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February 24, 2016
Coincidence that I got this email and tonight I’m speaking at Pleasanton Library about Connecting for Family Time in the Digital Age? Maybe not so much. Parents feel frustrated by the amount of time their kids spend on their devices. The more kids connect to their friends on one device or another, the less they connect with their school work and their parents. So what can we parents do to help them succeed in school and bring the family closer?
 by Jason Love JasonLove.com Read what this mom is dealing with:
Dear Annie,
How can I get my teenagers to shut off the TV, social media, their phones, etc. and get their homework done? There are too many mornings when they are not prepared for school because they didn’t finish an assignment or they’re not ready for a test. Yet, they spent a lot to time the previous day(s) on their screens!
—Frustrated Mom
Annie: What have you tried, aside from yelling?
Mom: Telling them to set a timer for 10-15 minutes and do nothing else but schoolwork. They don’t comply.
Annie: Think about the addictive nature of screens and you’ll get a better idea of how hard it can be to drag yourself away. I’m not just talking about teens. Ever said to yourself or a family member, “I’m just checking my email. I’ll be there in a minute.”? Next thing you know, you’ve been swallowed and chewed up by the Space-Time Continuum. Yeah, it’s an actual thing.
Call a family meeting to discuss the problem as it relates to school performance. Your job is to open the conversation, not to lay down the law. Come on too strong and they will fight you. Simply tell them their job is to be good students. (Don’t even mention the TV and tech stuff.) Instead, ask them how they feel about how their school progress. Got evidence of grades? Bring it to the meeting.
Your long-term goal is to help your kids become fully responsible for their own school work and their lives. If your kids admit they could be doing better in school, simply say, “I agree. So what do you think is in the way of better grades?” Let them do most of the talking. Help them to connect the dots between their school progress and their screen time.
The best outcome is acknowledging how hard it is (for all of us) to get away from the screen… even when the timer goes off and we know we should stop now. By the way, if anyone in the family uses technology during family meals, that needs to stop. Tonight.
Part of the solution here is an open conversation where everyone has an opportunity to talk about the pluses and minuses of technology. Part of the solution is modeling and reclaiming unplugged time, for focused work and for play, as a family. And part of the solution is accessibility. If the technology isn’t at hand, then it’s easier to resist the urge to pick it up. (Of course this works best when the homework does not require technology!)
Mom: I will have the family meeting and discuss this with them. I was thinking they just didn’t want to do their homework and they were putting it off — which I totally understand.
Annie: Who likes homework?! So, sure, they’d rather do something more “engaging.” But it’s also very true that they don’t have the brain development to resist the lure of screen time. That’s where you can help, and having their buy-in makes you more of a coach and less of a prison warden. Good luck!
Watch my three minute video on Vidoyen about How to Reclaim Family Time in the Digital Age.
December 17, 2013
Excerpted from my book, Teaching Kids to Be Good People.
 A no-tech solution to connection addiction While we’re all moving in ten directions at once, online and off, the notion of evenings and weekends where parents and kids spend unplugged time together is laughably retro. But life is neither virtual nor infinite. We’ve got to create an antidote to 21st century craziness otherwise our kids will grow up without us really knowing them and without them knowing us.
Listening (the old- fashioned way) with open eyes, mind, and heart is the best way we connect with our kids, and teach them how to connect with others. That’s what we want from them and for them. They need it now while they’re still learning about healthy relationships from us, so they can use it later when they’re creating intimate relationships of their own.
How do we teach them that the people we care about aren’t just on Facebook and Twitter, they’re right here in the real world and they deserve our attention?
Fuel for Thought—Think about a relationship you have where the other person is often “distracted.” What’s it like being with him/her? Contrast that with someone who is normally “there” with you. Now think about the level of “there-ness” you give to your family. Set a goal for the next week: Do a better job being with your family when you’re actually with them. Do not allow distractions to get in the way. Observe what happens.
Conversations That Count—Talk with your partner and child(ten) about digital distractions, including phones, games, TV shows, and computers. Ask them to rate the family (on a 1–10 scale) regarding the presence of distractions while people are talking to each other.
(Scoring scale: 1 = When we talk to each other, we’re not doing anything else; 10 = When we talk to each other there’s always a “distraction” present.)
Your 21st century child may not even have noticed or considered these “distractions” as anything other than “normal.” Ask what s/he thinks family life (vis-à-vis “distractions”) might look like when s/he’s grown up with their own family.
Teach—Create an Unplugging Challenge. Start small and doable. For example, “On Saturday from 4:00–5:00 p.m. we’re unplugging for an hour to do something fun, together, as a family.” Be ready for pushback from tweens/teens. Remind them it’s only for one hour. “Surely you guys can last 60 minutes w/o FB?!” “Yeah, of course we can, but we don’t want to!!!” The more resistance, the more likely your kids have a connection addiction. But don’t cave. Be upbeat. Take suggestions for a non-tech activity the family can do together for that short time. Play a board game, card game, make popcorn, build something, cook something, bake something, create something, take a walk, go for a bike ride, have an impromptu meal outside, read aloud from a mystery book, look at old family photos and tell stories. Etc. etc. Be together. Focus on each other. Have fun. Repeat often. Appreciate being a family. It’s the best gift there is during any season.
November 14, 2013
It’s Day 14 of National Novel Writing Month. For those of you outside of my family who are interested, as of this morning I hit 24,684 words toward my goal of 50K by Nov. 30th. (SFX of CHEERS) For all you fictionists… fictionaries? BS artists? Write on, comrades!
To free myself from blogging this month, I’m reaching into my archives for oldies but goodies. Found this one (SFX of DUST BLOWING off stack of yellowed pages)
Holidaze? It’s About Time
 Hey, kids! What time is it? Recently my Christmas cactus awoke from its summer stupor, which can only mean the holidays are racing up the front steps soon to lean heavily on my doorbell. If that sentence triggered a stress response, I apologize and feel your heart palpitations. Holiday stress is very real especially if you’re anything like me when I’m on a quest for the perfect gift, the perfect turkey-brining recipe, the perfect holiday.
But, wait! My handy dictionary defines holiday as: “a day taken off for leisure and enjoyment.” Who was this Noah Webster dude anyway? Obviously he never shopped, hit an ATM, circled a packed parking lot for the fourth time, polished, cleaned, cooked, served, or stared bleary eyed into a packed fridge wondering where three more containers of leftovers could possibly fit.
Before we write-off Webster please note that in a perfect world holidays are meant to be a pleasant break in routine for you and your loved ones – well-deserved time to de-stress and appreciate being part of a family. Who knew?
As a family, we celebrated an unscheduled holiday in January 1996 when a tremendous windstorm roared through our neck of the woods, knocking out the power. No school, no computers, no work. We gathered around the fireplace bundled in blankets as I read aloud from a giant book of obscure folktales. We paused at crucial plot points and guessed what would happen next. We acted out alternative endings. We played Crazy Eights by candlelight. We roasted marshmallows and shared memories from childhood. We ate outrageous ice cream sundaes for breakfast. Hey, we couldn’t just let all that Chunky Monkey melt, could we?
During that long blackout we depended on each other for warmth, comfort, entertainment, and connection. And we had a blast. Five days later when the lights went back on, we all felt a little sad.
21st Century parents and kids need family to provide a place to de-stress. Don’t think your kids are stressed? Here are typical responses I get when I ask kids “What does the word ‘stress’ mean to you?”
“A kinda mind overload.”
“Pressure and lots of responsibility on your hands.”
“Overwhelmed and overworked.”
“…a lot of stuff that I have to do like homework, chores and other things a girl my age should not be stressing about. If I have to do all those things in ONE day I would just pass out. It’s too much pressure!!!!”
“A tax on your soul.”
Heart breaking, huh? And those are from 11-13 year olds!
Most things in this world are constantly changing but our unconditional love for kids isn’t one of them. We hurt when we see our kids so freaked out and wound up, but what can we do? We can’t stop the world, but we can slow down our own little corner and bring the family in closer. Don’t believe your kids want to hang out with you? Probably not all the time. And be honest. You wouldn’t want to hang out with them all the time either! But they do want to spend time with you. Especially when you show them that you really enjoy being with them.
If everyone’s schedule is already packed and you just don’t see how you’re going to create a regular Family Time then I suggest you sit down with your kids and talk about the daily pressures each of you deals with. Discuss how spending time as a family can actually help you all stress less. Unplug the media for one night a week and do something you can enjoy together: Make a meal, work on a project, play a game, go for a hike, make music, dance, look at old family photos or videos, tell stories, read stories, laugh, relax.
Try it and you may get the same bonus our family got when the storm blew out the power… the gift of time, which is the first step to reclaiming the heart of your family during the holiday season and year round.
October 21, 2013
My friend, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, has created another cultural fog-buster in Technology Sabbath. In six minutes she sounds an alarm and gently nudges us to unplug and create time for the people we love and the non-tech activities that make us whole.
Inspired, I stayed offline from Friday evening til Sunday morning. No email, Twitter, FB. No IMDB, Wiki, Yelp. And absolutely no regrets. So what did I do for 36 hours without the Internet?! I did not climb walls, turn into Super Bitch, nor eat massive amounts of chocolate. Instead…
Early Saturday morning, after bagels and blueberry smoothies, David and I romped with The Pupster through the wet grass at the beautiful park over the hill. From there, we headed south to Puppy Training Class. Then up, up and up to Mt. Tam, for a hike through redwoods high above the bay. In the evening we met up for dinner with our lovely son and daughter-in-law, and her awesome parents.
And in between? While David worked and The Pupster sacked out in the sun? I crawled through a portal of my own devising, out of the 21st century and into a timeless time. And there I stayed for who knows how long, content simply to observe and draw an apple.
I started with this:
 Simply beautiful. Beautifully simple.
Expressed it as this:
 Gala Time Unplugged by Annie Fox Then, like a guiless Black Widow, I devoured my model:
 Delicious sweetness And still, this remnant of a remnant continued to draw me into itself:
 Trapped potential And hold me there:
 Power unlocked Until what remained was:
 All that's needed to start anew Enjoy your week, my friends. Be kind and respectful to yourself. Take the time you need to be outside of time.
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