Our guest today offers insight into the power of parenting within a supportive village. 

Casie Fariello is the CEO of Other Parents Like Me, a peer-led online support community for parents or caregivers with kids struggling with mental health and substances. Other Parents Like Me offers curated and identity-based peer led support groups every day, and every week they offer talks from leading experts and authors to help parents navigate the specific challenges that they face. 

Visit www.oplm.com to learn more.

Our guest today, Jenifer Joy Madden  of Durable Human, joined us last season to give a broad overview of babies and screentime. On this episode, she shares her thoughts on a new study just published in JAMA Medicine.

The study looks at developmental delays in infants and toddlers in relation to how much time they spend with screens. We examine two subgroups, moms with postpartum depression and those who are socioeconomically impacted, who are mentioned in the study as allowing their babies to consume more screen time. 

Jenifer Joy Madden is a health journalist, digital media educator, community advocate, and parent. She wrote two books: The Durable Human Manifesto: Practical Wisdom for Living and Parenting in the Digital World and How To Be a Durable Human: Revive and Thrive in the Digital Age Through the Power of Self-Design. And she gave an incredible TEdx Talk.

Andrea Davis, founder and CEO of Better Screen Time shares her thoughts and research on 

getting your child their first phone. She encourages everyone to work witht heir child to identify their level of readiness by using her self-evaluation form. 

Also in this episode, Andrea shares how to Untangle Teens and Tech, giving snippets from her course. 

Kim Hopkins, the Director of Outreach at Lives in the Balance, shares the formula behind the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model and the reason she started (and continued) using it in multiple residential facilities over a decade ago. 

CPS is the evidence-based, trauma-informed, neurodiversity affirming model of care that helps caregivers focus on identifying the problems that are causing concerning behaviors in kids and solving those problems collaboratively and proactively. The model is a departure from approaches emphasizing the use of consequences to modify concerning behaviors. In families, general and special education schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, the CPS model has a track record of dramatically improving behavior and dramatically reducing or eliminating discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, restraints, and seclusions. 

Jose Santana spent eight months making a concerted effort to quit video gaming. and almost a year later, says he'll never play a video game again. 

In this week's episode, 16-year-old Jose joins Julie to share his personal experiences growing up in this digital world, and expresses his love/hate relationship with modern technology and social platforms.

Kids and teens are especially encouraged to listen to Jose's story to hear about his past experience with gaming addiction, his current life as a small-business owner and intern, and his goals for the future.

Cool fact, Jose is a student advisor to the Digital Wellness Lab. 

And as mentioned in the episode, here's a link to Jose's pastor-dad's YouTube channel for all of you Spanish-speakers. And here's Jose's channel. 

Julie is joined by Jenifer Joy Madden, a digital wellness expert, health journalist, digital media educator, community advocate, and parent, to talk about how screens during the first three years of a child's life can impact their future. 

Jenifer founded the Durable Human in 2009 as a platform to inspire adults and children to cherish, strengthen, and protect their unique human assets, capabilities, and perspectives in a complex and increasingly digital world.

Her words and videos have informed millions on news outlets ranging from The Washington Post to the Children and Nature Network to her website, The Durable Human. A veteran of ABC News, Jenifer is an independent multi-media reporter and a lead adjunct professor for TV news graduate students of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Jenifer distilled her life’s work and experience into two books (so far): The Durable Human Manifesto: Practical Wisdom for Living and Parenting in the Digital World and How To Be a Durable Human: Revive and Thrive in the Digital Age Through the Power of Self-Design.

Download a free e-copy of the Manifesto here.

In this episode, Julie asks Catherine Knibbs, a Child Trauma Psychotherapist, how the Attachment Theory influences kids and their interaction with technology.

Cath is a Clinical Doctoral Researcher, Consultant, Public Speaker, Author, Child Trauma Psychotherapist and member of the VUWG. She writes about and works with cybertrauma, which is any trauma that occurs through an internet ready device.

Pre-oder Cath's latest books:

Our kids live in a digital world. We can't treat their interaction with tech as a separate piece of their lives. In this episode, Shelley Delayne helps us understand how to avoid being hyper-focused on the tech piece of parenting and instead, incorporate it holistically.