Episode 59: When raising kids in the digital age is too much, do this!

The Be THAT Mom Movement Podcast: Protecting kids in a digital world

Sometimes the day to day of raising kids these days is too much, but this episode talks about a few suggestions you can do to help you keep your focus and your resolve!

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

When looking at all the things that you're trying to manage with your kids, do you ever get overwhelmed and feel like, Oh my God, I cannot do this. Well today's episode is going to talk about how we focus on these things and a way for us to have more perspective, stay tuned,

Speaker 2 (00:22):

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, Hey friends,

Speaker 1 (00:48):

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 today's episode is coming to you from my front porch. Yes, it is true. I am not in my closet today, but today I am just feeling like I want a change of pace in new scenery while I chat with you.

Speaker 1 (01:36):

I think we can all agree that things have been heavy in our world. I know a lot of you listen to me from all over the world, which is such an amazing thing. And thank you so so much for tuning in. I have had some amazing reviews of the podcast come in in the last week. And I just thank you so much for your kind words and for tuning in and listening to me, if you haven't left me a review, please hop over there. It's very simple to do through the Apple app or whichever app you're listening to me through because that will help me to rank higher and be kind of pushed out into the inboxes of parents, looking for something of this nature to, you know, guide them. And it's always my goal to just get this into the ears of more moms and more parents in general, because this is absolutely a realm of parenting that is here to stay and we cannot ignore.

Speaker 1 (02:32):

So when you leave me review, that's going to help me to pop up the ranks for podcast and help more people. And we all need to be that mom. Right. So if you haven't yet done that, please do that. Thank you so, so much in advance. So today I want to take you back for a second. So I don't know if you've listened to my first podcast, but in them I talked about how I was born very premature. And one of being born premature sometimes is the vision of the baby being affected depending on how much oxygen they're exposed to when they're first born. So this is knowledge that I believe back when I was born, it wasn't as highly regulated or wasn't known. And therefore I have had very poor vision from when I was a kid. I don't know when it exactly declined, but it was discovered that I had poor vision when I was about the age of 14.

Speaker 1 (03:26):

It's kind of funny because I was in this class in high school, my freshman year that was kind of set up to be kind of like a college class where we were lectured to versus, you know, just busy work. So it was kinda set up different and I was required to pay attention to a lecture and take notes. And so that was the time that I discovered I could not see the board and, you know, got my eyes checked. And then I was like, Holy cow, the trees have leaves. I, you know, up until that time for, I don't know how long they had just appeared like green blobs. Like I just hadn't seen the world in that much detail. Right. So that was an amazing thing. But I do have very poor vision both near and far. So I promise this has a relation to this podcast.

Speaker 1 (04:10):

So hang with me. So recently over the past year, I have needed to go to the eye doctor. I wear contacts most of the time. I prefer that, especially when I'm working, I want to have my contacts on, especially now because of COVID wearing goggles or a shield. It's easier for me to wear the goggles that I have than it is a shield that also blocks my mouth when I visit patients that are hard of hearing as it is. And then putting a mask over my mouth and a shield in front of my mouth really blocks my voice. And it's so much harder to get through the visit. So I prefer to wear my goggles. Okay. So over the past year, I've needed to go to the eye doctor. My eye doctor I'd had for years had dropped my insurance right before COVID started. And that's when I was due for my next eye exam.

Speaker 1 (04:58):

And so I could not go and get my eye exam because of all of this stuff going on with COVID. So I finally found a new ID doctor and went to see him last week. And in the course of our visit, he told me that I had inflammation in my left eye, around my cornea. And while, you know, nothing major, easily treatable with some eyedrops, he said, I need to use these eyedrops for seven to 10 days and not wear a contact in that eye. And so that the prospect of that really kind of choked me up a little bit in the moment, because it is so, so hard to work right now with the mask and then to put the shield or the goggles on. And so the prospect of having to wear the shield for the next week was just, you know, no fun.

Speaker 1 (05:39):

And so he tells me, you can just wear one contact. It's not going to damage your vision. Long-term to wear one contact your eyes, or your brain will just get used to, you know, when you need to see it's going to use that eye, which seems totally bizarre to me. But, you know, I was like, okay, well that's news because then I can just wear my goggles, like I'm used to wearing, and I'll just wear that one contact. So for someone who doesn't have very poor vision, probably, you know, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But for me that my left eye, the eye that it's in, it's really hard to see with no correction. So therefore I'm pretty much working with one eye with everything that I do both near and far. So you wouldn't think that that's a big deal, right?

Speaker 1 (06:22):

Like just use that one eye. Well, I don't know if you realize this, but there's actually a lot to our vision that needs both eyes. And one of those things is depth perception. And so when we look at something, we can't tell whether or not it's closer or further away without the use of both of our eyes. I mean, you can, but it's, you know, some of the depth perception just isn't there unless you have both eyes. So in my week of working in my nurse practitioner job, I have one of the biggest things I've struggled with is when I need to take a drop of blood from a person's finger, I do a diabetes screening on them, and I need to take that drop of blood. But when you go to do a precise, what I want to call it, precise technique in collecting it with the little device that I use, it can be hard to collect that little drop of blood when I only have one eye to see it.

Speaker 1 (07:13):

Right. I know this sounds crazy. Please don't report me to the authorities, but you know, all in all, I am providing safe care. I get it done. But I have to look at that person's finger in that drop of blood, kind of with, you know, from a couple of different angles in order to get the perspective and to draw that drop of blood into the little device in order to do my test. Right. Okay. So that is so important for me to be able to look at the different angles, right? In order to collect the drop of blood Walton, the analogy that I want to make for this in relation to raising our kids in the digital world, is that when it comes to all of this stuff going on right now, all the heavy things in the world, not digital related, but you know, just all the things going on in the world right now that we're not sure where they're going.

Speaker 1 (08:02):

We're not sure who to trust. All of those things added on top of us navigating all the digital things. It can seem overwhelming, but I think that when it comes to raising our kids and, you know, going through the day-to-day stuff of, you know, like putting the phone up at night and setting the boundaries, it seems so cumbersome. And it seems overwhelming. And it seems like you just want to not do it right. Well, if you take a step back and look at it from a different angle and look at it from all perspectives and give it time to do the things it's supposed to do with guiding your children, you will see that it has an effect that with that depth perception of time, that you are able to positively impact your kids by guiding them. So while the day-to-day the close-in focus of those issues and the, you know, whatever rules and boundaries you're setting and how you're trying to guide them can seem so cumbersome and can seem in focus, but out of focus and, you know, just the whole big picture, you can kind of lose it in the daily things, right?

Speaker 1 (09:15):

If you can take a step back from that and really look at the big picture, you'll see that when you're looking with two eyes and you see the depth of everything that is going on your efforts today, and every day are going to be worth it. Right. And I bring that up because as I think about my own family, our troubles started where things kind of really came to a head in 2019. And it had probably been two to three years that we had given a gaming console with no guidance. We had given smartphones with no guidance, no limitation set up, absolutely nothing. Like we were completely clueless as to the impact of all of this stuff. Truly. So if you're there and you're trying to course correct, no judgment, don't guilt yourself just course correct. And keep moving. Okay. So when I look at how things are now, it's such an amazing thing.

Speaker 1 (10:10):

And I kind of feel like the ages of my kids and how it's all played out. Like on, in looking from one eye, it feels like such a heavy blow. And, you know, like I look at all the things that are available now with bark, with the pinwheel phone, with the gab phone, with the tick talk, watch all the things that are out there. Now, if I had had those back, when my kids were younger, things would have been so much simpler, so much easier, less overwhelming, all of that stuff. I mean, on one, you know, in one sense, right? When I look at that, I think why couldn't these things have been around when my kids were that age, but on the other hand, what I see now is that their ages and how everything played out was kind of a gift for us.

Speaker 1 (10:56):

And I think that all of us can choose to have that viewpoint when it comes to our kids and what we're going through, you can make it meaningful in your life. If you look at each one of the challenges is a gift and a way for us to grow stronger, both individually and as families. So with my kids, if you haven't heard some of my other podcasts where I talk about it, they are about four years apart. And each was given a phone that had more capabilities at a younger and younger ages. We went on the oldest one, her first phone, there was no smartphone that existed. It was simply, you know, a flip phone, something like that maybe had texting capability, but it was really cumbersome to text and no social media, none of that stuff. Okay. She still got those things at a young age and without guidance, but the capabilities were just not there as young of an age as it was for the middle one and the youngest.

Speaker 1 (11:49):

And so our challenges have been different for each one of them, but it's almost amazing to look at it now and to see how we had to manage things with each one of them. If I could go back, I absolutely would change some of the choices that I made. Even now. I feel like with our youngest, we made some very drastic changes that were so, so hard in the moment. But now looking back, looking with my two eyes and a perspective and some depths of the whole situation, we did exactly what we needed to do in the moment I followed my mother's intuition, my gut feeling on some things that others were denying were present, and we did what we had to do at the time. And now what we're seeing are the benefits of that, of our course correcting. But my point in bringing all of this up is that I can see from the other side now, not that we're through all of the hard years or through all the teenage years, you know, we have one smack dab in the middle and one that's right at the end of the teenage years.

Speaker 1 (12:51):

And we're still, you know, helping them to navigate and get through these years where they don't have as much awareness of the risks and all of the things out there. So, you know, very much still in the thick of it. But yet I think those hardest years are like the middle school years in the early high school years. And that's why giving them a fully functional device that connects them to all of the world just complicates those years, because those years are so hard as it is. But now looking on the other side of it, it was so worth it and I would change things, but I also wouldn't change some things because what it has done is brought strength to us as a family and to our kids and us individually, because of the things that we went through. And so if we look at things too closely, all the time to close up, we lose that perspective.

Speaker 1 (13:44):

We lose that depth perception. And so if you're overwhelmed in the moment with the things that you were having to deal with and the challenges and the you're the only person parent that does this, and I'm the only kid that doesn't have this, and why are you so mean or strict or whatever, you know, whatever you're hearing from your kids, take it and put it in the bigger perspective of things in their life, their childhood, their developmental process, to give you some perspective and some depth perception so that you can stay the course. I hope that makes sense to you that I have made some sort of sense with this analogy today, but I surely have been kind of sitting back a little bit in awe realizing that some of the things that I was so unsure about were truly the correct decision at the time.

Speaker 1 (14:38):

And if you're in that moment or you're trying to make a huge course, correction just know that your gut instincts are likely right on point for what it is you need to do. So in the make decisions to help guide your kids, knowing that they cannot navigate these things alone, and that is our responsibility to help them navigate that. But also remember the big picture that these decisions right now do add up and have an impact. So giving into it one time and, you know, letting them have more screen time or whatever is not a big deal, but make sure you keep the bigger perspective and the depth perception in line using, you know, all of the things, when you think about their future in order to continue to stay the course, guiding them with love and, you know, just giving them the things that they need to grow into responsible and healthy and balanced adults.

Speaker 1 (15:37):

Okay. So I hope this was helpful for you and I have a few episodes coming up that are going to have some more tools for you that I discovered that I think you will love. And we will just keep on rolling with this. Okay. So hang in there and be that mom for your kids. And when I say be that mom, it doesn't mean that you are strict and have all these rules, but it means that you are coming from a place of love. You were helping to guide them in this digital world. You were being responsible as a parent, knowing that they cannot do this alone. And you were also helping them to learn how to use tech healthy in responsibly. And to know that we can't keep it from them completely, but it is our responsibility. I can't talk responsibility to help guide them. Okay. So be that mom and be that mom's strong. Take care.

Speaker 2 (16:37):

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. Hey,

Speaker 1 (16:51):

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