Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. Today I'm going to talk about something pretty meaningful to Lace and I and an experience in the last week. It's around kids and screen time. So I think something that we are very fortunate about is so I've talked about, like silver lines and you know, struggles with having kids. In having kids a little bit later maybe than we had hoped or expected, we have been able to see the effect of screens and phones and iPads and all this crap on kids over the last 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Um, you know what didn't seem like a whole, much of a lot in the first couple of years to like you know the last several. I don't need to explain it to you. If you don't understand that it's a problem, then you need to do some investigating of your own. Um, anyhow, we are pretty big on um, the specific types of screen time. So leonardo watches tv. He watches, you know he's got his shows and his movies and stuff that you know he he likes to kind of like cycle through and stuff like that. Um, really try to make sure. So we call youtube the silly shows because there's so much crap on there that's just not filtered quite the same way as more curated content like netflix and amazon prime and all that. Anyway, sometimes he's on there too, um, video games we have a nintendo switch, uh, every now and then we'll, you know, we do let him play on the little screen sometimes, um, we'll play on the big screen. Uh, it's something that, like, I'll do with him. Um, he likes playing two-player stuff and that's been a maybe a more recent thing I mean, he did just turn four, so that's been a more recent thing in the last few months.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Um, what we do not have, like, he doesn't take our phones, he doesn't the. The only time that I give him a phone to watch something on is when I'm getting my haircut, and actually we're going to come back to that in a, in a minute. The other time that we might give him something like an ipad um to watch a show on is if Lacey and I have something that we're really wanting to watch on our TV and kind of have him present in the room, but he's just not necessarily going to be interested. This does not happen often. We don't watch a heck of a lot of TV. An example actually from this weekend would be the CrossFit Games finals. We did do that and then let him have the iPad for a little bit, but he doesn't get it. There's no games. There's no games on our phones, there's no games on our iPad, and those are known to him as like work tools. They're not known as games anyway.

Speaker 1: 3:07

The example was from last week and I was having a bit of a hard time with him, actually in the morning, getting him out. I had to get over to the gym at a specific time and he wanted to play video games. Right, we let him play for a little bit and it was time to go, and it just wasn't. It wasn't going right. Any parent knows what I'm talking about. And so I said you know what? Okay, let's like.

Speaker 1: 3:34

I had a moment where I took the easy path and I said you know what? It's? The Nintendo Switch. Let's just take it. I'll make it on a small screen. I'm not going to give it to you on the drive, because I don't want you starting to think that the drive is somewhere where you can just check out as well. But we'll get to the gym and I'm going to give you a time limit of 20 minutes, and so, anyway, we get there, and, to my not so surprise, uh, lace was like Whoa, no, no, absolutely not, absolutely not. She, she kind of ran over and took it away from him and, you know, gave me this look like what, what are you doing? Like I thought we were on the same page with this and, like you know, it hurt me a little bit in the moment, just you know that that kind of feeling of like getting in trouble and it was your fault. But, um, I reflected on that, but you, you know. So she hung out with the, the boys, for the next hour while I worked out and I I was kind of reflecting on it, even just from the moment it happened. I'm like you know what I, that wasn't the right decision. Um, we don't bring the switch anywhere. Uh, we don't. You know he doesn't get a phone or an iPad or anything at our gym when he does go there, and so, anyway, I had sort of reflected and kind of come to that realization. And then we talked about it afterward when we got home and she's like you realize why this is so important she goes, I the the hour that I had with him.

Speaker 1: 5:07

We did a little workout. He ran around, um, he greeted everybody as they came in. You know he was present when they came in. Um, he talked to coach Stefan. It was it was a longer workout with a ton of running, so there was moments where he could, um, actually talk with, uh, with whoever was coaching. And he talked to Coach Stephan.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And the haircut thing I get my haircut at a place by a guy named Rocco, who I got his contact from Stephan a while back and Leonardo got his haircut at the same spot and they got to talk about going to get their haircut at Rocco's. He also got to hand out freezies at the end of the workout. He went around to everybody and asked if they were sweaty and if they wanted a freezy. All of these things. None of them would have happened if we just gave him this device. Okay, he, and then play that out over a hundred times.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Okay, these things are wired for our attention. You know, after the 50th time, hey, do you want to do a little workout? Do you want to hand out freezes? Do you want to say hi to everybody? You know what a kid's going to say. They're not going to want to do it, and so you, just you have to sort of make that executive decision for them and it's something like it's so obvious when you think about it like that and you're robbing them of the presence of these things. And it's not just kids, it's adults too. I mean, if you're constantly tuned into devices, like, I promise you, the people around you do not see you as present.

Speaker 1: 6:52

So if that's something that you struggle with um, sometimes taking your yourself out of your own perspective of like, oh, it's important, I'm doing this thing or whatever, to like how people around you are viewing you when you've you're buried in this thing, um, that can be a catalyst for change. You know, I know that there's moments when I realize that I'm kind of like oh, you know, I'm not supposed to be on my phone right now, I'm taking too long to do this thing, or I've done the thing and I'm just now. I'm just distracted. If I take myself out of that moment and I hear you know, or if I hear my son like, hey, you know, come play with me, I'm like, okay, I know, I know what I need to do, like, put the freaking phone down anyway. Um, I just wanted to talk through this.

Speaker 1: 7:34

I know that, uh, it's something that a lot of parents probably struggle with and you know it's one of our um I. I feel like we're doing okay with it, but it's. It's one of the the times that um, you know, it seems like such a small thing. You know, I was going to give him a nintendo switch for a 20 minute time limit at the gym, but it's a slippery slope. So, anyway, hope something here resonates and you can take something useful uh away from it. I will see you in the gym.