How You Can Help Eliminate Your Child's Screen Addiction
Learn what you can do to ELIMINATEānot just manageātheir screen addiction. Really.
Step 1: Watch this video.
Step 2: Click the button below to begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.
Phone Addiction and the Effects of Technology
In recent decades technology has advanced so quickly that socially we have struggled to adjust. We all donāt even use the same words to describe fairly common problems. When people talk about phone addiction, they might be referring to any combination of the following:
- Internet surfing
- Texting
- Calling (audio)
- Video calling
- Video game addiction
- Social media addiction
- Addiction to screen time
- Virtual addiction
- Porn addiction
- Abuse of digital devices
- Electronics addiction
- Addiction to technology
The list of devices used in addiction to a virtual world is endless: phone, computer, television, iPad, video game console, and so on.
What Is Addiction?
All the above electronic devices have some potentially positive usesāsometimes lifesaving usesāso I am not suggesting that electronic technology itself is a problem. No, the problems arise when we human beings abuse the use of these devices, as we have learned to abuse so many other good things in the world: food, exercise, education, books, travel, politics, and more.
It should be obvious, then, that we need to be aware of āwhenā we change our use of an electronic device from a asset to an addiction. It might help first to clearly define what an addiction is. Itās not about the number of hours we do a thing. Itās about how that behavior affects our lives.
Addiction is the compulsive use of any substance, person, feeling, or behavior with little or no concern for the potentially negative social, psychological, job, and physical consequences. Perhaps an even shorter definition might help: Addiction is using anything that affects us negatively, and which we canāt easily quit.
Do You Have a Child Who is Addicted to Electronic Devices or Other Screens?
Look for the Signs.
Dependence on phone
Does your child seem to look at the content on his or her phone like a kind of emotional food?
Sneaking
If their phone use is restricted, do they sometimes sneak extra time?
Irritable
If their phone use is interrupted by other activities, or by lack of Internet reception, do they become irritable? Like someone withdrawing from a substance?
Isolated
Do they often use their phone in a place where they can be alone?
Neglecting responsibilities
Are they neglecting their chores, homework, and other members of the family?
Upset
Do they get upset about some communications on social media? Or brag about others?
Angry
Do you get āattitudeā from them when you tell them to put the phone away for whatever reason?
Procrastinate
Do they consistently put off homework and other duties to be on their phone?
Annoyed
If you require that they put their phone away to do something else for you, are they annoyed?
Takes phone to bed
If you didnāt impose restrictions, would they go to bed with their phone?
Doesn't listen
Do you often have to repeat yourself to him or her, because the first time you spoke, they were completely immersed in their phone?
Don't hear you
When you call them for dinner, is it like theyāre deaf or dead?
Phone use at meals
Do they ever use their phone while youāre having a family activity, including meals?
Whining
When you interrupt their phone use, do they often say things like, āJust five more minutes,ā or āOh, come onā?
Disconnected
Do they have significant activities in the real world outside school and homeāsports, outdoors?
These are not small questions. One out of three teens goes to sleep with their phone ON themātouching themānot just nearby. Itās an epidemic.
A recent large medical study indicated that failure to limit screen time was the most important single factor negatively affecting brain function in children and teens. Phones have been proven to adversely affect their emotional, physical, social, and academic health. We have to pay attention to this disorder that has snuck up on us with alarming speed.
Are you not tired of having your child kidnapped by a screen? Do you want to help your child avoid effects that could negatively impact them for the rest of their lives? I wish I were exaggerating.
There IS a Solutionā
How to Help a Child Addicted to Their Phone
Iām here to tell you that there IS a solution for the symptoms youāre seeing in your child. And weāre not talking about controlling or minimizing the addiction. Thatās not nearly enough.
Weāre talking about a real transformation where your child becomes truly happy, fulfilled, responsible, and, well, a human being again.
Welcome to the answers you've been hoping for.
For a long time now, youāve been looking for ways to help your child. I greatly admire what youāre doing right now. Youāre looking for answers, youāre trying to love and help your child, which is way more than most parents do.
And finally, youāre in the right place.
Desperately Looking for Help for Your Child's Phone Addiction
Itās like youāve been paddling around in the middle of the ocean, desperately looking for help, and nowāalmost unbelievablyāitās here. This is the ship youāve been looking for.
How could I possibly make such an extravagant promise? Because I KNOW how to teach parents how to help their children deal with the life-altering distractions of phones. What I teach has been used by uncounted THOUSANDS of parents, and it works CONSISTENTLY.
Iām not trying to sell you something here that weāre GOING to do. You donāt have to wait. The training begins right now. In the next few seconds, Iāll be teaching you things about your children and yourselves that youāve never known.
I repeat: Iām not here to tell you ABOUT what Iām offering you. Iām beginning now to GIVE you what you need. Itās my gift to you.
What a relief to know that right now youāre exactly where youāve wanted to be. You can learn what you need to learn. Finally, you can feel encouraged. You can feel hope. You can help your child.
And Iām going to help you do that.
Your Child is a Phone Addict,
and You Want to Do something About It
I know youāve tried to change things: maybe counseling, certainly nagging, books, programs, yelling, controlling. But your child still buries their face in a screenātexting, playing games, and imitating human connection on social media.
And youāre frustrated and tired.
Youāve been looking for something that works, and here it is: principles that have proven to work hundreds of thousands of times all over the world.
You would not be here unless two things were true:
If parents are thoroughly committed to learning and practicing what Iām going to share with you, predictably I see children quit their electronics addiction, and instead they become happyāeven after everything else has failed.
You become happy too.
It is NOT hopeless
Iām here to help you, and Iāll be using the insight and experience of counseling with thousands of parents, and from writing 20 books and endless articles on the subject, as well as appearing on 1600 radio and television shows and presenting seminars all around the worldāand much more.
You are about to change the world around you, and you donāt have to do it alone, which is miserable and frustrating. Youāve already proven that with your own experience.
What You Will Learn That You Donāt Already Know
So now the question that has to be on your mind: what am I going to teach you about your child and addiction that you donāt already know?
What am I going to say that you havenāt already read in a parenting book or heard from a program somewhere?
This is going to be revolutionary for you to hear, so slow down your brain and listen with your soul: What does a child NEED more than anything else? After food, water, and air, the answer is SO obvious, and yet we keep missing itāover and over.
To see the answer, letās start with an infant. When an infant criesāother than from obvious physical paināwhat does he want? You already know, because you just pick him up. Youāre pretty smart. You already know that every child wants to feel cared for. Every child wants to feel LOVED.
Picking them up and holding them is just a demonstration of that. And if youāre genuine in caring about them, they FEEL it.
But infants are relatively easy to love. They smile and melt your heart, make cute little noises, and laugh in ways we never hear anywhere else. Theyāre adorable.
But when they get older, they learn to spill things, make messes, ferociously say NO when you tell them what to do, scream in their car seat, fight with their siblings, refuse to listen to you, say ugly and hateful things to you and other people . . . and disappear into their phones.
They get a LOT harder to love, and when that happens, we really donāt know what to do. Usually we try to control their behaviorāand we might even temporarily succeedābut it doesnāt last, and we end up with kids who are still addicted and unhappy.
Weāre not so happy either.
Loving Your Children Unconditionally
Let me say this another way:
If our children become more difficult to love as their behavior changes, that proves we donāt know how to love them UNCONDITIONALLY.
If we love them unconditionally, weād love them no matter what.
But if loving them becomes more difficult when theyāre difficult when they behave badly, our love is conditional.
Unconditional love or Real Love means caring about another person without wanting anything from then in return, but we DO expect something in return for the āloveā we give our children: respect, cooperation, gratitude, and a certain level of reasonable and relatively easy behavior, which does not include screen addiction.
The Real Effect of Anger and Disappointment
Now more about unconditional love: That kind of love would mean that our love would not be affected by what they do. Thatās what unconditional love means.
But we really donāt know how to do that. How do I know? We PROVE it every time we become angry, or disappointed, or impatient, or irritated at them. Our anger and disappointment and frustration are undeniable PROOF that our love is not unconditional.
Deep inside, you know that what Iām saying is true, but let me demonstrate further: When other people are angry at YOU, do YOU like it? NO, you donāt. Not ever. Nobody does. When other people are angry at us, or when weāre angry at other people, weāre all saying, āLook at what you did to ME, or failed to do FOR ME.ā
In anger, weāre focused on OURSELVESāMe-Me-Meāand in that moment other peopleānotably our childrenāhear only four words, āI donāt love you.ā When weāre angry, weāre far too occupied with ourselves to unconditionally love another person.
I repeat:
When we are angry at another person, including our child, they hear only, "I don't love you."
I promise you that this is true.
No, we donāt MEAN to say that, but what else COULD people hear while our words, tone, and behavior are screaming ME-ME-ME? āI donāt love youā is what YOU hear and FEEL when people are angry at youāthink about it honestlyāand itās what our children hear and feel when weāre angry at them. And then we have an anxious child or anxious teenager.
Itās little wonder that they respond with their own anger.
Again, we do NOT mean to do this. We do not mean to hurt our children.
But it was inevitable, because WE were not loved unconditionallyāwhich means being consistently loved without disappointment or anger. We were not loved freely, without conditionsāso how could we possibly have learned how to unconditionally love our own children? IMPOSSIBLE.
Nobody is to blame. Our ignorance of Real Love simply perpetuated over generations. We donāt know how to love unconditionally because weāve never seen it or felt it with any consistency.
Childhood and Teenage Phone Addictionā
a Reaction to Not Being Loved Unconditionally
For emphasis, Iām going to say all this in a slightly different way:
When children behave badlyāwhen they are addicted to their phones, for exampleāit is almost always a reaction to them not feeling loved unconditionallyāloved with no disappointment, irritation, frustration, or anger. Your child uses their smart phone to ESCAPE the pain of the world. Full stop. What are you willing to do about that?
This could sound discouraging, even bleak. In some ways it IS bleak. Look at the worldāat the utter obsession with things that are distractions from our pain, from our not feeling loved: like endless entertainment, addiction to electronics, anger, controlling people, drugs, alcohol, sex, and on and on.
THERE is the proofāin our addiction to all those behaviorsāthat overall we do not know how to love people unconditionally. If we did, and I speak here with vast experience, these behaviors would not exist.
Children and Teenagers Who are Loved Unconditionally Don't Become Addicted to Phones and Other Devices
Iāve been teaching unconditional love now for so many years to so many parents that I can tell you this with complete certainty: When a child truly feels loved unconditionally, he or she DOES NOT become addicted to their phone.
Instead theyāre HAPPYāand responsible, and have all those qualities you wish they had.
With sufficient love, there is simply no NEED to turn to phones, games, social media, and other unproductive behaviors. Happy people donāt behave badlyālike being addicted to their phone, for example. Period. Full stop. It seems almost like this statement is too broad, too much. Itās not.
Why You're Not succeeding in Helping Your Children with their Phone Addiction
How many times have you wondered why a child isnāt hearing what youāre saying? Thereās an answer, and here it is: Because when youāre irritated, your child hears only āI donāt love you,ā and that is so devastating, that he or she hears none of the rest of the content of what you say.
So THAT is what I'll be teaching you:
How to LOVE your children unconditionally,
which then gives them a REASON to LISTEN to you.
If you love them unconditionally, they can HEAR you āwhat youāre really sayingābecause theyāre not distracted by their fear, not blinded and deafened by the āI donāt love youā message. Then it becomes possible for you to teach them anythingālike how to be loving and responsible themselves.
And if they have that powerful trifectaāthey feel loved, and they are loving and responsibleāthey are guaranteed to be happy, which is the ultimate goal for any parent, or, frankly, any person.
Your Children Can Learn to Be Happy
Your children can learn that being genuinely happy is way better than substituting screens, texting, games, and social media for real life.
Take my hand, and weāll talk about what you can doāand how I will support you. It will almost be like starting over in parenting. Youāre going to LEARN how to be a real parent, and your child will learn the lessons of life that will benefit him or her for the rest of their lives.
If you implement what you learn here, and if you do it consistently, you simply will not believe the differences youāll see in your child, and in you, and in your family.
Imagine it:
no more phone distractionsānone,
no more inattention,
no more tension in the family,
no more whining when you say it's time to be finished with a game or conversation.
Itās astonishing to see and to feel.
Our children are not bad. Weāre not bad.
We just have not known how to love and teach them.
Loving and Teaching Eliminates
Phone & Screen Addiction in Children and Teenagers
What weāre doing to help our kids with their screen addiction IS NOT WORKING.
Loving and teaching them does.
Rarely is it too late to change whatever unproductive behaviors youāre dealing with, not if youāre really willing to learn and to apply these principles to the interactions with your child. I can promise you, learning how to be a parent is WORTH IT.
Youāre about to learn how to ELIMINATE the behaviors in your children that are hurting them and making you crazy. Really.
I make you another promise:
Learning to be a loving, effective parent is EASIER than everything else youāve done as a parent.
Transforming, Not Managing Your Children
Weāre really going to get into this. This is not a casual effort. Weāre not looking to make your children more manageable. Thatās not even close to being enough.
Our mission is to help you to become a powerful and effective parent, and to help your child feel loved, and to be loving, responsible, and genuinely happy. Itās a transformation.
If you ARE truly committed to learning how to parent, IāM fully committed to teach you, and I will bring resources to the table you never thought about. The rewards are spectacularāas we have seen in uncounted thousands of families.
There is not a single thing youāll ever do that will ring through the ages more powerfully than being a loving and effective parent.
You can do this, so let's get started.
Click the button belowāitās freeāto begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.