Engaging Friends & Caregivers

Clarify House Rules and Expectations with Individual Caregivers and Babysitters

Do you want to have a shared understanding of when and how any caregivers use their own personal devices around your children? How about whether there are house rules for how and when, if ever, screens are available to your children?

It is best to clarify your house rules and expectations up front before a caregiver begins. Town and Country, the largest domestic placement agency in California, shares examples of professional vs. unprofessional mobile phone use while on the job, which can inform your thinking about device usage.

Define Screen Use Agreements with Extended Family or Friends You Vacation With 

Consider Co-creating Phone/Device Norms with your Child’s Friendship Group

Like you, families all around you desire a healthy relationship with tech, so huddle up to join forces. Your efforts here will generate an immediate impact on your child’s daily experience.

Consider your ripple effect.

If you don’t want your child’s mobile phone to affect group dynamics and interrupt play and socializing out and about, consider:

• Removing (or limiting access to) YouTube, video games, and social media on their mobile phone. Your child can access these attention seekers at home instead. Why should it be in their pocket?

• Encouraging your child to stow their phone when out and about with friends or when at their friends’ homes.

• Reminding your child how their own phone use can disrupt in-person time with friends.

For younger kids, do you want to host screen-free playdates at your home? If so, clarify in a matter-of-fact tone that no screens are available during playdates, and direct the kids’ attention to other available activities and supplies.

If a child comes to your house with their own device, you can likewise ask them to stow it in a designated spot. Again, a matter-of-fact tone that’s free of any judgement tends to go over surprisingly smoothly.

Huddle with friends’ parents to co-create group norms or agreements. 

Invite your child’s friends’ parents over for coffee, dinner, or drinks to share observations, air concerns, share wisdom and constructive tips, and come together as a group around this topic. 

Do you want to co-create some agreements about screen use when your children are together?

Your child’s peer group will have the biggest effect on your child’s screen wants and needs so why not lean in together and build some collective strength? 

Contact us (info@screensense.org) if you’d like ScreenSense to facilitate a conversation with your peer group of families. Parents are hungry for collective action as most screen-related parenting issues are social rather than individual. Sometimes it’s easier to have an outsider get this conversation started.

Schedule regular free play (ideal for kids in grades 3-6)! 

Gone are the days of neighborhood kids playing hide-n-seek until dinner time.  Today’s kids are busy with scheduled activities after school so the neighborhoods are quiet. 

The solution?  Scheduled free play! 

Reach out to your child’s friend’s families and see if you can find a day of the week (e.g., Thursdays from 3-6pm) when kids meet up within boundaries for old-school free play. No adults needed! If the kids don’t have prior experience free playing on their own, it can help to lay out ground rules and scaffold them at the start.

Alternatively, send out an impromptu text to organize friends and neighbors for a “pop up free play” at a local park or school yard.

Challenge teens to make their own friend-group agreements around tech use

Could your teen suggest to their friends that they try some group challenges? For example:

• Everyone agree to stow their phones sometimes when they hang out, with advanced notice.

• The first person to reach for their phone has to face some silly group-defined consequence.

• Remove social media from their phones together for one week and debrief the experience.

If a teen in your life would like to more deeply engage in this type of work, youth-led initiatives include the Log Off Movement, Look Up, starting your own Luddite Club, and adding your voice to My Social Truth.

Consider Hosting Phone-free Gatherings 

Consider Phone Norms on Your Child’s Sports Teams

Reduce your ripple effect.

If you don’t want your child’s mobile phone to affect team dynamics and interrupt sports play and impromptu socializing, consider telling your child to stow their phone immediately before, during, and immediately after practice. 

Explain the perks of being present with teammates for those in-between moments in a carpool and walking to and from the field. 

You may also want to remove (or limit access to) YouTube, video games, and social media on their mobile device.  Your child can access these attention seekers at home instead.

Huddle up with a coach to shape group norms.

Consider brainstorming with your child’s coach ways to preserve the sports field, sidelines, and associated team carpools for social interaction, presence, and focused play.

Perhaps the coach could suggest team norms like no phones during sports-related carpools and phones stashed in bags on silent mode during practices and tournaments - the effect on team camaraderie and engagement is palpable when expectations around tech are clear. But community norms must be explicit.

Coaches could also check their own phone habits during practices to make sure they’re likewise modeling a fully engaged experience.

With some simple, up-front communication, a coach can set clear expectations around tech use for their team.