the cousins. I know we get this question all the time. And again, you can go to your sister in law, brother in law and say, look, you know, maybe you can help us this year. We're really trying to pull our kids away from too much screen time. We have just failed in the past with balancing that. So if you could help us out. And instead of your kids, you know, and maybe they're your nieces and nephews, you know, instead of them bringing all their phone into the room when we are trying to visit, we've got board games and we want to teach kids. And what this does, we mean is that you're gonna have to remember, have a plan, have. Have some structure, have some appropriate age games. Just off the top of my head here, as I think about this, we love headbands, we love telestrations. We. Oh, my gosh, there's so many fun games that we have gotten into. Scattergories is one of them. Code names is another. And depending on how young your. Your family and the cousins and your kids are, just. This is part of what I'm talking about, planning ahead. Get the appropriate games. And don't just have them put them out on the table. Put them out right in the middle of the den. Like I said, put that puzzle out. It's amazing how this works. Maybe you have a basket in the foyer for everybody to keep their phones. You know, their phones need to go on vacation right now, and we're going to put them in a basket. But you've got to have these alternative things out. So, you know, having outdoor activities is huge when you have more than a few kids in your family come. And so you want to have outdoor stuff like a street hockey kind of thing or football, Frisbee, all these things that you can just tell them, hey, we've got a new football or we have new, you know, basketball. Why don't y' all go outside? Constantly be reminding them. Or maybe you even have this kind of planned into your schedule of your day, where you have certain times when you're just outside and it's just kind of becomes a thing that you make. Make clear when everybody gets there and you can do it in a fun way. You can also have crafts set out. We love doing crafts. There are so many things to choose from. And I know, especially when my kids were little, I always kept paper and markers on the kitchen table and they would just. They would just find their way over there and start coloring. That was a big thing. It's also a big thing to do when you are cooking and you need your kids to do something and they're maybe too young to help you cook. Or maybe what you're, you're baking or cooking, they can't help with. Just put some coloring sheets out and let them do that. If they're, if they're too old to color, then they're old enough to cook in the kitchen. And you can also teach the cousins. So cookie decorating is a big thing. And again, plan ahead. What I always do is make the cookies ahead of time and put them in the freezer. So all we have to do is pull out all the icing and the decorations. And now within just a few minutes, you can have everyone at the table decorating cookies instead of trying to go find a corner to play another round of Minecraft or Fortnite. Charades is a super easy, easy on the spot, quick thing to think of when you're at a loss in the moment to try to think of what to do. Charades is a wonderful game for kids. And then, of course, get out a sled if you're where there's a lot of snow. Another thing is, is just music and dancing again. And so if you have, you know, whatever the ages of the kids are, put on appropriate music. There are so many memories that my brother and I have of the certain music that our parents would play during Christmas. Oh, my goodness, there's these memories just come back because some of the songs like the Chipmunks and whatever were so silly and so fun. And we just remember that card games, you know, that what a wonderful invention because it takes nothing. You can have guard, you can have card decks out on the table even very quickly just to start up a card game or teach some of your family a new card game. And then there's always, always, always Legos in our home. Because we've just three boys, we have a lot of Legos. It is amazing what happens when you just dump a pile of Legos out in the middle of the floor. Those screens will go away. You make them go away so everyone can build something funny out of Legos for Christmas. I remember one year we actually got a bunch of pine cones and pipe cleaners and eyeballs and different fun things in a hot glue gun. So our kids must have been a little bit older. And we had everyone build some sort of Christmas creature. It was so funny. I still have these little pine cones. We didn't get the huge pine cones. We got kind of the medium ones that you get at the craft store. And we have the funniest things that, that our, our, my brother and, and his wife made. It's just really funny what what you can do when you, when you get everybody's creativity going. So when kids are engaged in real world play, you avoid this digital crash. You're trying to avoid it and everyone gets along so much better. And these are the memories that your kids are going to have. No one is going to remember having fond memories around playing Fortnite in their bedroom for hours when all their family was in town. That is not what is going to trigger a fun memory down the road. Trust me, I know this. My kids are growing older now and they talk about Christmas from the past and it is fascinating what they remember. It is always the family stuff. Okay, the last tip. Tip number five. This is a big one. To continue to choose connection over perfection. And this is really hard for some of us. Not, not so much for me, but I have a lot, a lot of friends. They really struggle with this. I am really not a perfectionist when it comes to my house. If anyone has ever been to my house, you would, you would see that right away. But some people are very gifted with their home and decorating it and making it look so wonderful all the time. Just like a magazine editor. A magazine editor could come in and just start taking pictures and it would be a beautiful spread. But what I have to tell you is that you want to choose connection over making everything perfect. Perfect. And this, this goes, this goes into not just the way that you're decorating your house, but your meals and even your gifts. And everything does not have to be perfect. And I think this is one of the most important tips. Your kids don't need a Pinterest perfect Christmas. They need you. They need you to be relaxed, present. They need you to be emotionally available. And they don't need to see that you're stressing over making everything perfect. So one of the greatest gifts that you personally can give your child as a parent is the gift of not constantly making things perfect and not constantly looking at your phone to check to see how you can make everything perfect. You have to put your own device away. And it's not that hard. I've done it and I know that there can be a struggle, but I've done it. I know what happens. And I know so many of you know the, the benefit of putting your phone away. And I mean it. I mean, sometime maybe you're going to have to keep your phone in the car. I used to have to do that because it's just, I would get too distracted. I would have certain times during the day where I would have shut my laptop and Put it away. So I would ask you to think about just what, what you can do this Christmas, this holiday season to give yourself a break. And maybe you can't take your phone away from yourself for the whole day, but please try a couple hours, you know, in the morning, a couple hours in the afternoon where the phone is out of sight and you turn to your kids to play a game with them, get on the floor and play Monopoly with them. Well, I know that does take a little bit of time, so you might want to sit at the table for that. But figure out things that you can do to slow down. And I know our devices make us do things way too fast. I know even when I get on my email or I start scrolling different things, all of a sudden I, I'm busy and I think of all these things I have to do when if I had just not looked at my phone, I would have been able to be a little bit more in the moment. So slow down, put your devices away, sit with them, read with them, listen to them, ask them questions, laugh a lot. We have a lot of humor in our home and I was thinking about it this morning early, how the humor in our home has really carried us through a lot of just, just a lot of things that, you know, any family goes through just a lot of stress. Humor has a way of relaxing everyone. So try to spend some time thinking about your humor and, and are you using that in the best way. So remember that this Christmas, you know, these are the moments, these family, the, the, these family moments, the moments of more intense family time, if you will, are the moments that shape your kids childhood. Even through their college years, even as they start to get over, these are the moments that they remember in these traditions. And how you structure this will become the backbone of their, really, their emotional health is they go through life. And all y' all know this, everyone knows that, that raising kids is tough. You know, problems can get bigger when your kids get older. Things don't really necessarily get easier, they just get different. And you will find that when you have a child who can lean on the family attachment and the family traditions and all the things that make them connected to their family, those are the things that really protect their mental health. So think of it this way with Christmas that you are being proactive, you are helping your child's present and future mental health and just your connections as a family. I can't stress it enough how they won't remember anything if you were on your phone. They won't remember much if all they can think of is that everyone was on their screens during Christmas. So that's all I have for today. I just wanted to make this kind of a short reminder with my five tips as we head into Christmas. Just five simple shifts maybe that can help you create a calm connected screen strong Christmas. Remember there to give presents that that's time with you not not screens. Number two is to plan tech free traditions to plan this ahead of time. Number three or that was number two. Number three is to protect sleep. Everyone sleep, even your sleep. You're going to be much nicer if you can get some good sleep in. Number four is to keep devices out of all the gatherings. And number five is to choose connection by putting your own phone down and and not being also not keeping everything perfect in your holiday so you don't have to do anything perfect. You just need to lead with confidence in your kids will feel the difference and so will you. So I just want to encourage you, wherever you are right now in your Christmas prep, I just want to encourage you. Take a deep breath, slow down. I promise if you take the screens out of the way for a while, you will immediately start feeling better. You will be able to enjoy your kids more and everything will just be calmer and ultimately you'll have more fun. So thank you so much for joining me today on the Screenstrong families podcast. I hope these tips have been encouraging for you to slow down and unplug and make this Christmas one that your kids will actually remember because you were fully present and they were too. So I hope you found this helpful if you have share this with another parent who could use a little screen strong encouragement this season. Remember, you're not alone. We're here to support you every step of the way. Remember, we've got your back and we are here to help you have everything you need to have a wonderful Christmas this year and remove all those toxic screens from your home. So until next time, stand up for your kids, stand out from the crowd, stay strong and Merry Christmas.