I put my son to sleep every night.
While Emily takes our daughter into her room, to hold and rock her until she falls asleep, my son and I go to his bed for a book and a bit of conversation. After we’ve finished ten or fifteen minutes of reading, we recap our day, talk about our expectations for the following day, and discuss some of life’s great mysteries, like, “If there were no humans around, how do we know dinosaurs lived on Earth?” or what my favorite stuffie was when I was a little boy*.
Then, after I click the reading lamp off, he rolls over and snuggles up to me. Then, almost every night, I grab my phone and slide the screen dimmer down to its lowest setting, and scroll through Instagram or Threads, catch up on the day’s sports scores and news, or read the emails that I’ve been ignoring all day.
I do this because, without distraction, I’m likely to fall asleep right beside him. Which is fine. Great, even. And some nights I do just that, waking up and crawling in my bed beside Emily, who, by that point, has been asleep in our bed for hours. But sometimes, I like to stay awake for an extra hour, to hang out with Emily or watch a show, movie, or the beginning of a late game.
But mostly I do it because, like so many of us, I do it because I’m addicted to my phone.
And, like children do with most things, it’s something my son noticed recently.
“You look at your phone too much,” he said, his words lilted, as he was on the verge of falling asleep. I coaxed a bit more out of him before he fully went off to dreamland, asking him if he thought he wasn’t getting enough of my attention because of how much I stared into my phone. He assured me that wasn’t the case, though he may just have been trying to shut me up so he could go to sleep.
The next morning, as he got ready for school and Emily and I milled around the kitchen, prepping our kids’ breakfasts and lunches, I called a family meeting and discussed what he had told me right before he fell asleep. He had no memory of the mini-conversation but confirmed that he did think both Emily and I look at our phones too much. And we do. One sobering look at my screentime data shows that I look at my phone for as many as five hours out of the day. That’s nearly a third of my waking hours. That’s fucking insane.
I need to look at my phone less. I know this. I think everyone needs to look at their phones less. But it wasn’t until my son made it known that it was something impacting him did I truly consider the impact of this stupid piece of technology that I’m often staring into mindlessly.
And so, we instituted a new house rule: phones will go and stay in a basket on our kitchen counter where they will only be checked intentionally. The only condition, per our son, is that I can still scroll as I put him to sleep, lest I otherwise lay in a dark room for however long it takes him to konk.
In the two-or-so weeks since we’ve instituted this rule, I’ve noticed a few things. I already feel myself being more present, more patient, more interactive and engaged with our kids. Though I still sometimes have to remind myself of the rule (and, in a few cases, have been reminded of it by my son).
Most of all, I noticed how I sometimes give my kids too little credit for just how aware of the surrounding world they are.
Now that we’re on the right track with our phone usage, maybe it’s time for me to stop saying “fuck” so much.
*A little brown bear named “Christopher” aka Chris**. We still have him. My son slept with him last night. He’s still my buddy.
**This is what happens when you let Italian-American kids in the 1980s name things.
Those darn phones.
I'm glad to hear that your system is helping you be more present. When I switched back to the iPod for my music/podcast device last year, my average screen time has been less than an hour per day. Sure, I'm still consuming media but I'm much more intentional about it. Maybe this will help you further. Good read as always.