Author: Cynthia

We are counting down our top six episodes of the Screen Less Play More podcast!

Screen Less Play More is the go-to parenting podcast for families who want to raise confident, curious, healthy kids in a digital world. If you’re worried about technology, cell phones, screen time battles, video games, social media pressure, or how tech impacts your child’s mental health, behavior, and attention, you’re in the right place.

Each episode features experts who help parents create healthy tech habits, set realistic phone boundaries, and build a calmer home with fewer screens and more connection. We also dive deep into the power of play—free play, risky play, outdoor play, imaginative play, and reading—to help kids develop resilience, creativity, and independence.

Whether you’re raising toddlers, kids, tweens, or teens, this podcast gives you practical tools, research-backed strategies, and hope for raising children who thrive both online and offline.

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I know that you want to make it a magical and memorable Christmas or Hanukkah. But please, do yourself and your child a favor: do not buy them a smartphone as a gift. (And please tell Santa to hold off as well.)

Reasons include: increased suicide risk, exposure to pornography, decreased attention, health problems, and more!

Tune in each day from now until Christmas for 50 reasons to delay buying your child a phone.

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It’s not like your 12-year old boy wakes up one day and decides to be a woman hater.

It often starts with memes. Kids trade texts with thinly veiled misogyny, homophobia, and racism and pass it off as humor.

Then they start watching “self help” videos on Youtube about getting fit, earning money, and attracting women.

That’s when it starts to turn dark…

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While reading “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory” it’s easy to infer that Roald Dahl was disgusted by the way children were changing from the new technology of his time.

I can relate.

If Roald Dahl, (and Willy Wonka) are disgusted by the new breed of television-obsessed brats, (in 1964) then what would they like children to do instead of TV?

Well, I believe is best said in the words of Dahl’s most memorable creations, the Oompa-Loompas…

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dangerous hashtags can be easy to use accidentally

How can a hashtag be dangerous?

By putting a hashtag on your child’s photo, it makes it potentially accessible to a pedophile with one simple click.
Pedophiles and predators need not spend hours searching for scantily-clad children, when they can click #nakedbabies, #toddlerbikinis, or #bathtimefun for thousands of photos.

You may have created a unique hashtag for your specific child, but beware that if someone takes a liking to your kid…

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Before you wake up on Day 1 of summer in a cold sweat, check out these 4 questions to discuss as a family that will really help give structure to those long school-less days.

Thanks to Andrea Davis of “Better Screen Time” who told our podcast that the key to a successful summer is…

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It’s just play, right?

“The first thing is for children to listen to what their body is telling them. That is so important because now you think of a teenager who is at a party who feels the pressure from a peer to have an experience that maybe they’re not ready for.
And if they can start to recognize in early childhood what that feels like, and how they get out of it, then they’re going to have that skill in adolescence and adulthood and all of the encounters we’re going to have as humans later in life,” says Sally Swaitek in Episode 5 of…

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Tessa Stuckey

In her practice, therapist Tessa Stuckey started recognizing a trend about 6 years ago.
“Kids would come to me with typical life stressors, mom got mad at them, they didn’t empty their dishwasher, or they made a C on a chemistry exam. Typical life stressors. But their go-to answer was always a dark, dark thought, whether that be self-harm or suicidal thinking.”

Tessa started investigating and found that “every single one of them had issues that were rooted back to an overuse of unhealthy screens or social media.”

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