Resisting the Glow

how I raised my kids without phones

It’s hard for me to discuss the topic of kids and screens with people. Inevitably, I feel like anything I say sounds preachy and better-than, even though that is never my intent. I do my best avoid the discussion on social media and I only engage in person if someone else brings it up—and unless they took the same path I took, I mostly sit quietly. It can be awkward! I never ever want to make other parents feel bad for the paths they have taken—we really are all just doing the best we can. Ultimately, I don’t really care what choices other people make about screens and their kids!

But people have asked. “How do you handle cell phones?” When they were younger it was, “How do you survive without a TV?” Honestly, I don’t know how to answer these questions with any ounce of wisdom… but I can tell you what we did and why we made the choices we did—as well as how my kids feel about them now.

Once upon a time we were a one-car family with two very cute toddler daughters. It was 2011—Anja was three and Greta was two and for Mothers Day that year, Martin got me my first smart phone. Joy! It was an iPhone and it was so cute and I loved it so much, and I dropped it on the sidewalk that very first day. It didn’t shatter, but it did get a little nick, and I felt awful and like such a loser and the embodiment of “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Actually I’m pretty sure I cried, I was so disappointed in myself for being such a klutz.

In any case, in 2011 there were not a lot of warnings about phones and kids. It was kind of a free-for-all and a great opportunity to have distractions on the go. We did a lot of driving around in those days; our families both had cottages on a river about 35 minutes away, and we spent a lot of time up there with our families, ending with a lot of drives back to our home during times that were uncomfortably close to, but not exactly, bedtime for the girls.

If you have ever been in charge of a toddler, you know that feeling when they are nodding off in their carseat at the absolute worst possible time. Too early for bed, too late for a nap, you know that if they doze now, you’ll be up with them aaaaallll night. It was at those moments that I began brilliantly handing them my phone. I downloaded some cute game apps (I don’t remember what they were… ABC Mouse? Was that one? I can’t remember!) and if I saw their eyelids drooping, I just handed them that bright little device and let them merrily play their games until we got home. It felt like we were all winning—they not only stayed awake for the drive, but they were also fully distracted, giving Martin and me some time for conversation. Big time parenting win!

Except the win only lasted as long as the drive, and then we turned into big losers. BIG LOSERS. Anja was fine with giving up the phone as soon as we were curbside at our house, but Greta was a whole ‘nother story. Greta’s personality is STRONG. Greta is TENACIOUS. Greta can be LOUD. And at two years old, she was just coming into that big personality; when we told her it was time to give up the phone, she was not having it.

Oh, the fits we endured. They started out small, but grew swiftly with each episode. Really, it was embarrassing. Not just the fits, but the way I gave into the fits. “Oh, okay, I’ll give you five more minutes. Five more minutes. Then we’re really done.” I was such a wimp! But sometimes the screaming was more than I could bear, and it seemed worth it in the moment to allow a few more minutes on the phone in order for even the eensiest bit of a chance at a peaceable handover when the five minutes were up.

Spoiler: the peaceable handover NEVER HAPPENED.

One day, we were driving someplace as a family in the daytime hours, at a time when no one was at risk of falling asleep, when Greta wanted to play games on my phone. This had started happening more and more frequently—the handing over of the phone at her request, the giving in even though the need was not there. We had begun to realize that we’d created a monster, and we were filled with regret.

We looked at each other and resolved to say the word that every two year old loves to say but loathes to hear: NO.

We said no, but we didn’t just say no— we said no, and never again.

Cold turkey, we cut them off from the iPhone. It was so obviously bad for Greta, so clearly more of an addiction than a game. It brought out the worst part of her personality and caused so much ugliness in our sweet little family. The toddler fits were unparalleled, and the parenting was abominable—we had to make that drastic change!

BEST DECISION EVER! It took her probably four days to stop asking to play on my phone. I had not yet developed my own phone addiction at that time, so it was easy to not demonstrate the behavior that she would want to imitate. The habit of hers was relatively quick to break, (though it was a number of scenes of screaming in the car for a few days,) and we happily rolled into a screen free life for our kids.

I tell this story to illustrate my poor parenting skills and bad decision making before talking about the one good decision I’ve ever made, which was to forego all screens in early childhood.

It came to be that we never had more than a travel sized DVD player or a laptop computer as a television. These were utilized very infrequently—most often during sad tummy-bug times, and multi-state car trips. Watching a movie was a very special occasion which entailed a trip to the video section of the library and carefully choosing one or two DVDs. At some point we began to buy a few kids DVDs; among the earliest were the animated Charlotte’s Web from my childhood, as well as Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog.” We never collected very many, but we watched them so very infrequently that we really didn’t need more than three or four.

This era was when people started asking me how I survived without television time. I guess the answer is simply that there wasn’t an alternative. Except for that short but regrettable span of time with the iPhone, we had never used screens as a regular part of our parenting, so it was not ever something that my kids felt they were doing without. Not only that, but I didn’t feel like I was doing without because I had never used them as a parenting tool in the first place.

I don’t want to take any credit for the imaginative nature of my children’s minds, but my girls have always been very into play. Hours and hours would go by with them playing elaborate games together. They all loved dolls, dollhouses, and pretend play. At very young ages they showed interest in crafting, especially Anja; we would make paper dolls together day after day. We jumped into all the handicrafts of the education philosophies I loved—knitting, weaving, embroidery, sewing—as well as daily painting and constant drawing. And I guess, ultimately, the reason it worked easily for me to have so much time with them doing creative activities or open play, is because I didn’t have anything else to do. I was a “busy mom” but my busyness was just parenting them and teaching them, filling their days with beauty and joy and fun. My busyness was housework and cooking, baking with them alongside me, the exhausting excursions to the grocery store and the excruciating act of putting the groceries away as fast as possible before their crazy toddler/preschooler hands could break into all the snacks I’d bought. We read story after story after story, usually sitting on the kitchen floor, my back against the oven door. My busy days were filled with them and for them, and the idea of turning on a movie never crossed my mind. That doesn’t mean it was all sparkles and bliss—I distinctly remember crying at the door and singing “Where is Daddy, Where is Daddy, He’s at Work, He’s at Work” as we waited for Martin to arrive home. (Sometimes we waited for his headlights, but if we had the car that day, we’d wait to see him walking across the parking lot from the bus stop.) When he arrived, he took over the parenting for awhile, a blessing of which I was fully aware. I have always had a willing and capable coparent to step in before I reached burnout, something that probably had a lot to do with me never feeling that I needed to turn on the TV to get a moment to myself.

Homeschooling is amazing in a lot of ways, but one way it’s been helpful for me in parenting is that there are less outside influences, and the ones that are in place are somewhat curated. Basically, you can set the “norm” for your family and easily avoid any “keeping up with the Joneses” attitudes by simply not bothering with any Jonses in the first place. I don’t mean this in a social isolation way, but am simply pointing out the fact that everything done in a homeschool setting is a personal choice, and most likely is going to reflect the interests and preferences of the majority of the family. One chooses the co-op, the extracurriculars, the social circles based on common interests, goals, environments, and people. Homeschooling is not without its social trials, but for the most part, if there seems to be a bad influence or a clash of values between a family and an outside group, one is simply not going to sign up for that group again the next year. This differs greatly from having to have your lunch money stolen by the same cafeteria bully day after day from kindergarten through senior year.

But, like doing without the school bullies, as the years went by and the kids got older and our family was lacking “Friday Night Movie Nights” and such, I did begin to wonder if I was raising weirdos. I wondered if they would resent me for depriving them of such a basic childhood accessory. When the middle school years crept into teenagerdom and friends were getting cell phones of their own, I worried my girls would argue in favor of their own devices.

It turned out I didn’t need to worry. Around the time Anja was 14 or so, she began walking to ballet by herself and I felt like she should have a cell phone with her. We instituted the Sisters Cell Phone, an older model iPhone left over after Martin and I upgraded. This phone lived primarily on the kitchen counter, but accompanied the girls if they went places without us. The whole family had full access and use of that phone, and it also worked well as a sort of “home phone” if ever the girls were home alone. For awhile I expected that phone to take over their brains. I expected them to ask for social media accounts. I expected to have to lay down some boundaries with the screen time. Surprisingly, it was never an issue. For years that phone sat in its place on the counter, largely ignored, completely barren of apps, acting simply as a means of communication. They would call and text their cousins, aunts, a few friends. It was always a very healthy relationship.

The girls still share that phone—Greta (17), Elka (14), and Ingrid (12) use it to communicate with friends, cousins, and Martin and me when they are either out without us or home alone. It still works beautifully as a balanced means of communication and safety, still without social media, still accessible by the entire family. The two apps it has on it now are the TunerLite app for instrument tunings, and a local weather forecast app. Healthy.

As for Anja, eldest daughter, we gave her her own phone for her 18th birthday. It was embarrassingly hard for me to do after resisting the norm for so long! I felt a little bit like I was ignoring my own parental values, but of course that’s ridiculous, she was becoming an adult, she is leaving for college, she is at the trailhead of Life Without Parents Mountain and OF COURSE SHE NEEDED A PHONE. As soon as we gave it to her (or as soon as she found out we were giving it to her, haha) it was really exciting. REALLY exciting. It felt like a fun step along the path to her future, a little token to mark her official adulthood.

I asked my big girls last night how they felt about the way I had handled the issue of screens in their young lives. They both said they appreciate the avoidance of the addiction they see in the young people around them. According to Anja and Greta, the lack of screens as a norm has kept movie watching as a something special, as well as set an unspoken boundary between them and unlimited phone screen time. Greta specifically thinks she does use her phone far too much. (I have to disagree… she loses it constantly and doesn’t seem to care, precisely because she doesn’t see it as a necessity.) They also think that part of their good relationship stems from never having any social media accounts, as well as having more screen based school classes, which makes them feel like they already spend too much time staring at a screen without the addition of a cell phone. They can see the fun of it from the outside, specifically they have talked about downloading Pinterest, but ultimately, their personalities have taken a more analog life route, and they just don’t feel the need to be on social media at all. (Anja made an Instagram account recently, posted once, and seems to have let it die.)

Now, it would be unfair of me to tout my big girls’ healthy relationship with screens while ignoring the way I have parented Sylvi, the 6 year old, the baby of the family. As with all youngest, her upbringing is much more influenced by older children. I still limit her movie watching to special occasions… it just feels like there are more special occasions in her life than there were for the older girls.

And one last thing to note: New York Times Word Games. Every day, obsessively, all our girls Anja, Elka, Ingrid and I play Wordle, Connections, and Strands. (And Elka and Ingrid often play Spelling Bee.) We don’t subscribe, and we don’t play all the free games, only the ones listed, but it is definitely WAY MORE SCREEN TIME than I ever would have allowed in my younger parenting days!!

It remains to be seen how the younger girls develop relationships with phones as they get older. We plan to get each of them a phone for their 18th birthday and not a moment before. We plan to maintain a lifestyle where screens play a minuscule part of each day. We plan to foster a relationship with phones that highlights them as communication tools between loved ones, not unlimited playthings.

Nowadays there is a lot more awareness about the connection between smart phones and mental health struggles, especially among young people. This breaks my heart, and my own girls are very aware of it, and I think that helps them to want to stay away. But ultimately, having never introduced the phone as the norm, they’ve developed lives that are full already without the need of a device. Also, I admit that I do not always have a healthy relationship with my phone, and that bothers them a lot. They don’t like it when I’m distracted by a glowing thing. They don’t like it when I “don’t have time” to pursue my own hobbies because I’ve spent all my time scrolling through documentation of the hobbies of strangers. They’re onto me! They make me want to be better!

Actually, I’m realizing right now that in giving my kids a life free from Influencers, they have become the ones who influence me every day to be my most authentic, whole, envy-free, real-time self. Among all my terrible parenting moves over the years, that thought makes this one decision seem like a good one.