How We Solved the Cell Phones vs Family Time Problem

It had gotten bad, you guys. I mean—really bad. I can feel a tiny bit of shame bubbling up even as I write this, but I am going to share, because this story has a problem solving solution at the end! We saved family time.

Do you wish you could put your phone down? Do you sit next to your partner in bed—while you both scroll on your phones—not talking? Do you have children that have to ask you things over and over—or worse yet—call you out on your phone use? I know. I was there. I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. Happily, I’m also going share with you a tool that has worked for us and our family. Perfectly? Nope,—not even close. However, what the Phone Jar has done for our family, is allow us to practice intentional family time.

A little while ago, our sweet son Liam asked if our phones were more important than him. It stopped us in our tracks. Mommy and daddy guilt set in big time. Our thoughts raced, “Oh, man. I thought he didn’t really notice!” The sad part is, we felt like we were doing pretty OK in that department. We consider ourselves active, intentional, loving parents—but we had made a mistake. We felt awful. We knew our scrolling mindlessly wasn’t good. We even had conversations about limiting adult time on our phones just like we limit computer and TV time for Liam. We had talked about it—but e’d never done anything about it. It’s sad, and I am not proud of the fact that it took our six year old asking the question in such a normal and matter-of-fact way to bring about a solution. Knife to the heart, self-inflicted guilt and shame, followed by forgiveness. “Hi, I am Kim. This is my husband Grant (we are raising our hands), and we are not perfect.” Please, be gentle with yourself, and repeat after me, “We are going to make mistakes.” We all do—and will continue to do so. It’s how we choose to move forward and learn from those mistakes that counts.

The realization that looking at our phones while our child is asking a question, seeming disinterested but answering anyway, or completely ignoring (not even on purpose) doesn’t feel good to anyone. But here is what we are choosing to focus on: we are choosing to focus on the fact that it was a wake up call, and we did something about it. Perfection is an illusion, but making changes for the better is a do-able reality.

We created a “phone jar” — in our home, it’s a literal jar with a label and everything. Our phones now stay in the jar—unless we are taking photos or speaking on them—until our son goes to bed. The exception being our designated “electronics time” when he may be on our tablet or watching TV. It was (and still is) hard sometimes, but this phone jar has been awesome! We are able to be so much more intentional about our family time and about how we spend our phone time.

You can use anything that holds your phones. It doesn’t have to be a jar—a bowl, a box, a drawer—lots of options will work.  If you know you are on your phone too much, if you are reading this and mentally cringing, try a phone jar—just for a week—and see if it works for your family.

It’s time to release the phones. Let your family time triumph.