Episode 56: Helping your kid sow seeds for success: Are you too late?

The digital world can be a great place to connect but also can cause us to disconnect. Listen in on this episode for tips to to reconnect with your kids.

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 FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Today's digital world can make us feel so interconnected, but also disconnected at the same time. So today we are going to talk about some strategies and some ways for you to move forward from that and avoid disconnecting from your kiddos and your kids disconnecting from their life and their future that they have ahead of them. Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:23):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson, he friends

Speaker 1 (00:50):

Was, did you hear there is an app that will transform the safety of your kids, smartphone and technology use it is my favorite way to sleep easy at night and have peace of mind because it is monitoring my kids' activity online without me being in their business. It is the bark app and yes, bark like a dog bark bark bark. It tells you when there's something that you need to be concerned about starting at a small fee each month, you can protect your whole family across all devices. Get connected with bark today. Use code, be that mom for 20% off your subscription for life and get a seven day free trial to check it out. So before we get started with today's topic, I just want to say that my episode from a week, two weeks ago, I believe about the mom that lost her kid to the experimentation of taking a pill and unknowingly taking something that had too much fentanyl in it.

Speaker 1 (01:41):

And it killed her son. I've gotten a ton of feedback from that. And I just want to encourage you if you haven't listened to that, to go listen to that, it is so very utterly important that we're all so very aware that this is a very real risk for any one of our kids thinking they're innocently going to try this pill because someone else says it's, you know, a thing to do. And that one time is too much and takes their life. So if you haven't listened to that episode, definitely go back and listen to it. I believe it's from two weeks ago and, you know, share it with your friends and, you know, use the tips that I have in there to help discuss things with your kids, but also take the precautions that I mentioned and definitely be proactive in that because it's a very real threat for every single one of our kids.

Speaker 1 (02:29):

Okay. All right. So recently I was on social media on Facebook and I saw a post from a dad where it was almost like a plea where he said I messed up. I didn't know. And I gave my kid this gaming console and I've lost him. I've lost my kid to these digital things that I allowed him to have. He's lost all interest in everything he ever wanted to do before gave him the digital things. And he just has no interest of doing anything, but playing those games, I feel like I've totally messed up and I've lost my kid. Where do I go from here? I can so relate to that, that plea, that feeling that he was having, that he was expressing because I was there once too and sitting on the other side of everything that we have faced and we have walked through.

Speaker 1 (03:23):

I can tell you that there is always hope. There is always a place where you can readjust and course correct and get yourself moving in a different direction. If your kid is younger and you're listening to this, then those are the most critical years of, I think the middle school years are like the hardest years and the most critical years to really try to be proactive and navigating this and, you know, to take a very positive stance with all of it. But even if your kid is in the teenage years, it's not too late, it's just time to reassess and readjust. And yes, some of it may be painful and difficult, but at the same time, nothing is too hard when it comes to the future of our children. And I very much think that the influence of all the digital things is absolutely the most impactful thing that our kids have to deal with in their childhood these days.

Speaker 1 (04:23):

So it's always going to be worth it. So today I want to give you some tips. I want to give you some tools you can use and give you a game plan. So you can move forward from this. So whether you are regrouping from feeling disconnected and, you know, kind of seeing that this is happening with your family, or you are just trying to be proactive from the get-go and you haven't yet given your kids these things. I think these things can help. I believe that kids are very, very resilient and while we want to shape and mold them, you know, and shield them and all of that from the get go, if we have made missteps and need to regroup, reassess course, correct. We need to forgive ourselves a little bit and I'm talking to myself because I've had a lot of mom guilt around it, but I'll expand on that here in a minute and explain why it's not necessarily completely horrible thing when these things happen.

Speaker 1 (05:18):

And we have to course correct, mainly because it's, it's a learning, it's a learning point. I'm like stumbling on my words, but it's a place for you to have, like your struggle on something is always a place for you to build strength. So if you can view it from that place, then it's a place for you to figure out how can we use this to make us grow and make us stronger. So, you know, bringing this to actual real life tips, if you have given your kid a phone, a gaming console, whatever it is, and you have not set down boundaries, or you're just noticing that it's taking them away from their normal childhood interests. And they're doing that more and more. I just want to start by saying that they are resilient and they adapt quickly. And so it's just our role. Number one, as a parent, to be the parent, and to take a step back from the situation and look at the big picture.

Speaker 1 (06:12):

Some of what I'm going to describe today is outlined in a book that I love and that I highly recommend that I haven't mentioned on here in a while, probably since the very beginning of the podcast, but the book is called disconnected by Thomas Kerstin. And it's titled how to reconnect our digitally distracted kids. I'll put a link for that in the show notes, but in the book he talks about in one chapter about how we need to look at how we're planting seeds in our kids' mind in their childhood. Basically, if the seeds that they are having planted are based on their interaction in the social media world of feeling not good enough and being bullied and comparing themselves to others and having a low self esteem that we're planting those seeds to mold their childhood in their future around that. And they are adaptive in their resilience, but it's also their childhood.

Speaker 1 (07:10):

Is there time of sowing those seeds. And so we need to take a big step back and say, okay, we need to, if you're one of the ones like me, that you didn't want to like be that mom that was setting down these rules that was allowing them not to game all night long, that was moving the console out of the bedroom that was setting limits on the use of the cell phone. That was eavesdropping a little bit on social media accounts. If you are hesitant to do those things, because you've always allowed them and you are afraid that your kid is going to be upset that your kid's going to be ostracized or look different, or that they're going to think that you don't trust them, take a step back and look at the bigger picture of things, how things are going, the trajectory of how they are going.

Speaker 1 (07:52):

Are they planting good seeds? Is it a place where your kid is going to grow to be strong, be confident and, you know, just have a positive and productive stance and outlook in the world. Is that what you were creating with the things that you were doing right now? If you don't feel that that's the trajectory you're on, then that's when we need to step in and be a parent looking at the big picture and decide where we are going to go and where we are. We are going to set boundaries. Another thing that is kind of a phenomenon that's been going on for a while. And I feel like it gets before my time on this earth of us getting more and more disconnected from ourselves. And so I think this disconnection that we're seeing in our kids with the digital things is more pronounced now, but I do not think it's a new thing for this generation because me personally, when I look back on my childhood, there was a time where I was very connected with my creativity and my ambitions and goals. And then as we get older, it's kind of like, it's almost like it's taught to us to start doubting ourselves. And, you know, to just, you know, settle down, don't have those big ambitions, cause you're likely not going to get there type thing. I'm not that my mom necessarily encourage those things. She was always, you know, my biggest advocate and telling me I can do whatever I put my mind to, but society

Speaker 3 (09:14): And you know, all of

Speaker 1 (09:16):

The things out there, like just kind of telling you that you're not capable of that. So don't hope that high because you're just going to be disappointed. So I think that as a, another tip to what I've already added is that we personally ourselves need to learn, to look within and connect with ourselves and walk the walk that we want our kids to walk, reconnecting with ourselves. And part of that is learning to, you know, disconnect from those devices and spend time with each other. Face-to-face reconnecting in the world, reconnecting with things other than digital things. And I bring that up because last weekend, my family, we drove about a hundred miles away from our home to a place in South Texas, where they have hiking. And when we drove up to the state part, we lost complete signal on our phones. While out on our way there, we had an issue with our vehicle.

Speaker 1 (10:10):

We were in three different vehicles in one of the vehicles. And one, me and my husband were driving in, had an issue where something in a warning light came on on the dash. And so this is something that had been happening with this car. And so my husband was afraid to keep driving it as far as we needed to go, because he wasn't sure what the issue was. So we combined everything into two cars and he went back home and got another vehicle and then caught up with us. But we were still waiting for him to come before we started our hiking, but we went ahead and went to the park and we were going to wait for him there. Well, when we got there and we drove into the park, we all lost signals on our phone. Completely. Like there's no way we could have got a text out to say where to meet.

Speaker 1 (10:53):

There was no, no way for us to tell them that we'd already checked him at the, in, at the front desk. It was, you know, there was just no way to get in touch with them at all. We couldn't tell him where we had parked nothing. So, you know, the other part of the group went and parked. And then me and my daughter and her boyfriend drove out of the park and went back to the RV park that we'd been at and where we met up with friends and we went back there. So we could call my husband and tell him where to meet us at, and that we'd already checked him in. So when he did arrive, he knew where to go. So we went back to the park, we waited for him, we connected with him. And then we went on with our day.

Speaker 1 (11:27):

We hiked a total of 10 miles. Some of it was like steep and strenuous and a while we had a great time and I enjoyed the nature and being disconnected. My body is not used to a 10 mile hike. So I came home very, very, very tired. But my point in bringing that up, it was, it was a wonderful time for us to disconnect from the rest of the world and just spend time with each other. We talked, we laughed, we looked at nature, we just enjoyed the silence. And it was a great thing, but it was also a struggle. Like at one point we got to like the highest part of the park and we all had signals on our phone again. And we all instantly wanted to check in and see what was going on on our social media and see if we had any texts from anybody.

Speaker 1 (12:10):

And I tried to quickly shut that down, you know, for myself personally and not look at my phone, but it's so hard to disconnect from all of that because we're so used to being so interconnected, isn't that crazy that you're like, we're like more interconnected, but yet disconnected from our own like inner silence, our inner peace and, you know, just finding a place. I think I'd say, you know, a lot, don't, I I'm noticing that with this as I'm talking, but it's crazy how that works, that we're disconnected, but interconnected. And it's hard for us to get connected to our inner self and our inner peace. So my point is I think that we all can learn to kind of silence all of the outside noise and try to find our own inner peace and to find our own way of, you know, just connecting with ourself.

Speaker 1 (12:58):

I think I've said that over and over now, but in this book disconnected by Thomas Kerstin, he has a section where he talks about that. And he says, in the case of kids with all the digital things, that boredom is like a mental fertilizer and boredom is to the brain. What weightlifting is to the muscles, boredom is necessary. It is the spark of creativity. And we all know that creativity as a child is like us working mentally through the world and, you know, creating our construct of the world and what our interests are and all of that stuff. And the phenomenon that we're seeing with all of the digital interconnectedness is that our kids are losing their creativity and losing their boredom because they're never, they're never allowed or forced to be bored because they always have the digital things, always something to put in their hands so that they don't have to deal with that boredom.

Speaker 1 (13:54):

So I think the biggest lesson of what I want to talk about with disconnecting to reconnect is to create a time for your kid for a digital device disconnect where the digital devices are not available, where they are forced to be bored into, to be creative. And as someone who has walked through all of this with my own family, if you don't know my past story, my kids are mid-teen upper teen and younger, lower twenties right now. And each one got a device at a younger and younger age. And I saw the impact of that from the oldest to the youngest. I had no idea that it would have an impact like it did. I thought social media was just a place to post their pictures and connect with friends. And I just had no idea the ramifications, the risks that were out there, all of the things that we're trained to get to my kids and how I was opening the entire world to my kid on those devices.

Speaker 1 (14:54):

And so I've seen the impact for all of them. And I didn't create a place where there were no devices for them. I didn't set up those boundaries and to help them with that and our kids so desperately need that from us. So whether you are in the place of just starting this, or whether you are in the police of just starting this with your kids, or you are here in desperation like that, dad looking for a place to restart and figure out where to course correct, know that when you set up those boundaries for your kid, you're going to get pushback. Most likely if they have, are used to not having the boundaries, but know underneath that fit or that tantrum or that attitude, that they need you to set these things up. And I think I digressed from my point when I was talking about us going to the state park, but with my kids, I have seen the effect of doing this where old interests are reignited, where new creativity and new discovery happens.

Speaker 1 (16:02):

And it is because I set up the boundaries on the use of the devices. And that can mean, and it should mean not in the bedroom. I can't emphasize that enough, keep them out of the bedroom until they're able to self-regulate themselves and have a discussion about why that is important. Put the phones to bed at night in your room, in a place where you control, keep the gaming consoles out of the bedroom. Like if you have it in their bedroom, they cannot resist the temptation of playing it. It messes with their sleep. It's an, it becomes an addiction. It interferes with schoolwork and everything else in their life. So digital devices out of the bedroom and set up times to where it is a required digital free time. And then that forces them into the boredom and helps them with creativity and helps them to have those normal childhood desires other than getting their next little achievement on whatever game they're playing or checking in to see who's gone to what party or checking to see some girls picture that you're in BSF.

Speaker 1 (17:08):

You know, like all of the things that the, the doors that these open, this gives them permission to shut it all down. Even though it's you setting the boundaries, it's giving them permission to not connect with their friends. It's giving them permission to say, my mom won't let me be on this at this time. It's okay to be the bad guy, because in the end, they are going to be thankful as a mom that is sitting on the other side of so much struggle. I am seeing things that I once thought I would never see. Again. I once thought that I had made the biggest mistake ever as a parent and felt like the most horrible parent in the world. I want thought that the mistakes I made were going to have such detrimental effects longterm, but I'm telling you, you got to stick to your guns.

Speaker 1 (18:00):

You got to be the parent. You got to look at the big picture and look at the trajectory of your child's life, and then know that they are resilient, but they need you to set boundaries and they need you to guide them to have that non-digital time so that they can have the mental timeout from it so they can be bored. So they can find that inner peace in that abundance that comes within that. Otherwise there'll be too distracted in too disconnected from the world to find on their own. And you yourself. Like I mentioned with me, always feeling like I didn't, I was always looking outside of me for connection and meaning and all of that, me, myself, trying to dive more in to my own inner peace and strengthened my own boredom models of behavior for my kids. I don't know if I made that point clear earlier, but that models that behavior for my kids.

Speaker 1 (18:53):

So be the model for them. And while you're setting these boundaries up, set the boundaries up for yourself as well, and then they know, and they see that you are doing this same thing. Okay. So besides that, as you know, the, uh, tools that I mentioned in most of my episodes, I have a free download in the show notes of this. If you don't know where to look for the show notes, either swipe up, or there might be some like little dots that you click on, and then you go to show notes, but look in the show notes. And I have a free download for all of the resources that I normally list. I also have links in the show notes for all of the resources, but you can set up as tools to help you. You can set up bark to help you monitor.

Speaker 1 (19:35):

You can set up Griffin or Gryphon router and bark home to shut down parts of your home's Wi-Fi during certain times of the day, there's other tools out there that can help you to shut down access to certain things so that, you know, they know that this is how it's going to be at these certain times of the day, and there's no getting around it. And then there's also things like the pinwheel phone where you can set it up into modes. And then it's like at a certain time of the day, they know that the mood that the phone is on at that time is not to, you know, do all the things it is to be doing a certain thing. The pinwheel phone doesn't allow you to get to social media and those things. So it keeps the phone as a tool, not as something that's controlling the kid in everything that they do.

Speaker 1 (20:20):

So it's a great option for the younger kids. And if you have younger, younger kids, the tick tock tick tock watch is a great option for staying connected without giving them the smartphone and all of that stuff. Okay. So I haven't mentioned it, I don't think in my other episodes, but pinwheel changed my promo code. It is be that mom dash 10 T E N. So it's all spelled out altogether and then dash T E N. So if you are going to grab a pinwheel phone, use the link in my show notes, and then if it asks for the discount code and it's not already registered as that put in, be that mom dash 10 and for bark, it is still be that mom altogether that will get you 20% off in the seven-day free trial. And I highly recommend all of those. Again, I have everything in the show notes, click on my free download that will get you signed up for my email list, and then give you the links in all of my recommendations for basic boundaries to set up and help you.

Speaker 1 (21:18):

Okay. I hope this was super, super helpful. I think I kind of went around in circles a little bit, but I personally have tried to really work hard at walking the walk with the kiddos and doing more disconnect time. And I feel like it's been really meaningful and I enjoy it more than I used to. I think this past year of 2020 is made me really look at a lot of things and value things more. And so I hope that you are able to use these tips and move forward with all of this stuff to, and I hope that all of this stuff will help you navigate it a little bit easier. Okay. So I hope you have a great week and I will chat with you next time.

Speaker 2 (21:59):

Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time

Speaker 1 (22:13):

Either before you go, I want to just give you a heads up on something. When things have been hardest in my role as a mom, the thing that was so very helpful for me was having a routine to take care of myself each day. I know that this whole thing around raising kids in a digital world is so very overwhelming. But if you have a place where you are taking care of yourself every single day with a simple routine that works despite where you are or what your schedule is, you will be able to be more present for your family and handle all of the ups and downs of this most amazing role that we could ever play in this world. So connect with me and let's get you connected to fitness and nutrition tools made by experts that will help you simplify this and then connect you with my fit club community that will support you, guide you and give you momentum and motivation to show up everyday, take care of yourself first so that you could be better present for our digital native kids.