The term “accidental neglect” might sound a little harsh, but it also describes what your child experiences when you’re on your phone. You might be disconnecting from your kid without realizing it. Today, I’m talking all about what your child sees and feels when you are on your device and strategies for better phone etiquette around kids.

You’ll Learn:

• Why your kid often bothers or interrupts you when you’re on your phone
• How kids experience your phone use
• The difference between real-life and online interruptions
• 4 simple strategies to be more intentional with your tech and connected to your kid

As a society, we really aren't doing our kids a solid by having a distracted parenting experience. It's actually changing our children's nervous systems and their brain patterns. I believe that we can figure out new ways of relating to tech so that we can have a more connected experience for our kids and future generations.

Listen to learn how!

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Accidental Neglect

Even as an adult, I’ve noticed that I feel a little lonely when I am in a conversation or with someone and they look at their phone. 

You see them kinda glaze over, and their mind becomes totally consumed with whatever they’re looking at on the screen. 

And when someone is on their phone, you don't know what they're doing. You don't know if they're responding to a message, reading a news article or playing a game. You can't really see what's on someone else's device.

As adults, we can imagine what they might be doing because we also have these online worlds that exist on our devices that we engage with. We can take a guess at when they’re doing and soothe ourselves. 

Kids who don’t yet have an online life don’t have the ability to go through this mental process and put themselves in your shoes. They have no mental map of that online world. They don’t understand what you’re being drawn to.

So, when you are having a conversation with your child, helping them with their homework or playing a board game and you pick up your phone to check a notification, your kid feels rejected. They experience that moment as neglect, even though that’s not your intention. To them, the phone is almost like a sibling that they’re jealous of. 

When you get distracted, they get dysregulated. Next thing you know, you’re frustrated with your kid and think they’re being rude by interrupting or bothering you when you’re on your phone. You find yourself in a conflict or disciplining them. 

But in this situation, their nervous system is truly being affected. They feel like they’ve lost connection with you. It’s unsettling, and they don’t know how to deal with it. 

Real Life vs. the Online World

In real life (aka not online), when there is an interruption, the other person can see what’s happening. There is etiquette that we practice around this. 

With real-life interruptions, like an in-person conversation or a phone call, your child sees the other person or hears the phone ring, watches you pick it up and hears you speaking to the person on the other end. They experience it along with you. 

We also usually explain what is happening. We say, “Excuse me for a minute, I need to step outside and talk to my colleague.” You probably give them something else to do, like look at a book or color a picture. 

We communicate a lot of information and let them occupy themselves. You pause and provide a little mental map so that your child knows what is happening. They don’t see you as absent for an unknown amount of time. 

Online interruptions are not something your child can embody in this way. It’s nothing they can see or hear. What they see is that you are leaving them, you’re distracted and you seem to drift away. 

The goal here is not to never be on your phone. That just isn’t realistic for most of us. What I want you to do is begin to practice communicating to your child what it is you're doing.

Strategies for Better Phone Etiquette Around Kids

Kids under 10 years old really don’t have the ability to cognitively connect dots. That’s why it’s so important for you to narrate and communicate what is going on to help your child understand what’s happening. 

These strategies also help us to have a healthier relationship with our technology, create better boundaries about when we use technology and when we don't and decide on times that we want to fully connect with our kids.

Retrain your brain. The pings and dings coming from your phone create a sense of urgency to respond. But that urgency is fake. Very few things actually need your attention right then and there. Slowing down and remembering that this is not an emergency will help you so much.

Turn off notifications or put your phone on “do not disturb”. This gives you more power over when you interact with your device.

Pause and communicate what’s happening. Let your child know what you’re doing, how long it's going to take and give them a little idea of what they can do while they wait. You can think of this as a preview, letting your kid know what to expect. 

For example, “Excuse me, honey. I need to talk to the doctor for a minute to change an appointment. I'm gonna be on my phone for 5 or 6 minutes solving this problem. And then I'll sit down with you and have a snack.”

This is also a great exercise in self-awareness, because sometimes your explanation might be, “I’m feeling restless and I want to scroll social media for a few minutes.” You might find that you don’t love all of your reasons for picking up your phone. 

Work on your habits. There are two habits involved here - the way you relate to your phone and the way you relate and communicate with your kid. 

The first step in changing any habit is awareness. You start to catch yourself after your response. When this happens, you can reflect and decide how you want to handle it next time. 

Next, you might catch yourself in the middle. You might be looking at your phone and realize that you didn’t give your child that preview. So, you pause, put your phone down and communicate with them now. 

Eventually, you’ll train yourself to the point that when you get some information from your phone, you pause, connect with your kid, narrate what’s going on, do what you need to do and come back to them. 

As always, I encourage you to be gentle with yourself. If you’ve had a pattern where you’re on your phone a lot or super distracted with your kids, there’s no need to beat yourself up. Being mean to yourself will only get you stuck in self loathing and guilt.

Instead, you can simply say, “You know what? I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be more connected and slow things down in my life. And so I'm going to be really cautious about letting my phone distract me. If it distracts me, I'm gonna talk about it with my kids. If my kids are getting dysregulated, then I'm going to stop what I'm doing, connect with them, regulate them and then try to go again.”

Your child's relationship with you is always open to improvement, and your children's brain is plastic and moldable. Everything can be healed. 

Previous Episode Mentioned:

• Episode 145: The Art of Thriving Online with Amelia Knott

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Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn Childress. I'm a

life and parenting coach, and I've titled this

episode accidental neglect, which sounds a little

harsh and I don't wanna scare you. But I do wanna make you aware

of how your children experience

you when you're on your phone. I wanna give you some awareness

of what it's like when you're a little kid and you

see your parent on their device. But first, I wanna tell you

a little story about being an adult and noticing another

adult on their device. And it's a small little simple story

of my husband and I. So last night we're making dinner. I have

this whole new thing where I'm not really making dinner anymore because

I'm exploring new areas of my life where I don't have to do caregiving. It's

very interesting. So, anyway, I had already warmed up my

dinner and then he was kinda prepping his. So I was eating at

the table and he was in the kitchen and our kitchen table is really close

to our kitchen, so I could see him. I was sort of a little bit

distracted looking at my phone, but he wasn't sitting at the table yet. And then

he finishes warming his food up, and I sit down he sits down across from

me. I get I had been in a text conversation. So I got a

text from a friend, and I got the text and I

noticed it on my phone because I had my phone nearby at the table. And

then I replied, I had been talking to him and then I stopped talking to

him, maybe even possibly mid sentence, paused my

conversation with him, looked down at my phone, and started to text my friend.

And I said to him, oh, I got a text from Deb. I'm responding. And

I kind of narrated it out loud to him. And then he's like, okay. You

know, didn't think anything of it. And then I finished, I put my

phone down, and I start to eat, and I look up, and he is on

his phone. And I was like, what are you looking at?

What are you doing? And he's like, oh, I got a work text or a

work, you know, ping or something. And I was like, oh,

okay. So he finishes that. And I realized

that when someone is on their phone, you don't know what they're

doing. You don't know if they've been getting a notification from

somewhere or if they're reading or if they're playing a game

or kind of you don't really know what's going on because you can't really see

what's on someone's device. So as an adult to another adult,

I feel a little lonely when I am in a conversation or I'm with

someone and they look at their phone. And I've watched this

phenomena with teenagers, with their friends. You know, they're

in a conversation then, like, oh my god. Oh my god. And they look at

their phone and you can kinda see the person on the phone, like,

glazes over and they're just consumed with what they're seeing. And their

mind is totally engaged with what they're looking at on the phone. The other

person is just staring at them kind of, I don't know.

Should I look at my phone? Like, how long is this gonna be? This all

makes sense when you're an adult because I also have an online

world that exists on my device. Or if I'm a teenager, I

have an online world that exists on my device. So I

can kind of imagine in my mental map

what somebody else is doing when they get distracted by their

phone, especially, like, a friend or whatever. I'm like, oh, they're

answering a reply to, you know, their kid texted them

or something like that. But I have a guess

of what's happening, and I can kind of soothe myself. I can kinda

guess how long they'll be distracted, kind of justify why

they're doing it. I can do some mental gymnastics

to cope with that disconnection that happens in

that moment because I also have an online

life. So I can imagine. It's kinda like if you're a

mom and you're with another mom and you're in a conversation and they stop

talking because they deal with their kid, and then they come back and they keep

talking to you, and you just, like, don't even think anything of

it because you just normalize it. You're like, yeah. That's what it's like. Right?

Now, that's peer to peer, adult to adult or teen

to teen. Anyone who has an online life can kind

of imagine what it's like for someone else.

Here's the thing though. Children hopefully don't have

an online life and hopefully don't have a device.

So they don't have the ability

to go through any sort of mental

calculation or understanding or, you know, putting themselves in

your shoes. Cognitively, they can't do that, nor do

they have any experience of what is so attractive

to you about your phone. They don't understand what what you're being drawn to.

So when you are sitting there having a conversation with

your children, you're at a restaurant, you're making dinner, you're

picking them up in the carpool line, you're helping them

with their homework, you're playing a game,

whenever you're doing anything and then your phone sends a

notification or you go pick up your phone and you check

for stuff, your child experiences

that moment as neglect. They kind

of feel rejected. Maybe I should think of it as

accidental rejection. They don't

know that maybe you're getting a work call and it's

important that you respond. They don't know that maybe

their grandmother or their aunt or uncle has texted you about

something for this weekend. They don't know that you're in the middle of

making a doctor's appointment online. It they have no

mental map of what an online world is like. And so they

just see you have your eyes on them, then go and look at

the phone. And to them the phone is

like almost like a sibling that they're jealous of.

That's why oftentimes they act out, or they

just disconnect from you anyway, and they kind of go into sort

of a lonely space. I say all this

because I want your kids to

feel safe and connected and

comfortable in their life. And I

don't want them to feel rejected or abandoned or neglected.

And I know you don't want that either. And so we can be

doing that accidentally. We can be accidentally

disconnecting with our children and not

normalizing in the moment or not explaining to them

narrating what it is that is happening. Now, here's

another example. Imagine you were working

in your office and you were like a working parent. And

for whatever reason your child came to work with you that day.

And then your boss comes in and she says: oh,

excuse me. Do you have a minute? Because your boss would see that you were

with your child, that you're engaged in a in a conversation

with somebody. And then you would say, oh, yes, I do. And then you would

turn to your child and you would say, excuse me for a minute. I'm gonna

go talk to my boss for a second or talk to my colleague, and I'll

be right back. And why don't you work on your coloring pages?

And I'm just gonna be right outside the door while I have this conversation.

In real life, normally, interruptions

are the other person is experiencing the interruption. They kind of

know who it is and what's going on and why it's happening.

And we are polite and we use etiquette to explain what

is happening. And then we give the child an alternative

or a thing to do. We give them about amount how much time it's gonna

take. We give them a little task. We let them occupy themselves. We

communicate a whole bunch of information. So

then the child knows what's happening and it doesn't feel like

this absent this absent parent, this absentee parent,

this this unknown amount of time or what's going on

or am I important? Am I a priority? Am I not?

What is happening? When you pause and explain what you're

doing, then your child can create a little mental

map, a little neural pathway of, like, oh, my mom has busy for a minute.

She's gonna talk to this person. She's gonna come right back. You, I

want you to know you can still be being

in your phone and taking care of business and doing the things that you're doing.

What I want you to do is begin to practice communicating

to your child what it is you're doing. And you might find yourself

trying to explain, oh, excuse me for a minute. I'm just feeling

restless and I'm gonna zone out on you and

scroll Instagram for a few minutes or TikTok for a few minutes, and I'll be

right back. If you were to have to explain that to your child,

you'd probably be like, well, that's not very nice. I wouldn't do that

to anyone else that I was around. Like, if I'm at dinner with

somebody or lunch or going on a walk with someone and all of a sudden

they're just scrolling on a social media platform, I'm

gonna feel kind of rejected. And, like, do you care?

Like, here we are together having an experience, and yet you're just

leaving to go into your online world. I wanted to have

this episode because it kind of follows up on the episode I had

last week with Amelia about how we go to

our phone to do I've been on a kick about this. So we go

to our phone, we just we're distracted, and we are trying to find ourselves

to be soothed, entertained, or learn something. We get a little

dopamine kick, get a little oxytocin, process some cortisol.

It does do that. And your

child though, what they're experiencing isn't

like, they don't understand what's going on. They just feel it as

a disconnection or neglect or abandonment or rejection.

And I know you don't do it that way. I know you don't mean to

do it that way. So part of all of us is

learning how for for all of us, what we wanna be doing is

learning how to have a

healthier relationship with our technology,

creating better boundaries about when we use technology and

when we don't, when are were our working

hours and our non working hours,

clearing the afternoon or clearing an hour at dinner where we

make an active choice to not disconnect from our kids

and go into our devices. Here's another

example of how things used to be compared to how they are. So

in the past, we would be at work, we'd be at work.

Right? And if our children were around, somebody came to talk to us in real

life, we would have a whole conversation about the interruption.

The same for, like, another time, like, if you're at afternoon pickup

and you're picking up your kids and you are talking to a mom and then

your child, they come they come running out, Mommy, mommy, mommy. And you

say, Oh, hi. Hi. I'm so happy to see you. And then all of a

sudden, a mom's like, Oh, can we go to the park? And you leave the

conversation with your child to talk to the other parent.

That is it another moment where in real life you would say, oh, excuse

me, honey. Let me just talk to this mommy really quick, and I'm gonna figure

you know, I'll be right back. Okay? I want you to be communicating

and narrating what's going on in your life so

that your children understand what's happening. They don't have

the ability to cognitively connect dots. They don't really

understand time. They don't understand relationships, especially under

10. So using these practices, it's teaching

etiquette, it's teaching manners, it's learning to be polite, it's helping your child

have connection. So another example of, like, in the

past when we had telephones in our home and we didn't

have cell phones in our pocket, the phone would

ring. Right? And then everybody in the room would

hear the phone ring. They would know that is someone calling.

And then you could decide that you're gonna let the answer machine pick it

up or you're gonna go and or let it go to voice mail.

Eventually, we had voice mail and but you would go pick up the phone. So

your child, like most of us growing up, we experienced our

parents stopping what we're doing, going to see who's on the phone.

And then, you know, the child might come around and you say, oh oh, I'm

gonna talk to, you know, grandma for a few minutes, or I'm gonna talk to

your cousin, you know, to your my sister or your aunt, or, oh,

this is your friend calling or it's a doctor's appointment, you know,

confirming of, an upcoming appointment. There would

be some sort of physical experience so that

your child's neurology and biology, so

their brain and their body was having an embodied experience of

you getting a phone call and then you being on the phone. Even if they

couldn't see anybody on the other on their other line, you would

be they would see you pick up. You they saw the

phone ring. They heard it. They see you and they can come touch

you. And you can pause and say, excuse me. I'm gonna be a minute. Let

me, let me be with you in a second. When you have

interruptions coming online, it's not an embodied

experience for your child. To them, it just looks like you are

leaving them. You're just distracted. You just seem like you drift away.

You're bored. And this is why I keep talking about, like,

silencing your notifications, putting your phone on do not disturb,

giving yourself more power over when you leave

your conversations with your child or when you stop working

or when you shift from a task to a different task,

that you have a little bit more power over how that happens,

that you're creating making decisions about that. That's

gonna be good for you, but, ultimately, it's gonna be helpful for your

kids. And then if you do get an interruption, to

pause, explain what you're doing, how

long it's going to be, and then giving them a little

idea of what they can do while they wait. So, say I

get a text message and it

says, you know or an email comes through

and it is I have to make a decision about a doctor's appointment. You

know, the doctor's appoint doctors wanting to change my

our appointments for the kids or whoever from 3 to 4 o'clock. You need

to go online to do that. You would say, oh, excuse me,

honey. I need to talk to the doctor for a minute. I need to work

this out. I'm gonna be on my phone for, like, maybe 5 or 6 minutes

kind of solving this problem. And then I'll keep playing with you, or then I'll

serve snack, or then I'll sit down with you. I want you to pause,

communicate what's going on, giving your

child an activity or a sense of

what they should be doing while they're waiting for you. We get

so frustrated with our kids because we think they're rude at interrupting

and bothering us when we're on the phone and creating a

problem. And really, what they're doing is their

their nervous system is is affected. When you go on your phone,

they then feel like they've lost connection,

companionship, relationship with you, and it feels scary to

them. It feels unsettling. They also don't know how to deal

with the boredom of it. Like, you were engaged with them, and now they're

you're not. They don't know how to do it, how to deal with that. So

they get a little dysregulated. You get distracted. They get

dysregulated. And then all of a sudden you're in a conflict and you're

now you're disciplining them and frustrated with them.

I'd love for you to get out of that trap of distraction,

dysregulation that happens and instead say

give give your kids some guidance, some

previewing of up, looks like I'm gonna have to take this

phone call up, looks like I'm gonna have to you know what, honey? I didn't

quite finish something that I was working on while you were at school, so I'm

gonna finish that now. I'll probably be about 20

minutes. So that would be perfect for you to play Lego

or build a fort or whatever activity you can

give to them. Here's some clay or some Play Doh or some slime or something

like that. If your child is not able to entertain

themselves or occupy themselves, like, they're too little to do

that, then they might need to be taught how to do that. You might have

to put off your task until later when you have more support or

help, or you can invite them in. I'm

gonna be sitting on my computer for a few minutes so you can sit next

to me. You can bring some coloring books and be right next to me. You

can sit on my lap while I work on the computer as long as you

don't touch the keys. Giving your children what they need

in connection and helping them understand this is a

temporary situation. You I in like, we want them to be able to

cope and soothe themselves and, you know,

switch gears and then switch back. We want them to have that

response flexibility, and that means that they need

help. So I hope that this isn't a

hard thing to learn or it's a hard thing to do. I think

it's going to just be, a little bit of retraining

your brain before you go right into whatever your phone like,

your phone bings at you or you get a notification or you pick it

up, and you then all of a sudden respond and you're feeling

urgency to respond to everything. And

the urgency is fake. It's not real urgency.

There's nothing really urgent that needs your attention right then and there.

So stopping, communicating, being polite,

thinking of it as manners, communicating to people in the room with

you, and then finishing your task, and then coming back to

those people which are your children. So it's

gonna It's like a habit. It's like a relational habit. It's a

habit you have towards your device, and it's a relational habit of how

you communicate with your kids. And so catch

yourself anytime you're trying to change a habit, getting to calm,

you know, changing your limit setting language, any of that. It's really

about catching yourself either after you didn't, you

know, like after you're in the middle of a meltdown or you're yelling at your

kids and you're like, what happened right before this?

Oh, we were playing a game, then I got on my phone. Okay. That would

have been a time where I could have stopped and either finish the

game with my kid or tell my child that I'm gonna change, you know,

go do something. So afterwards

is, you're always welcome to reflect and look at what

happened and then decide how you wanna handle it next time.

It's a lot of how change happens is kind of after the fact

reflecting gently and making a new, a new

plan. Or you can get yourself in the middle.

You didn't pause and tell them what was going on, didn't preview,

didn't explain, you know, didn't communicate. So you

can pause whatever you're doing, put your phone down, put your

computer down, look up, give them eyeballs, let

them know what's going on, let them know, hey. You know

what? I'm so sorry. I did not tell you, but I need to use the

computer for about 15 more minutes. And I know this is hard for

you. It's you know, I was playing with you and then I left and that

was confusing. And now you're, you know, in my face bothering me or bugging the

dog or bothering your sister, whatever it is. So I just want you to know

I'm gonna be done in a few minutes. You can either sit next to me

as long as you're calm or you can start or you can go outside

if that's safe or, you know, give them an alternative thing to do while they

wait. So that's you catch yourself in the middle.

No problem. Reset. Communicate and

reset your limit. Or train yourself

Eventually, you'll train yourself where you get some information from your phone, and then

you pause. You connect with your kids. You narrate what's going on with

them. You give them some solutions. Slowing

down and not thinking of anything that comes in from your phone as

an emergency, as urgent, is going to help you

not do this accidental neglect situation.

If you have been doing this and you have had a pattern with your family

where you're super distracted, you're on your phone a lot, you check out, you

are middle of conversation, you notice you're, like, aren't paying attention to your children

anymore. That's okay. I do not want you to,

oh my god. I've already ruined them. They have abandonment issues.

They have insecure attachment. Let's not let's

choose not to be mean to ourselves. Yeah? Let's

choose to be loving and say, oh, I didn't

know or my nervous system needed that back then. I didn't have

information. I didn't have the skills. I didn't have the capacity.

No problem. Everything can be healed.

Everything can be fixed. Your children's

relationship with you is always open to

improvement, and your children's brain is

plastic. It's neuroplasticity, so it can be

molded and shifted and healed.

So going back in the past and being

mad about things and telling yourself you were a bad mom or that

you are a bad mom currently, it will not help you

get to this next stage of your

parenting and shift you into a more connected

relational way of parenting. That will

only get you keep you stuck. Being mean to yourself will only get you

stuck in self loathing and guilt,

and you'll get trapped. So instead, I invite

you to be gentle with yourself and say, you know what?

I don't want to do that anymore. I wanna be more

connected and slow things down in my life. And so I'm

gonna be really cautious about letting my phone

distract me. If it distracts me, I'm gonna talk about it with my

kids. If my kids are getting dysregulated, then I'm going

to stop what I'm doing, connect with them, regulate them and

then try to go again. Okay. I promise I'm not

gonna belabor the phone and relationships to tech and

screen for the rest of the life of this podcast. We

are shifting gears and talking about some other mindset stuff

soon, But this has been really on my mind

a lot because I think as a society, we

really aren't doing our kids a

solid by having a distracted parenting

experience. It's actually changing our children's

nervous system and their brain

patterns. And I I don't want that for you or

for your kids or for future generations. And so if we can

figure out some new ways of relating to tech in our adult

life, we can maybe prevent some of the problems that

could happen in the future with our kids and their

relationships to tech. Again, be gentle with

yourself. Be loving. Be kind. Make a decision if you

wanna make a change and then work on it. And if you

want help shifting these patterns, I encourage you

to join me in the Calm Mama Club and we can talk

about all of these things that I teach you about. Calming yourself,

calming your nervous system, connecting better with your kids, setting better

limits, following through when they don't keep their boundaries.

This is the work of the Calm Mama process, and it's what we do in

the Calm Mama Club. So I'd love to have you in there. You can join.

You don't have to talk to me. You can just sign up right on my

website, Calm Mama Coaching.com. Get in there. It's $30 a month.

Try it for a month. See if you like it. If not, don't don't

renew. It's fine. It's month to month. But if you're curious about it

and you wanna talk to me first, I'd love that. You can always book a

complimentary discovery consultation with me on my

website, and you can find all this stuff at com

mama coaching.com. So all one word,

calmmama, mama, m a coaching dotcom.

Okay. Wishing you a distracted free

parenting week, and I will talk to you next time.