“Are We Being Mean Parents?” Why This Pediatrician Held the Line on Screens

Screen time battles have become a nightly fight in many homes, and pediatricians are seeing the fallout in the exam room: kids who aren’t sleeping, struggle to hold a conversation, and melt down the moment a device is taken away.

Dr. Lisa Petit is a board-certified pediatrician with nearly 20 years in practice, a background in psychology, and three teens of her own.

She joins Titania Jordan, Bark’s Chief Parent Officer and bestselling author of two books on digital parenting, to walk through her FIRST Down Framework (Focus, Intention, Resilience, Support, Teaching) and the Saturday her kids lost screens for the day and ended up writing songs and playing chess. She explains where gentle parenting falls short with tech, why parental controls work like training wheels on a bike, and how to talk with your teen about limits on Snapchat, Instagram, and gaming without it feeling like punishment. You’ll walk away with one change you can make tonight.

Key insight: A screen time boundary is only as strong as the reason behind it and what you do when your child breaks it. The single most effective change most families can make is having phones sleep outside the bedroom.

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Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Explore the Bark Phone, a kid-safe smartphone with parental controls built in: https://www.bark.us/bark-phone/

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dr. Petit's website: https://info.bark.us/dr-lisa-petit
• Screen Time scorecard: https://info.bark.us/screen-time-scorecard