Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1068 - A Screen Breakthrough

Transcript

#1068 - A Screen Breakthrough · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: wants answers.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Now, okay, it's Friday. It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: old Do Better Tomorrow. I'm justin. I'm here with Kylie.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: This is the episode where we look at the week
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that was and try to work out if things are
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: going well or not and how we can do better tomorrow.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I feel like you're feeling a bit heavy today. I
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: think you might need a dad joke.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I was going to give you all the reasons that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling heavy. I am. I am mainly because it's
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: really hard to do. I'd do better tomorrow when I've
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: been traveling so much lately and it's almost finished. The
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: travel's almost done, but it's I have been a way
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: more than i've been home, and it's tricky. Tell me
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the dad joke.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: How do you stop an astronaut's baby from crying?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Thinking something to do with space atmosphere? No, I don't
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: know you rockets? Oh my goodness? What laugh? Maybe Maybe
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: if I was, maybe, if I was doing better, i'd.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Laugh at think you've lost your funny.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: All right, let's dive into it. I'll do better tomorrow.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We need to kick off with a word of the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: year review. We didn't do it last month. Can you
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: remember your word of the year.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I can't believe you're asking.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Are you stalling?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You're stalling. I can flux and see it on your face.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: You've forgotten the word for the year.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yours was present?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, you know mine? And do you know what? In
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: spite I was embraced? Okay, all right, very good. In
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: spite of the fact that that I've been a way
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a lot, I feel like I'm doing a better job
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of being present than I have in years. I really
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm I'm there for you and for the
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: kids when I'm home. Maybe that's been amplified because I've
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: been traveling a lot and giving talks. But I'm giving
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: myself good marks. I'm going to say, I'm like, at
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: a seven and a half and eight, I think I'm
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: doing reasonably well. How's your embracing going? Well, it's a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: long store. I think we've got everything we need.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Our oldest daughter may have asked me if I wanted
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: to join her in the Malula Bar triathlon next year.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Smart and I may have said no, Oh, I.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Thought you said yes. I thought we were doing.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: It, and then baby number three said, I can't believe
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: you said no.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So now I'm doing so you are in yes, fantastic.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: So I think I'm embracing.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Good on you. That's great. We've got we've got some
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: work to do. We have, we've got a lot of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: work to do. I can't swim no, no, and there
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: is some fitness obstacles to overcome as well.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I didn't say I had to do it well, which
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: you just had to do it.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Come on, if you're going to do it, and you
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: know what they say, if it's worth doing, it's worth
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: doing badly because it was worth doing. So at least
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: you've done so, Kylie, I'll do at it tomorrow. I'm
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: going to share mine fairly briefly, because there's very very
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: little for me to talk about. Two things, just quickly.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Number one, last weekend we had your family, your parents.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Your parents stayed with us for a couple of nights.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And this isn't so much about me as it is
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: just about the experience of having grandparents involved in positive
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: ways in their grandchildren's lives. We've worked really hard to
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: make sure that your parents and mine feel like they
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: can visit us whenever, whenever it's convenient for them, whenever
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: they'd like to. They stayed with us. And I walked
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: into the kitchen and saw Lily, our fourteen year old,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: playing Uno with your mum. Your dad was off doing
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: something else. We'd already had family time across.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: The weekend, a big list of handyman tasks.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, so he did. He didn't do any
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of them. He did one, he did one thing, he
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure out the others. I digress. I walked into
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the kitchen and I saw Lily and your mom laughing
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: their heads off as they tried to cheat each other
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: at you know, they were having so much fun, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I saw this is why grandparents matter so much. I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: did a sort of an ask just and conversation about
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it the other day when a mum was saying, I
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: don't agree with the way that my parents are going
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to be involved with my child like they're doing at
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: old school, and I want them to be on board
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: with on the same page as me. Your parents are
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: on a different page to us, They do things differently
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: to us. And yet I saw Lily, this fourteen year old,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: surly ornery, sometimes regularly frustrating fourteen year old, and I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: saw this side of her that I just haven't seen
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: for weeks, maybe months. She was pure delight and your
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: mum was having a ball. I thought, this is why
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: grandparents matter. It was just beautiful. I stood in the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: kitchen and ate my yogurt and blueberries and just watched.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So you were the one await almost.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but you ate three quarters of the planet.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Come on, I only had a.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Few no no, no, no, that was Indie.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Let's not have that conversation now. It was just beautiful.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: So my older about it tomorrow was really just a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: really big push for parents to do everything they can
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: to involve grandparents in positive, engaging, active ways with grandkids,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: regardless of their capacity. Right, like your mum has very
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: limited physical capacity, but she could sit at the dining
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: table and play, you know, and it was magic. I
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: didn't want to leave. I just they knew that I
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: was there, but they weren't engaged with me at all.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: They were so involved in what they were doing. And
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I had five minutes where I just stood there and
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: watched and it was beautiful, just beautiful. The second thing
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to highlight really quickly. Is that last Saturday,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: front of I think it was four hundred or four
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty developmental pediatricians. The Australasian Conference of Developmental
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Pediatricians was held on the Gold Coast and I was
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: able to do a keynote for an hour and then
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: another nineteen minutes workshopping with them. And I was quite bold,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I said to them. I talked to parents all the
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: time who say, justin you're telling me to do one thing,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and then my pediatrician is telling me to do the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: exact opposite. I don't know what to do. And I
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: said to the pediatricians, you're doing it wrong. I said
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: it nicely, I said it politely, but you're doing it
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: wrong and it's causing so much difficulty for so many parents.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And they said, well, what do you want us to do?
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And we got to spend two and a half hours
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: workshopping and playing with ideas, and honestly, it was one
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of the highlights of my career to stand in front
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: of a room of that many people who really work
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: so closely and so tightly with so many families who
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: are struggling, and I just wanted to flag that I
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: love speaking at conferences generally. I love being able to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: give keynote addresses in schools or I'm speaking at south
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: By Southwest shortly in a couple of weeks in Sydney.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: But that conference, with that particular audience really intelligent, really engaged,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and desperate to know. They pretty much said, we're pediatricians,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: we're medically trained, we haven't been taught this stuff. What
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: do we need to know? It was just it was
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: just sublime. That's more news than I'll do better tomorrow.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, I think you're cheating just
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: a bit.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I am, but I'll do better next week.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: You're a hilarious.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: What's your old about it tomorrow? Missus happy families?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Well, it might feel like I'm kind of harping on
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: the same vein over and over again, but this whole
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: idea of having family meetings.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've got to say on this. At the pediatrician conference,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the organizers, came over to
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: me and said, I've been listening to the podcast for
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Ages and if you're listening, hello, And she said she
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: listens to the podcast as much as she can drive
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: from north of Brisbane down to the Gold Coast every
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: single day for work or a few days a week
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: for work. But she said family meetings have revolutionized her family.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: She said it's the most important thing that they do,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: and it's us harping on about it that makes the difference.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Her and a husband, same page, kids across what needs
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to be across. It makes an impact.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: And so last week I mentioned that we had sat
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: down and one of our daughters had acknowledged that while
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: she had done a hundred times better this week on
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: her screen, on her screen, there was still room for improvement,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: and she really wanted to work at that.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So anyone's been listening for a while knows that this
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: is your regular news item. Really, I'll do better tomorrow.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: It was just this ongoing conversation with our fourteen year
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: old about how much she's using a screen.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So you went away for the week, and on Wednesday
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: morning you rang me and you asked me how everything
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: was going with the family.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: And I had an agenda. I'd checked the screen time
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: stats and I knew that she'd been on her device
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a lot more than she.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Promised, and I acknowledged to you that it was really
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: hard because we'd made some really conscious decisions around screen
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: time that now the kids were sitting in the lound
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: room and were very visual when they were on their screens,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: and so I wasn't actually sure whether it was getting
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: better or worse because I could see it all happening
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: before me. But you acknowledged that our fourteen year old
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: had had a number of more hours available to her
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: on screen time, big Man, Big Mum than we had
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: agreed on, and I couldn't work out how she done it.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: So you just said to me, when you get a chance,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: can you have a chat to her? So I didn't
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: go to her immediately, which is something I would often do.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: If there's a bee in my bonnet, I want to
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: fix and dealt with straight away.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: This is something that I've been emphasizing for a long time.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: You don't have to fix everything on the spot. Wait
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: until you're calm and the kids calm, choose your timing.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: It actually didn't happen until the next day. She came
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: to me and voluntarily handed me her phone.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: She didn't know that you were planning on talking about it.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: And she said, Mum, can you have my phone for
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the weekend? And I went, oh, this is too good.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: This is on a Thursday.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: This is perfect. And I said, hey, kiddo, I said,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I was talking to Dad yesterday and he mentioned that
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: your screen time was a little bit high this week.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: And she looked at me and she said, yeah, I know.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: She said, that's why I'm handing my phone in now.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: And she said, and while I'm thinking about it, I
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: actually think I should delete a whole heap of my socials,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: And so right in front of me, she deleted a
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: whole heap of her socials and handed me back the phone.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: And I said, I'm just trying to work it out
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: how you managed to increase the time because we've put
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: time limits on your screens and she said, yeah, I
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: know that too, she said, but I managed to get
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: around them on the laptop. So she hadn't been using
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: her phone, she'd been using her laptop, and she'd managed
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: to change those screen times to enable her to be
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: involved in whatever she was doing. And I said, oh,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I said, well, that's a problem, I said, because you're
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: handing me your phone. But you've also now just acknowledged
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that it's the phone's not actually the issue, because you've
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: found a way to utilize your laptop and get around
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: all of those, you know, kind of boundaries that we've
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: put in place. And she said, yeah, I know, but
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: I won't do it anymore. She said, Mum, I've been
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: kind of just taking stock of the way I'm using
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: my screen and she said, and I've realized that there
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: is one particular platform that I've been using that's really problematic.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: She said, I post on there regularly, and as a result,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I'm seeking the validation of others. But in order for
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: me to be able to increase that involvement, I actually
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: have to be validating other people all the time. And
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: she said, and I'm just getting sucked in. And she said,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and it wasn't until I looked at my screen time
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: this morning and I saw how much I'd been on there,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: and then I went to my history to see what
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: it was that was really impacting my screen time. She said.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It was this one platform. And she said it and
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I recognized that in spite of the fact that what
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I'm doing is actually a really good thing and I
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: love doing it, the desperate need for validation and the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: need to validate others all the time has become quite
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: toxic in her life. Can I tell you again, this
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: is the same thing. If I had had this conversation
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: with her.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: And said you need to do this, you need to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: We would have ended up with World War five hundred
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and fifty five. It would have been intense. This is
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: literally the first time this kid has number one, been
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: on top of this, like totally accountable. When I said
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: to her, your screen time has been a bit up. Normally,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: on a normal day to day conversation, I would have
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: had her up in arms justifying her choices and how
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: you know how she was utilizing her time and being
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: really angry at me for asking her, like even just
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: questioning her on it. But because we've been having this
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: ongoing conversation weekly check ins and accountability with each of
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: us and at the same time putting ourselves on the firing.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, recognizing that we are not perfect and we need
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to improve as well, she's.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Been able to do that self evaluation on her own
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: and of her own fruition and recognize that there are
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: traits that she's not loving about her self and the
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: way she's utilizing her screen.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So when I listen to this story, there's a couple
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of things that I want to pull out of it.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: For a lot of families who are listening and going, yeah,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: not going to happen with my kids. Number One, your
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: kids want to do well, they really do. Number Two,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: this does not happen after one conversation. This has been
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: about a month of well, let's be real, it's.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Been an ongoing conversation her whole you know, kind of
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: teenage years. We've just gotten really concentrated in the last
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: few months.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: In the last month or so, we've really really drilled
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: into it and said what's going on here? But I
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: think the critical thing is when kids feel backed into
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a corner, like anyone or anything else, they push back.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: They want to get out of the corner and they
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: want their freedom. By allowing this to sit, by continuing
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to have the conversations, and by saying we don't technically
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: have an agenda here, we're not trying to stop everything.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: We're just trying to find ways that we can get
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a healthy balance, and at the moment it's not balanced.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: How do we work on this together. We've come up
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: with I mean, it's still imperfect, there's still room to move.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: We will continue this over the next week, fortnite, month, quarter, whatever. Yeah, yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: of course this is an ongoing thing, but it's giving
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: her the time and the space to think through things
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and develop her own internal regulation around it. That she
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: started to identify what matters. And this is for anyone
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: who's read the pairing Revolution, this is where we move
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: from external regulation where someone's making me do it, to
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: introjected regulation, where I'm doing it because I have to.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Now she's moved to this thing called identified regulation, where
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I see the value in it, so I'm on board.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: The next step is called integrated regulation. I'm the kind
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of person who and then there's intrinsic motivation, but I.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Think she's getting there.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: In the reason she's moving towards integrated this is.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: The this is the really powerful moment of the story.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: The reason she came to me on Thursday morning was
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: because on Wednesday night she'd been at a social gathering
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: with all of her friends, having an absolute ball, but
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: because she had her phone with her and she was
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: obviously engaging on this particular platform. Every time she got
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: a notification, she was checking, she was stopping whatever the
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: flow of the evening was, because this was so important,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: and it wasn't until she came home and she thought
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: about it, and she just thought, I'm sitting there, face
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: to face with my friends, and yet there's people on
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: the other end of a screen who are branding my
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: attention more. And she said, I've watched it with other
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: people and have been devastated that I'm not as important
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: as whatever's on the screen. And she said, and in
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: that moment, I realized I'm becoming that person, and I
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: just this is hu huge.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: This is huge, what a great story. There is hope
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: it can be done. It just takes time and patience
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: and conversations and willingness to let kids have the learning.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: We hope that there's some inspo in our conversation today.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. The Happy Families podcast is
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: produced by Justin Rulan from Bridge Media. We love your work, Justin,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Have a great weekend everyone, and if
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you'd like more information about making your family happy, please
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: join us at happy families dot com dot au.