Transcript
Narrator (0:00)
Foreign.
Mandy Hammond (0:10)
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 Mandy Hammond and I'm your host for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining us. You are in for a treat today. I, I think I always say that, but I just love our guests that come on here. But I want you to know that your kids are at as well. Okay. So in fact, what I dare say that this episode is one for the kids. Okay, so what is going to be fun is at the end of this podcast, there's going to be a little present for your children to listen to. Okay? So just kind of know that that's coming at the end and this first part is going to be for the parents just to kind of encourage you and talk about our topic today. So we are going to talk today about creating versus consuming. And our guest today, you're just going to love him. It's, it's going to be super inspiring to you. So you know, we're either creating or we're consuming. And according to this Magic Kids who we're going to talk to today, this choice shapes who we become. Okay. Whether we're creating or we're consuming and more. In the screen saturated culture, our kids are being trained to consume and to scroll and to compare. And if you've been around at all, you hear us asking Screenstrong all the time, you know we've got to protect childhood. And if childhood is spent consuming and scrolling and comparing, what kind of adults is this going to create? What kind of end game are we wanting here for our children? So we are excited to talk today about how to raise kids who can express and imagine and build rather than scroll and compare. So let's dive right in. I'm so excited to introduce all of you Screenstrong families to our guest today, Bradley T. Morse. Bradley is a father, storyteller and serial entrepreneur. He's the founder and CEO of Magic Kids, which is an audio, entertainment and education company on a mission to end the screen zombie epidemic. His company, Magic Kids produces Pixar level movies for the ears, cinematic audio stories, music and imagination meditations. Each experience includes hands on creative learning activities that spark imagination and no screens are required. So welcome Bradley, to the show.
Bradley T. Morris (2:23)
Thank you for having me here. I'm excited.
Mandy Hammond (2:27)
Awesome. Well, let's start off by just having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Bradley T. Morris (2:31)
Sure. I am a papa bear of Soren who is nine and a half and I have been making Magic on the Internet for about 22 years. First video I ever put on the Internet went viral. That led to speaking tours and kind of launched my career long, long time ago. And yeah, I man where to start. So I have been, I've done everything from produce world class audio meditation libraries that have reached millions and millions of people, to helping build online creative platforms, schools, and transformational educational entertainment based media. My career has been kind of in a whole bunch of different directions. And when my kiddo was three and a half was going to preschool, everything was great. And then one day he decided that he just didn't want to go anymore. And over the course of weeks and weeks of him resisting and putting up a fight, more and more it got to a point where he refused to leave the welcome mat. And so finally we got on our knees, we got eye to eye with them and we listened. And we asked him why he did not want to be going to preschool. Because before he was really enjoying it. And he said he'd made a decision. And his decision was, you're my people, I want to be home with you, and I can't focus on my projects. We said, well, it sounds like you have some very important projects to do and we will pull you from preschool and we're going to keep you home and we're going to pivot our plan. Because my wife was just starting to get back into work. I've had a media company for years and I have my own studio here on the property. And so, you know, we could bend with what was happening naturally. And after several years, Soren and I were making up a lot of stories. You know, when he was born, I looked at him and I was like, my little adventure buddy's here. This is the coolest thing ever. And so he and I were making up bedtime stories every night. And some of them were pretty awesome. And sometimes he would tell me, get me to retell the same stories again and again and again. So I got to refine them. Eventually I recorded them. I would take the recordings and transcribe them and then I would edit them. And after half a dozen stories, I was like, these are pretty good. And that was when we decided to have a new baby business called Magic Kids. But before that, let me just back up a little bit, because when Soren was three and a half, around the same time as him realizing he didn't want to do preschool anymore, he we had a hard move. We had to move our studio in our home. And it was like two months of total chaos. Anybody that's ever moved, just knows it's, it's, especially with kids, it's chaos. And so that was hidden his introduction to paw patrol and TV shows and all the things. That was his first time ever getting screen time. And in the two months of chaos, we noticed our sweet little kiddo, who was always quite regulated, rarely cried, was always quite happy, turned into what we playfully dub as a screen zombie. Like, his nervous system regulation was totally off. His tantrums were heightened, like multiple times a day. All he wanted to do and all he kept asking us to do was watch shows. And so after we got settled into the new home, we just, we stopped shows altogether. We're like, this is totally not working. It's not worth it. We're watching like the joy, sparkle inside of our little kiddo just totally disappear. And so this was before I got into the science of it all. And so we took it away and we started experimenting with audio stories. And when we started putting on the audio stories, we wouldn't just press play on an audio story and leave them to be. My wife, Celeste, would put out activities every day when it was audio story time. And so she would put out whether it was play doh or blocks or color supplies, painting supplies, whatever. There was always a creative thing for him to do. And he was like, hey, it's audio story time. And she would press play and he would listen to the stories, his imagination would expand, he'd be actively creating. And then I would ask him about the stories he was listening to after he was done. And he would retain the characters, the storyline, what happened. You know, we would talk about some of the lessons in them. And that was when the light bulb went off for us of like, his nervous system calmed down pretty darn quick. You know, he went through some withdrawals, as when they come off of a drug. For the first week or so, he was asking for shows every day. And we just told him that it's not going to happen anymore. And then, you know, everything has been pretty amazing. So he's nine and a half now. He gets one show or movie time per week. Friday nights, that's your movie night. You can have a show, you can have a movie every other week. We might watch something together. Right now we're watching Avatar Last Airbender as a family. Every couple weeks we'll watch a few episodes, but that's it. And so we're not anti tech. And this is, this has become our parenting philosophy. And the philosophy behind what we built at Magic Kids, our media company, is that we are either creating or consuming when it comes to technology. And most of the consumer products and consumer facing shows out there are training children to become passive consumers that don't necessarily own their own creative capacity. And my son and I had this conversation the other day of like, why do you think they call TV shows shows? And he thought about it for a minute and he's like, the light bulb went off. He's like, because it's showing you what to think and what to imagine. I'm like, bingo, buddy. Why do they call the news feed on social media the feed? Because it is feeding you what to think, it's feeding you what to see, it's feeding you what to believe. And an empowered creator is someone who has the, the skills to critically think, to receive information, and to be able to discern what is true, what is not true. How does this feel inside of my own system and what do I want to do about it? And so, yeah, that's, it's been our parenting journey and it's really shaped how we have focused the, the creative parts of what we're building at Magic Kids. So, yeah, hopefully that's a good answer for you.
