Raising kids in the digital age is tough. Not only are kids going through baffling developmental stages and life crises, so are their parents. Plus, each family member has a unique personality, belief system, and behavioral history that lead to varying “fits” between members at varying times. Throw that in a blender and you have a family. To make it more complicated, divorce peaks during trying times, upending everything even more. Divorce conflict, shared custody, and blended family issues can lead to exploitative and manipulative opportunities, especially with powerful mobile devices in-hand. My clients have benefitted from both using our free CONNECTED FAMILY SCREEN AGREEMENT. This digital contract gives both households sensible rules and strategies so kids have consistency and cooperative guidance. To align on parenting strategies and get more confident with setting rules and adopting parental controls, our weekly parent and family coaching videos delivered on the GETKIDSINTERNETSAFE APP is for you. Quick 5-minute videos a week allow you to tweak screen safety and positive parenting in your home in doable chunks. Demonstrating that you are consistently addressing screen safety looks great in court! Another option to help your tweens and teens directly build knowledge and psychological wellness with our SOCIAL MEDIA READINESS COURSE FOR TWEENS & TEENS. It’s like driver’s training but for the Internet.
In my twenty-six+ years as a clinical psychologist with a specialty in family transitions, I have run across practically every family situation you can imagine. Not only can divorce strain parent-child alliances, but fear can muddy parent judgment as they jockey to win child favor and aim to achieve parenting perfection in less-than-perfect times. With everybody distracted by their own emotional processes, consistency, and communication too often slip leaving kids vulnerable for risk.
Here are three fictional family stories that resemble actual situations to illustrate the complex factors that divorced families face.
Safety, Parental Alienation, & Home Privacy
Sally and Joe were married for fourteen years. They have two daughters, 13-year-old Maggie and 10-year-old Jacqueline. The marriage dissolved when Joe was discovered having an affair with Pamela. Sally shared too much information with the girls during her heartbreak, blaming Pamela for the breakup and begging Joe to make the marriage work even after discovery. Pamela and Joe married six months after the divorce was final and were granted shared custody of Maggie and Jacqueline as well as Pamela’s son and daughter.
Sally didn’t trust Joe and Pamela to take good enough care of the girls. She constantly worried about Joe not checking the girls’ homework, believed Joe and Pam drank too much, thought Pamela favored her own children and became particularly angry if Joe socialized with old friends. The girls felt protective of their mom and felt guilty leaving her during dad’s custodial time. They also wondered if mom’s fears were true and they were being unfairly treated and not adequately attended to.
Sally bought both girls mobile phones outfitted with the social media they wanted and encouraged them to call, text, and send images frequently with the hopes of gathering evidence she could use in family law court. She also posted accusatory memes about Joe and Pamela on her Facebook. If Joe set limits with the mobile phones, Sally argued the restriction prevented the girls from seeking appropriate help in an emergency situation, which further demonstrated to the girls that Joe was not protecting them.
In her cloud of grief, fear, and anger, Sally was committing parental alienation. Parental alienation is a pattern of psychological abuse toward a child by creating fear, disrespect, or hostility toward the other parent with the ultimate goal of parent-child estrangement. Parental alienation has been demonstrated to be detrimental to child mental and physical health and parent-child attachment. When caught in the destructive dynamic, family members are nearly incapable of post-traumatic growth, spinning helplessly for sometimes years in the eye of the storm.
Illegal Surveillance
John is a twelve-year-old who’s divorced parents have conflicting views on-screen use. John’s father allows him to use his phone and
other screen devices as much as he likes with no filtering or monitoring. His mother, on the other hand, does not allow him to use ANY screen devices. What John does not know is that his father secretly installed spyware on his mother’s devices during their divorce in order to gain information against her and has a history of domestic violence and pornography addiction. John’s mother has a restraining order against her ex-husband. She does not feel safe having mobile devices in her house that her ex-husband has purchased in case of spyware. She also worries about the online content her son has access to for fear of him becoming addicted like his father. John prefers to be at his father’s house because of the more permissive screen access and accuses his mom of being too uptight and paranoid. His dad laughs with him and agrees.
Consequating Dangerous Child Behavior
Dave and Laura have been divorced for two months and have two sons, 16-year-old Chad and 14-year-old Ian. After the divorce, both boys were living with their mother with weekends and certain holidays spent with their father. Chad has AD/HD and an anxiety disorder; Ian is in independent study due to oppositionality and defiance.
After suspecting Chad was using drugs, Dave demanded to see Chad’s phone. When Chad refused, Dave grabbed the phone and found photos of Chad smoking marijuana at a house party. A screaming conflict resulted. Chad stormed out the house and walked several miles back to his mother’s house where she then called Child Protective Services. Dave insisted that Laura take Chad’s screen devices away as a form of punishment. Laura disagreed thinking it would isolate Chad from his friends at a time he needed them most and bought Chad a new phone with no filtering or monitoring. Chad has chosen to live full time with Laura and refuses to talk to Dave. Ian feels caught in the middle.
Co-Parenting Strategies
Co-parenting can be difficult in all family types, but shared custody poses particularly ripe opportunities for exploitation and manipulation during a time when parents need to be particularly astute about the prevention of digital injury due to unchecked screen use. To launch a healthy and safe relationship with screen media, kids need warm, encouraging guidance from their parents.
Parents who set standards and praise without being overly critical have well-adjusted kids. Theorists call this authoritative parenting. Evidence demonstrates it is better than uninvolved, permissive, (overly accepting), or authoritarian (overly controlling) parenting styles.
Authoritative parents are proactive rather than reactive. They set the stage for success and respond calmly rather than ignoring or being overly punishing in response to destructive child behaviors. Children from authoritative home environments not only achieve more in school, but they also demonstrate a stronger willingness to seek out and master challenges for personal satisfaction.
In the stories above, the parents let their divorce conflicts interfere with their parenting judgment and slipped into authoritarian or permissive styles. While authoritarian parenting promotes a form of structure for the child, the harshness and rigidity can lead to parent and child aggression and can cause the child to have low self-esteem and minimized self-worth (Paul, 2011).
On the other hand, permissive parents are kind and accepting but don’t implement safety measures or uphold rules. Thus, children can become entitled, depressed, or anxious (Paul, 2011). Even parents who were once authoritative will sometimes escalate their tendencies in order to counterbalance the strategies used in the other custodial home. This leaves kids ping-ponging between sometimes hostile perspectives and varying rules for conduct. They will often choose the more permissive parent due to their inability to recognize the long-term implications of their behaviors.
In response to these challenges, family law courts often refer or order parents to use educational resources like co-parenting classes, schedule sessions with supportive professionals like child psychologists, therapeutic and legal mediators; or even order minor’s counsel to represent the children’s best interests. Parents may also be ordered into individual or reunification therapy which can lead to positive change.
When working with co-parents, I strive to empathize with the very real challenges of single parents and working through issues that make kids hard to handle. I remind them the situation is usually temporary. In most circumstances, grudges heal and parents recognize that parenting must take priority over vindictiveness. Kids will eventually see manipulation, often resulting in delayed insight. Nobody wins. Patience, empathy, grace, and kindness help kids heal. Sometimes we all need lots of nudges and gentle reminders, whether it comes from family, friends, lawyers, judges, or mental health professionals. Kids come first.
Thank you to Ventura family law lawyer extraordinaire Joel Bryant for the valuable information he contributed to this GKIS article and to CSUCI intern Allie Mattina for her research. To best understand the complex developmental factors of family life and learn effective screen safety strategies, check out Screen Time in the Mean Time: A Parenting Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe. Full of developmental brain facts and helpful tips and information, setting structure and sensible teaching conversations is a great start to family safety and stability.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Parents know that screen use carries risk, whether it’s sleep deprivation, texting while driving, online sexuality and aggression, or addiction. But what can we do about it? Pandora’s box has been opened. Yes, there are powerful parenting strategies that should be happening to limit risk, but who wants to deal with toxic teen fallout? Tweens and teens can put up a fight and workaround most rules anyway. And what if you have been monitoring on the sly and see something alarming, then what? If they find out you’ve been spying, it will damage an already difficult relationship. What can parents do to kick in and do a better job without starting World War III?
I work with teens every day in practice and have two at home. I agree they can be pretty scary. But I also know that without us, they’re capable of getting into real danger. There are sensible techniques you can use to implement real change without damaging your relationship. Believe it or not, teens even welcome limits sometimes, as long as they’re justified and introduced with a sincere offer for respectful negotiation. If that wasn’t the case, I’d be getting fired by session three most of the time by my teen clients. Instead, I often have to push them to graduate from therapy. Like us, they love fun connection and will accept adult influence more than you think.
Here are some parenting hacks for managing screen use even with the most independent teens:
DON’T AMBUSH
Sprinkle in your intent and justification over time rather than in one aggressive attack. Intervention doesn’t have to happen all at once (even though you may be anxious to get it over with). Introduce your ideas over time to give teens a chance to digest the information. Start with a discussion, then a meeting, then the implementation in doable steps. It’s unlikely you’ll ever get their full buy-in, but gradual tweaks will be accepted far better than a hostile takeover. For example, rather than take away Instagram due to a transgression, talk to them with warmth and acceptance acknowledging that ALL teens make mistakes online. No big deal. Just fix this one and maybe pare back to Dunbar’s number on their friends list. This is the number of friends our brains seem to have slots for, 150. By paring back, they reduce risk and still get to keep connecting with friends. All-or-nothing interventions can drive a wedge, but gradual and reasonable tweaks provide learning opportunity and you get cred for being reasonable.
PREPARE FOR PUSH-BACK
When I work with families, I often start with coping skills long before I suggest parenting strategies. Listening, assertiveness, negotiation, and relaxation skills are key. It also helps if you are prepared. These push-back possibilities are offered so you won’t be surprised when they arise and will stay calm and strategic and avoid getting pulled in and manipulated. If it gets too heated, walk away (eyes off the behavior you don’t want) and return to the issue another time (eyes on the behavior you want). Most important, don’t let them see you sweat. Maintain your credibility with calm authority.
Typical teen push-backs:
Act like they don’t care with plans to sneak later
Justify, lie, or make excuses
“I didn’t do it”
“Everybody does it”
“My teacher says I have to”
“You don’t know what it’s like now [I know everything about everything]””
Deflect and distract
By triggering you with real-time bad behavior, you may forget to follow through (“Look squirrel!”). I call this “throwing a fireball into the room.” While the parent is running around putting out fires, the issue at hand gets lost and the kid wins. Fireballs can be:
Eye-rolling
Talking back or cussing
Pulling out a list of grievances with absolutes (“You never let me” “This always happens”)
Tantrum
Name calling (“You suck”)
Self-deprecation (“I’m a terrible kid”)
Emotional extortion: Threaten to hurt you or themselves
Physically aggress (throwing, slamming, hitting)
Defy you and do it anyway
LISTEN AND VALIDATE
Although maddening, it’s healthy for teens to push back and manipulate. You want your kids to test things out on you, their safe person. Don’t take oppositionality personally. Manipulative kids are simply smart, strategic kids. Your job isn’t to squash their spirits, it’s to manage it and coach them to success.
For kids to engage in a discussion, you’ll need to listen as much as you talk. Lectures turn them off immediately. No engagement means you’ve lost any hope of influence. Once your child has responded and you’ve confirmed that you understand their position (whether you disagree with it or not, their position is legitimate), firmly state your intent to establish sensible rules. Remember that screen use is their lifeline to learning and socialization. Compulsive screen use happens, because it has real meaning and benefit. If you tell them to “turn it off,” they get anxious. Anxious kids are the most defiant, because they will endure almost anything to avoid the feelings from anxious rebound. Making a non-negotiable announcement will make for hard-going later and interfere with the opportunity for teens to take accountability for positive change. There’s big payoff for giving in a little rather than demanding full obedience. Modeling, mentorship, and teamwork are keys to success.
NEGOTIATE THE RULES
How does one negotiate without losing authority? Let’s take the example of trying to get your child off their phone during homework time, called multitasking. First, keep in mind this is not a black and white issue. Sometimes multitasking contributes to learning, other times it interferes.
Multitasking is beneficial when generating ideas, acculturating oneself to vocabulary and ideas around a particular topic, identifying experts and networking with community, enriching understanding using multimodal formats (reading, listening, viewing video), and when browsing for entertainment. Multitasking activities that have performance costs include screen activities that interrupt demanding cognitive learning tasks like reading, homework, or studying. Perhaps pulling back on bad habits rather than eradicating them entirely is a good start for now. For best success, outline goals, commit to honest learning objectives, and download time management and tracking apps. Let them try out their ideas, then swing around later to discuss outcome. Tweak, repeat.
There you have it, a plan! Remember to set an expectation for success and prepare for follow-through. If you capitulate to teen freak outs, it will be far harder next time because you’ve taught them you’ll cave in the face of tantrums. If you follow through, they’ll eventually respect your authority. Staying firm, consistent, and emotionally neutral is also important. You’re empowered and so are they. Small consequences (one night when devices are docked early) are usually just as impactful as big ones (taking their phone for a week), and you are less likely to cave because it’s doable. Don’t forget to remind them that you will lighten up as they get close to graduating. High school seniors need more independence to build resilience and prep them for success in college.
