This book is about connections and how we establish and maintain the kinds of relationships that will help us all live up to our potential in the digital age. The project has been for me its own case study in the alchemy of chance meetings; connecting with teachers, parents, and students all around the country; reconnecting with old friends and colleagues; making new online friends; and discovering new technological applications that have transformed the process of research and writing.
It began with a fortuitous meeting at HarperCollins, in which Lisa Sharkey invited me to have a conversation about writing a book, and asked Gail Winston, executive editor, to join us. From the moment I met Gail, I was struck by her integrity and acuity. Since then, I have come to cherish her warmth, humor, and wisdom. Through Gail I connected with my agent, Kim Witherspoon, whose tenacity and belief in the book have been unwavering. At each stage in the process of writing this book, these two extraordinary women have been my polestars, keeping me balanced, guiding me brilliantly through this project.
At HarperCollins, I am also very grateful to Maya Ziv, editor, for her meticulous attention to detail during every stage of this process, and Robin Bilardello for creating the perfect book jacket. I hope that everyone judges the book by your brilliant cover! I thank Stephen Wagley for his diligent work as copy editor, and at InkWell Management I thank William Callahan for keeping everyone connected.
I will be forever indebted to my friend, fellow psychologist and prolific writer Michael Thompson, who helped in so many ways, especially in connecting me to Teresa Barker, who became my invaluable partner in this process. I could not imagine a more dedicated, intelligent, and delightful person to work with! I always looked forward to “going to work” on our smartphones, headsets, Evernote, and joinme.com with such a calm, upbeat, meticulous, and utterly professional colleague. My collaboration with Teresa, whom I have yet to meet IRL, is a glorious example of how technology can facilitate thrilling working relationships between two people who sit down to work together thousands of miles apart.
For her part, Teresa extends thanks to her family—husband, Steve Weiner; son, Aaron, and daughter-in-law, Lauren; daughters, Rachel and Rebecca; beloved mentor and mother-in-law, Dolly Joern; sister (and schoolteacher), Holly; and parents, George and Maxine, for their invaluable contributions—and to soul sisters Sue, Margaret, Kathy, Leslie, and the Elizabeths, whose friendships, begun the old-fashioned way, have flourished across years and screens. And to Michael, who e-mailed one December day to introduce a friend.
The research and networking for this book took me into more than thirty schools, also thousands of miles apart. Most were independent schools; public schools welcomed us, too. There, and in focus groups coast to coast, I interviewed more than 1,000 children ages four to eighteen, more than 500 parents, and more than 500 teachers, representing a diverse range of backgrounds. The one thing they all had in common was an eagerness to share from their own discovery, delight, and difficulty with the impact of technology on their lives.
I was able to do much of the research for this book thanks to my long-standing consulting work and close collegial relationships with many heads of schools, principals, faculty, parents, and students. Educators understand and hold dear the concept of the teachable moment: that growing up is full of missteps, and that an essential pathway to learning life’s big lessons is to learn from our mistakes. This is a book full of stories about really good kids making big and little mistakes. It’s about parents doing the best they can and learning along with their children. It’s about school principals and teachers discovering what it means to educate children in the age of technology. I am immeasurably grateful to each of you for your trust in allowing me to come into your schools to interview students, teachers, and parents. I wish I could name each of you who have been so helpful in this way, but of course to protect your privacy, I cannot.
Thanks to all the children, parents, teachers, school counselors, and therapists I have known over many years who, upon hearing about this project, volunteered to be part of it. I had several confidential conversations with college students and other young adults, as well as grandparents, to include their perspectives. You all know who you are, and I thank each and every one of you. This is a topic close to all of our hearts, and I was consistently moved by the willingness of all those involved to tell me their stories—the voices in this book range from age two to eighty-nine.
Except for experts interviewed, all the names mentioned in this book have been changed to ensure privacy. Identifying details have also been changed for privacy, and many stories are composite stories, when several people shared similar information. I have chosen not to list the thirty schools that participated in this project in order to counter the temptation by anyone to guess where this or that happened, and to underscore that any story in this book could have happened in any number of places (indeed, many did happen in more than one school, one community, or one life!). We are all equally vulnerable, and rather than point fingers, let’s support each other and learn from one another.
In addition to interviews conducted confidentially, I would like to thank the following experts who generously contributed to this book through personal interviews: Craig Anderson, Mark Bertin, Ellen Birnbaum, Tina Payne Bryson, Dimitri Christakis, Gene Cohen, JoAnn Deak, Ned Hallowell, Mimi Ito, Jackson Katz, Mike Langlois, Madeleine Levine, Liz Perle, Denise Pope, Harvey L. Rich, Michael Rich, Kelly Schryver, Nancy Schulman, Robin Shapiro, Daniel Siegel, Lydia Soifer, Michael Thompson, Yalda Uhls, Donna Wick, and Maryanne Wolf. In their various and different ways, these professionals are all deeply committed to protecting childhood and family relationships, and I was honored by their willingness to contribute to the book.
I also want to thank my dear friend and inspiring colleague Janice Toben, a visionary and pioneer in developing social and emotional learning curricula. Janice is my partner in much of the SEL schoolwork that I do. Huge appreciation to her and our talented, dedicated, and delightful colleagues Rush Sabiston Frank, Nick Haisman, Elizabeth McLeod, and Alisa Andrews—for all the different ways we work together, at the InstituteforSEL.org and in schools, and for your help with this book.
My thanks to Tony Dopazo and his gang at Metro-Tech Services in Boston for their professional help with all things digital, all the time.
As a therapist, I am continuously awed by the depth and resilience of the people with whom I have the pleasure of working. I extend my deep appreciation to those of you who gave me permission to share aspects of our work together in this book. Two others deserve my thanks: my high school– and college-age research assistants who contributed to this book in numerous ways. Since one of these ways was to share confidential stories with me, you must remain nameless. You were each a total pleasure to work with!
I am so lucky to have such dear friends and extended family,and thank you for all the phone calls, stories, e-mails, links to YouTube, TED talks, texts, blogs, Instagrams, Facebook posts, and research articles that you took the time to send my way to help me stay current in this ever-changing field. Bits and pieces of so many of your lives are woven throughout this book that I am protecting your privacy in not naming names. However, please know how deeply I cherish your presence in my life and especially all the ways, technological and IRL, that you stayed connected and patient while I was so preoccupied with this project. Thank you for not pushing delete on me!
A special thanks to Carolyn Peter, Melanie Gideon, and Alexandra Merrill, all extremely accomplished wise women who so generously read the entire manuscript for me, each of whom brought her professional expertise and critical eye to the work.
And a shout out to my painting pals. Thank you for the pleasure of your friendship, artistic inspiration, and your patience with my many no-shows through the three years of my work on this book. Our studying, painting, and traveling together are the best new “lightest highlight” in my life.
This book is about sustaining family relationships, and I am so thankful to have the unending support of my family. In my first family, my parents Rosalind and Lee Steiner instilled in each of their daughters many of the traits and values that are described in this book (grit, optimism, resilience, curiosity) long before the field of SEL existed. Big love to my sisters Terry Steiner and Nancy Steiner, with whom I shared our childhood and first learned what it means to be family. To both my sisters’ families, all my nieces and nephews, and to all the Adair families down South, thanks for being such an engaged, helpful, and encouraging family. A most special thanks to Nancy and her husband, author David Michaelis, whose generosity, enthusiasm, sage advice, and unwavering support from start to finish have been invaluable.
To my other NYC family, my heartfelt thanks for your extraordinary gifts of time and hospitality; for the endless supply of “kitchen confidential” conversations and the warmth, wisdom, and humor they provided and that permeate this work. Your remarkable “sustainable family” graces these pages in so many ways, I cannot imagine having written this book without you. On the Boston homefront, my enduring love and gratitude to Margaret O’Neil, who is an essential part of my life and our family and without whom I could never do the work I do. To my goddaughters and their partners, Elizabeth Atterbury and Joe Kievett and Emily Atterbury and Diné Butler, thank you for the depth of our connection and your inspiration as artists, educators, and activists. To Eric Allon, old friend and longtime legal counsel and adviser: you are always there when I need you and you are always right!
Finally and foremost in my heart, my deepest love and gratitude go to my husband, Fred, and our children, Daniel and Lily. For thirty years Fred has wholeheartedly supported each new endeavor I take on, and the writing of this book was no exception. Fred, thank you for your utter and unquestioning belief in my work. I am in awe of your ability to help me hold on to my vision when I couldn’t see where I was going, your ability to ask the right and hard questions to help me get to the next level, and your patience with this process. Thank you forever for the depth of your love and intelligence that come through in our daily morning sessions with the newspapers, our evening dinners, and my meltdowns! Your unwavering commitment to this project, including reading (and sometimes rereading) every page, has been a great gift. Most of all, you have been my dearest partner in creating and sustaining our family. Everything I cherish about love, family, and connections is anchored by our partnership.
Long before apps and texts and tags, I called Fred my PPD—my “permanent prom date”—with love and amazement that we found each other. Just when I thought it wasn’t possible to love anyone or anything as much, along came our children. Daniel and Lily, it is through loving you that I have learned most deeply what it means to be a parent. I am profoundly grateful for all you have taught me about love, families, and growing up in the digital age. I am so touched by the consistency with which you each would ask “How’s the book, Mom?” and then offer some fresh insight or story, always lightening my load. I thank you for your humor, wisdom, your sharp readers’ eyes, and technological savvy. I am eternally grateful for your presence in my life, and for each and every way that we connect.