Chapter 32

Help Them with External Triggers

After understanding the internal triggers driving kids to distraction and helping them create a schedule using the timeboxing technique, the next step is to examine the external triggers in their lives.

In many ways, it’s easy to blame the explosion of unwelcome cues tugging at our kids’ attention. With their phones buzzing, the television flickering, and music blaring into their earbuds, it’s difficult to understand how our kids are able to get anything done. Many kids (and adults) pass their days mentally swinging from one thing to the next. Constantly reacting to external triggers, children are left with few opportunities to think deeply and concentrate on anything for long.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study looking at youth and technology in the United States, “95 percent of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one.” Not surprisingly, 72 percent of parents whose kids’ have a smartphone are concerned they “pose too much distraction.”

In many ways, it is parents and guardians who have enabled this situation. After all, we are the ones who gave permission and often provided the funds to purchase the distracting devices we’ve come to resent. We’ve bowed down to our kids’ demands in ways that may not benefit them or our households.

Many parents don’t consider whether their children are ready for a device with potentially damaging consequences and give in to the protest that “everyone in my class has a smartphone and an Instagram account.”

As parents, we often forget that a kid wanting something “really, really badly” is not a good enough reason.

Imagine a young child is standing at the edge of a swimming pool while their friends are all playing in the water and having a great time. The child desperately wants to jump in, but you’re not sure they know how to swim. What would you do?

We know swimming pools can be very dangerous, but despite the risks, we wouldn’t keep our children from enjoying the water forever. Rather, once they are old enough, we’d make sure they learned to swim. Even after they had the basics down, we’d keep an eye on them until we were confident about their ability to enjoy the pool safely.

In fact, we can easily think of a host of activities we wouldn’t let our kids experience before they’re ready: reading certain books, watching violent films, driving a car, having an alcoholic drink, and, of course, using digital devices—each comes in its own time, not whenever a kid says so. Exploring the world and navigating its risks are an important part of growing up, but giving a kid a smartphone or other gadgetry before they have the faculties to use it properly is just as irresponsible as letting them jump headfirst into a pool without knowing how to swim.

Many parents justify handing over smartphones in exchange for the peace of mind of knowing they can contact their children at any time, but unfortunately, they often find they’ve given their child too much, too soon. The swimming pool analogy is useful here. When children learn to enjoy the water, they start in the shallow end. Perhaps they wear floaties or use a kick-board to help them get comfortable with the water. Only later, when they have demonstrated their competence, are they free to swim on their own.

Instead of giving our kids a fully functional pinging and dinging smartphone, it’s better to start with a feature phone that only makes calls and sends text messages. Such a phone can be purchased for less than twenty-five dollars and does not come with the apps that can distract a child with external triggers. If location tracking is a priority, a GPS-enabled wristwatch like the GizmoWatch keeps track of kids through an app on parents’ phones but only allows incoming and outgoing calls to and from select numbers.

As kids get older, a good test of whether they are ready for a particular device is their ability to understand and use the built-in settings for turning off external triggers.

Do they know how to use the Do Not Disturb feature? Do they know how to set their phones to automatically turn off notifications when their schedule demands concentration? Are they able to place their phones out of sight and out of mind during family time or when friends come over? If not, they’re not ready, and they need to take a few more “swimming lessons,” so to speak.

Though parents tend to fixate on the latest technology craze, we often forget about older technologies, which can be just as much of a problem. There’s little justification for allowing kids to have a television, laptop, or any other potentially distracting external trigger in their rooms; these screens should be kept in communal areas. The temptation to overuse these devices is too much to expect our kids to manage on their own, particularly in the absence of parental oversight.

Kids also need plenty of sleep, and anything that flickers, beeps, or buzzes during the night is a distraction. Anya Kamenetz, author of The Art of Screen Time, writes that making sure kids get enough sleep is “the one issue with the most incontrovertible evidence.” Kamenetz strongly advises that “screens and sleep don’t mix” and implores parents to keep all digital devices out of kids’ rooms at nighttime and to shut down screens at least an hour before bedtime.

It’s equally important to help our kids remove unwanted external triggers during activities like homework, chores, mealtime, playtime, and hobbies that require sustained attention. Just as you may ask your boss for time to focus at work, parents need to respect kids’ scheduled time as well. If they are spending time on homework according to their timeboxed schedules, we must, of course, minimize distraction. But the same rule applies to scheduled time with their friends or playing video games. If they’ve made their plans in advance and with intent, it’s your job to honor that plan and leave them alone.

Recall the critical question: “Is this external trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Sometimes, as parents, we can be a source of distraction. The dog barking, the doorbell ringing, dad’s subsequent command to answer the door, mom’s question about the baseball team’s game schedule, or a sibling’s invitation to play can all interfere with the time scheduled for something else. Though these interruptions seem trivial, any disturbance at the wrong time is a distraction, and we must do our part to help kids use their time as they planned by removing unwanted external triggers.

 

REMEMBER THIS


      Teach your children to swim before they dive in. Like swimming in a pool, children should not be allowed to partake in certain risky behaviors before they are ready.

      Test for tech readiness. A good measure of a child’s readiness is the ability to manage distraction by using the settings on the device to turn off external triggers.

      Kids need sleep. There is little justification for having a television or other potential distractions in a kid’s room overnight. Make sure nothing gets in the way of them getting good rest.

      Don’t be the unwanted external trigger. Respect their time and don’t interrupt them when they have scheduled time to focus on something, be that work or play.