Welcome back to our next episode from Lessons From the Playroom podcast. I am so excited for today’s topic because we’ll just put it in the category of Hot Topics, and I can’t think of a better person to join me on this topic of screen time for kids and how to support children in their use or non use of screen time. Then Stacy Jagger.
So for those of you that are not familiar with our amazing guests, let me introduce you and then we’ll say a quick hello to you, Stacy, and then we’re going to get going into this conversation. So I’m Stacy Jagger. She is joining us from right outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a registered play therapist, and supervisor. She’s also an approved supervisor. Sorry I said that incorrectly.
She’s a mother of four, and I’m just going to vouch not just four, but four amazing kids, your kids. Thank you, Lisa. Amazing Stacy, up there on my list of favorite kids in this world, you’re a speaker, author, and mentor to so many.
You are the founder and clinical director of Music City Family Therapy, a unique counseling practice serving Greater Nashville. And you specialize in integrating play and expressive arts therapy for children, individuals, and family. You’re also the creator of the Stacy Jagger Mountain Method as well.
And you’re the author of 30 Day Blackout, as well as a children’s book called A Letter from Emma. So listeners, as I’m sharing this, maybe you’ve heard of some of these before, so you can go, I didn’t know that was Stacy or, oh, this is Stacy. So as you’re orienting to how I’m introducing her and some of you may know her live from television.
So she is a regular on local NBC affiliate show Today in Nashville. She’s appeared on Nashville’s Talk of the Town. She’s been a featured expert about child everything pretty much on so many different platforms.
So Stacy, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation because this is one of your gigs. This conversation is one of the things that you love to talk about the most. Yep.
Thank you for having me, Lisa. You’re one of my favorite people, so thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Yeah, I feel privileged to have this conversation with you. So I said the word hot topic. I know you know that it’s a hot topic and we hear so much is screen time good? Is it bad? What’s it doing to children’s brains? And my hope in our conversation is that we’ll give therapists just another perspective, another way to think about screen time, another way to support families with screen time.
Let’s just start with we’re not going to make it right or wrong. Let’s just talk about what do we know that it does, what does screen time do for kids? And even for the family system, there is positive impact, but let’s talk about what the potential negative impact is. Well, not all screen time is created equal, as you know.
But I will tell you that the research is showing that kids are on screens about seven to 8 hours a day. And in the work that I’ve done over the last 1012 years in implementing digital detoxes for families. What I’ve seen over and over again is that the overuse of screen time, especially content that is very fast frames per second, can dysregulate the nervous system when they are not balancing that out with nature based play, being outside at the expense of other activities, especially connecting with their families.
I could talk about this all day, but I can tell you that for some kids, they can get very dysregulated outside their window of tolerance and that sympathetic rev up and then others completely shut down. And parents don’t really understand the nervous system and what’s kind of going on with their kiddo. They can think that their child is just simply depressed or anxious and they don’t understand that there is a role of screen time in the way that that all kind of shakes down.
Go ahead. When you say screen time, what are we talking about? Because I think some people might just go, oh, they’re playing games, but screen time, screen time. Correct.
Yeah. When I first started implementing digital Detoxes with families, what I found pretty humorous is that after I would go through my whole spiel about it, the parents would ask me, well, what about the TV? And I would say, is TV a screen? And they would kind of chuckle and look at each other and be like, oh, I guess it is a screen. So we’re so used to so many screens being on all the time, and you can’t even put gas in your car now without looking at a screen that I think we’ve forgotten that 100 years ago this wasn’t a thing.
I think that’s important to name because I think when people hear screen time, they think, oh, it’s the kid on their computer playing a video game. And I think it’s important that the listeners understand that we’re talking about screens. Like you’re saying it could be computer, it could be the phone, it could be the television.
Yeah. It’s living in the age of distraction around screens kind of being everywhere, if you will. Yeah.
I have one more little question in here about the Dysregulation then, and I want to then go into a little bit about how you work with families around this. Yeah, sure. Really unique, and I know you great results from it.
So you said this interesting thing about however many frames. Is it the stimulation that dysregulates the nervous system because of the sensory data? Is that what’s happening? Well, what I’ve observed over the years, helping folks go through a 30 day blackout process is that when you think about Mr. Rogers Neighborhood back in the 70s, it was pretty slow.
It was like a documentary. You kind of go down the street, and then you take a left, and then he opens the door, and then you go through the door, and then there’s the fish, and it’s just a very and then when you think about what’s going on today. There’s so much advertisements and the frames per second are so fast that if you juxtapose that against what was going on in the it’s just sped up so fast that I’m now of the opinion that it doesn’t really even matter what the content is.
Sometimes it’s just the frames per second. The things are switching around so fast that it kind of depends on what your nervous system or your child’s nervous system can handle and then how to artfully figure out. Okay, how much screen time can my family handle in order for us to all stay in our window of so, Stacy, when you do an intake with a family, do you ask questions? Is this part of your intake process with the family? It absolutely is.
So it’s an integral part of my intake, and when I’m training my interns, I will kind of chuckle and say, if parents look at you and say, oh, it’s about, I don’t know, what do you think? Two, 3 hours a day, I pretty much will multiply that times two, sometimes three, because it kind of reminds me of alcohol. Well, really, I just have a couple of beers a night. Well, really, it’s more like six or seven.
So I have found that to be true over the years. When parents don’t actually know how much their kids are on their screens, it’s probably twice as much as they’re thinking, usually. Yeah.
Okay, so this is super interesting. So you’re proposing that the therapists open up the possibility that screen time is contributing to some of the Dysregulation and things that might be going on for the kids? Because that’s novel, Stacy. That’s not something that play therapists typically just jump in and start to just get curious about and you’re saying, no, that’s actually a really important place to be curious, because there absolutely is a connection.
So let’s say that you have a family and you’re suspecting, oh, no, there really could be something here with that. Walk us through what this looks like and help us think about this. Sure.
So, first session, I do a full genogram on the child and family. I will do a timeline on the child. Then I will ask, what do they enjoy doing? And when the parents start telling me, oh, they love Minecraft shooter games, I can’t remember all the names of all of them.
I’m getting old. But I will start to ask myself, for example, if I told you my child is eating chocolate chip cookies 8 hours a day, then you might say to yourself, as a therapist, that’s a lot of cookies. That’s a whole lot of cookies.
Now, if you start thinking about screen time, then the research shows that kids are on their screen seven to 8 hours a day. And then you start to ask yourself the question, okay, well, at what expense? And when children are on screens all day long and they’re not getting enough eye contact, they’re not getting enough of that personal connection with their family and friends. During the play based assessment, which is for me, session two and three with both parents, I start to see in that play based assessment that what I’m seeing is there’s not a lot of eye contact.
Their transitions are super fast. They’re having ADHD qualities to their play. And I have a whole story behind this, Lisa, of my own story, as we all do, and creating interventions for our work.
I lived in a cabin with no electricity in my early 20s with my husband. It’s a hilarious story. But the truth is, because of the way I was raised in an alcoholic family that was very violent, I did not have an opportunity to experience what it would feel like to be regulated in.
My own nervous system until I was in my early 20s, living in a non electric cabin with my husband with no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing, and spent most of my time for a year and a half walking with my dog, observing the trees, feeling the wind, taking naps in the middle of the day, getting involved in gardening. And because I was literally stuck in front of a television most of my childhood, in the book 30 Day Blackout that I wrote, I’d tell the story. I would wake up and watch Wheel of Fortune, and then I would watch I think it was One Life to Live, General Hospital.
Then I would watch I think it was the Jeffersons. I mean, I’m showing my age right now, all in the family. Then I would watch Wheel of Fortune again with my sisters later that afternoon.
And I already knew what the answers were going to be to the wheel. And I would be like, I know what it is. And so I really was stuck in front of a television a lot of my childhood.
And so after having experienced living non electric for a year and a half, which is kind of crazy, but I actually did that by choice when I started working as a therapist, and I had families with multiple children where the parents were saying, please help our whole family. And I didn’t just have one child that was my client, but the family was the client. It was honestly the easiest intervention for me to get an efficient way to get the ball rolling of how to help a whole family to connect and regulate without me having to see the family for years.
And what I found is that it created a treatment plan that was more like three to six months rather than years on end. And so utilizing experiential therapy, play based stuff with really focusing on regulating the nervous system by digital detoxes. I am known in Nashville for being like, the get it done therapist because I’m really treating the whole family on the child’s behalf that the parents are most concerned about.
So this is really about efficiency for, like, how quickly can I help a child and family get out of pain? And I have found that by taking away the screens for just a little bit and that doesn’t include work in school, but it reduces screen time from seven to 8 hours a day to more like two. One or two. That there’s a whole lot of bang to your buck when you’re willing to do something that is kind of a grenade in your lap approach.
Like, oh, and by the way, you’re going to go Amish for an entire month. I don’t know if I was signing up for that, but when I explained to parents the nervous system and how if we can really jump in with 2ft for three to six months, that whatever it is that you’re really wanting for your child and family in that period of time, that we’re going to create a treatment plan on a mountain of where we are at the bottom of the mountain. What you want at the top.
And we’re just going to simply climb that mountain together. So there is a little bit of a coaching element to the way that I practice, but in the beginning, it is nine times out of ten, some sort of a digital detox or a blackout or what I call a gray out, which is usually when I’m working with a divorce situation where I just can’t get both parents on the same page. Yeah.
So, listeners, I know that I mentioned 30 day blackout in Stacy’s bio, and you just mentioned it too. So that’s Stacy’s book. As we’re having this conversation, if you’re finding yourself really interested, pick up that book so that you can read more about this.
All right, let me ask probably some of the questions that some okay, have the first one hit me with your best shot. Wait, what? Like, families agree to this? Isn’t there a freak out that happens. And do the parents have to do it, too? Speak to some of the I mean, let’s call it what it is, fear.
Right. Let’s speak to the fears that come up. I think for anyone who’s been so conditioned to have a life in front of a screen, which is all of us, typically, right, it is.
And so the thought I think even I mean, I’m even thinking about it right now going, oh, my gosh, what would that be like for me? And my heart starts to increase, right? Just a little bit. So speak to the fears. How do you work with the fears? What do you see? Lisa I work in a very wealthy part of Nashville in Brentwood, and most of the parents that come to see me, they just want me to get the job done.
So if the child is in distress, they will literally do whatever I say. I mean, that’s just the truth. The way that I explain a 30 day blackout is I will say, you’re going to go home and you’re going to explain to your family that we really want to connect better, and this is going to feel like a punishment, but that’s not the intention.
For the first five days, it’s going to be complete and utter hell. And the reason is because everybody’s used to doing what they’ve always done, and we’re going to do something different now through the lens of experiential family therapy. If you’ve studied Virginia Satir, her whole thing was perturbing the family system on purpose.
Okay? Now, there’s many ways of perturbing a family system, but I found over the years that if screen time is the overuse of screen time is an issue, that taking away the screens is just a very easy, natural way to perturb the family system. So you’re rocking their boat on purpose, for the purpose of them putting their furniture back together in a different way for the whole family system. And so after day five, I call it the door of boredom.
Day six and seven, that’s when I tell parents that your child is probably going to think that boredom is going to kill them, that boredom does not kill children. The next three weeks after that, we simply replace connection based activities for what used to be entertainment while I’m working with your child. And what will typically happen is whatever is really going on with that child client will simply bubble to the surface.
It makes my job very easy. They’re basically handing me on a platter what the actual problem is, and that is when I start choreographing repair for any ruptures, any perceived isolation, lack of connection. If it’s a sexual abuse case, it makes it much easier for me to access the perception of that child’s experience because I’m, in essence, creating a therapeutic environment at home.
That kind of reminds you of wilderness therapy, quite honestly, but it’s just an at home intervention that I am inspiring families to go camping, get outside, go hiking, get off the screens for just a little bit so that we can really deal with the issues at hand. And then I will many times find that parents are not connecting very well. And that is when I use my communication mats, which makes my job much easier.
They’re simple mats that I have created that will help a parent and a child or siblings or whoever DIAD that I need to work with in the family system to forgive, to get on the same page. I used them at the conference. Lisa, you were so kind with Lynn Louise Wonders. The two of you experienced that intervention. I use those maths all the time and so do my interns and it’s just a jump in there and get this done.
Nobody’s got time to be in therapy for five years kind of situation. I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you. I will explain to a family, I’m going to see your child and your family weekly till we’re halfway up the mountain.
Then we’re going to go to every other week, then we’re going to go to once a month and then we’re going to pick a graduation date and we’re going to graduate. I have found that families that choose to do some sort of blackout, they will climb half of a mountain in about a month, month to six weeks. I mean, it’s pretty fast because everybody’s nervous systems are regulated and they’re able to do the work easier because there’s no distractions of really what the issues are at hand.
What I find to be so awesome is that and there is a sales element to this. And I’m realizing that more and more. Which is why I’m creating a course where my colleagues can just send their clients to a course rather than trying to sell it themselves.
Because I don’t think I realize this is more difficult to do than I mean, it’s easy for me, but it’s not easy for everybody. But anyways, what I found with parents is that they will implement a blackout a second time on their own, without any prompting from me whatsoever, because they see so much of a dramatic shift in their family system and in their child that many parents will tell me, I’m never going back and doing what we were doing because we were just, quite honestly, wasting too much time on sitting in front of screens. Just some families where you kind of need to meet them in the middle, like the know where it’s no, it’s too uncomfortable to go.
Yes. And I will just simply say, tell me what you’re willing to do. And then that’s when the negotiation process kind of happens.
And many families will say, what if we just started with a Griffin router? Which I highly recommend if you don’t know about the will, it’s a simple router that will filter out any violence, pornography, anything that you don’t want your child or for you to see or be exposed to. It filters all of that out so many times. I will just start with a Griffin router and a grayout, which is a negotiation of how many hours a day are they willing to reduce to so that I can do my job with their child and their family and the siblings and all the things that I’m trying to do to help their family heal.
I’m hearing a couple of different things here that’s really interesting. One is the recognition of the potential impact on the nervous system of just the screen time, recognizing the role of that in maybe what’s gone on in the family dynamics. I’m hearing kind of two things.
One is the impact of it and then also how it can be used as an avoidance to maybe issues that are going on. And kind of like twofold, so removing that or limiting access to it not only helps the nervous system be able to calibrate right, or come back into a little bit more of a more regulated place, but then it also simultaneously reveals what might have been masked or hidden by that. And so it’s kind of like this dual thing, like, let’s help regulate the system while the stuff emerges.
And as the stuff emerges, then we jump in and we address that. And then the other thing that I’m hearing, which I really love, you’re, actually affirming something that I have shared with parents over the years, which I’ve shared with parents. Don’t expect your kid to get off screens if there’s nothing that’s worthy of getting off for.
Great point. Right? Just telling them, get off and it’s like, Why? For what? Right? For what? There’s nothing here for me, so why would I do that? What I’m hearing you say is that this obviously served a need, whatever it was. But as we’re moving that, we’re also filling it, right, filling that void with, like you said, nature, family connection, different things that can get a whole range of needs met.
So it’s not like, oh, we’re just getting rid of it and then good luck. Yeah. And to be trying to help.
And to be clear, Lisa, kids absolutely hate me in the beginning of treatment. They really do. Because I will tell the parents, if you need to blame this on me, feel free, because nothing like a common enemy to bring a family together.
And I’m actually fine with that. But kids write me letters at the end and say, I’ve always wanted to go camping with my dad. We never did family connection time.
I’ve never put a puzzle together with my mother. I never knew that I could play the ukulele. I’m playing the piano.
I mean, I have kids. I have stacks of letters from children that I know they’re going to hate me in the beginning. And I know they’re going to love me.
Not all, they don’t all love me, but most of them do at the end. And that’s kind of what makes it worth it to me, because it feels my goal is more to graduate the family rather than to keep them around forever. And what I’ve found with my own practice that has grown over the years is that the community has learned that if they’ll do the hard things for just a little while, that therapy doesn’t take forever, that they really can climb a mountain in a reasonable amount of time.
And then they tell their neighbors and their principals and their teachers about me. And before you know it, my practice, I was seeing more people that I could really see, which is why I started a group practice a couple of years ago and growing that way. And I know that you have the reputation, I know you were joking a little earlier of like, honestly, Lisa, they just do what I tell them to.
Important for listeners to hear that when we do something that is successful and people feel grateful for it and they start to tell their friends or the work, the sales pitch does become easier because it was a very hard sell twelve years ago. But I’ve created a reputation where people kind of know that this is what I’m known for, is Digital Detoxes. So they kind of come to me knowing what they’re signing up for on the front end.
And that was a little egotistical for me to say. They do whatever I say. That’s not always true, but I can tell you that I know what works.
And I only have so many slots in my week to work with families. And if they’re not willing to reduce screen time at all, if they just dig their heels in and this is something they’re not interested in doing at all, I will typically say if you’re not willing to reduce screen time at all, I don’t know how helpful I’m going to be. So I really am willing to let people go if they don’t want to follow the mountain method protocol, because I just know that it works and what they want.
If you want what you say that you want, then we’ll do what’s required. And having a different environment at home and focusing, I mean, I’ll tell parents the healing happens in between sessions. It’s not really all with me, it’s what happens at home in between coming to see me, if that makes sense.
Totally. I’m imagining there’s some listeners that might be thinking, oh my gosh, maybe I should try this in my home and get a sense of the power of it before even considering going towards their clients with it, which I don’t think such a bad idea. Right.
I have found that my interns that have implemented 30 day blackouts with their own family, it just becomes an easier sell for their clients because they’ve experienced. It a harder sell for those that don’t really want to do it themselves. But I don’t make them do it.
But a lot of my interns have done 30 day blackouts with their own families and have experienced the quiet. I mean, we are not used to quiet. We’re not used to being bored.
I will tell families a lot. You got to feel bored in order to find that inner sense of creativity. And if you will allow your child to press into I mean, I will tell parents, I’m implementing boredom on purpose.
It’s not going to kill your kiddo. But if you can let them lean into it, they will start to find a willingness to do things they were not willing to do before. And I’ve seen it over and over again.
They’re willing to cook with mom in the kitchen and go for family walks and put together puzzles and dust off all the dust on their board games at home. And then as play therapists, the reality is if you take away the screens, they’re going to organically play on their own at home. And then when they come to see you, you’re doing that deeper work that the parents don’t know how to do on their own without you at home.
I want to take us back to something that you had shared at the beginning, which I think is worthy of bringing back around, which is that everyone’s nervous system is different and everyone’s nervous system needs a little something and so something different. And so I’m just thinking about the children whose high values maybe do have something to do with a screen. So like let’s Child that their creativity is unleashed when they are working on a design of something.
Yeah, that’s a great point. Or someone who’s super into programming, you know what I mean? Like computer programming. Sure.
When they come alive. I want you to speak to this. I want to say one thing.
In my understanding, when we’re doing something that is deeply inspiring to us, it doesn’t affect our nervous system in quite the same way. Will you speak to that? And that may not even be the direction you’d go with it, but would you speak to that? What about the kid who genuinely, really is inspired and there’s a screen involved? I’m really glad you brought this up. The reality is the blackout is not to try to make everybody amish.
That’s not the point. It really takes away unnecessary screen time so that when you implement, you go back to some sort of so at the beginning of working with a family, they will come up with a family joint agreement of what they’re going to do for the next month. Many of those families will do it again.
During that second time, we will have conversations of when this blackout is over or gray out is over. What would you like to implement? And every. Family is truly different in regards to what they want to do going forward.
So it’s an art, right? And if you have a child that loves coding or loves YouTubing or whatever it is, what I will say is that they will find the thing that’s most meaningful to them and they will jump in with 2ft of what they want to do with their time on screens. So it’s not the screen. This honestly isn’t even a screen time issue, really.
It’s more about putting the things in place where connection is possible both to themselves and to their families and their parents and then figuring out a way to make this the dessert of their life, not the main course. Really. Like, how do I artfully want to use screen time? Where I’m going to invest my time in the things that are most meaningful to me and to do those things.
But then I’m not going to spend another 6 hours scrolling on Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and YouTube and just mindless things that mean nothing to them, right? They’re just going to focus on the thing that’s meaningful to them. And then when they’re done, they’re done and they get off and they go outside and they hike. Because you only have so many hours of the day.
We’re asleep 8 hours. So you got 16 hours left. So do the math.
But I have found that in my own family. My son Luke, he uses YouTube for guitar lessons. And my daughter, Della Rose, she loves mean.
There’s so many good things about screen time, but after the blackout, you’re just getting rid of the fat. You’re cutting the fat and you’re keeping the meat. You’re chewing up the chicken and throwing out the bones.
Okay, I don’t need these bones. Don’t need those bones. But we won’t keep this chicken.
I like the chicken. Keeping the chicken, throwing out the bones. Is that helpful? Does that answer your question? Totally.
I’m just hearing about helping the family come back together like a family that’s been dispersed energetically or in their connection with each other and with themselves. Right. You’re basically going like pause, pause, pause.
Exactly. Not an end. It’s just a pause.
We can establish our foundation again, our foundation to ourselves, our foundation to each other. So then we can reevaluate. How do we want our energy to go towards this thing? That’s inevitable in many ways because of the age that we live in.
And so how do I want to have a relationship with the screens? What does that look like? What’s best for my nervous system now that I understand better? What’s best for our family’s nervous system now that we understand our family nervous systems better? That’s more of like what I’m hearing. Is that accurate? Yeah. And some children, even with my own kids, I told this story in the 30 day blackout book.
But my daughter watched the abominable snowman on Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer, and it scared her to death. I mean, just scared her to death. Well, then here comes my son number two, and he watched the exact same movie, and he was laughing hysterically over the exact same abominable snowman which is proof that one child’s perception is very different than the other.
So where one child could like my daughter Della, she can sit in front of a screen, and about 30, 45 minutes later, she’s just done. She just is done. But there might be another child that just it’s like they can’t get enough of it and can’t turn it off.
So there’s little things that you can notice with your own child or your own self or your child client of, this is what this child can handle, and this is what this child can handle, and this is what this child can handle. And we all have to kind of be mindful of how much you can handle and how much you can’t and just be real honest about it and have conversations as a family about it. This is too much for me, or this is going to work for me.
And this is not totally it’s a pretty new phenomenon and conversation that needs to happen because none of us have figured it all out. But over the last 1012 years, I have found that taking a pause is healthy. Yeah.
That’s why I wanted you to join me in this conversation and so glad that we’re talking, because I guarantee this is a new thought for many of our listeners just to even consider the possibility of that. I have a final piece of discussion that I think that would be great to have with you and then where they can learn more about many of the things that we reference in the conversation. I want to go back to the pandemic.
Stacy. I’m thinking of Avery. So my Avery and her use of screen time in a matter of a couple of weeks from, I don’t know, whatever it was, to, like, Skyrocketed.
Right. All of a sudden, her school was online, and the only way to connect with her friends was online. I absolutely saw an impact on her, everything from headaches to agitation in her body to so much.
Right. And then the fact that you couldn’t go outside to enjoy that nature, wow. Her staring at this screen is really impacting her on many levels.
And my guess is that there are a lot of kids in that camp where the increase in screen time did have an effect to the pandemic and maybe even became part of the new norm. I just say. Curious about have you noticed or do you get curious about the effects of the increased screen time that had to happen because of the pandemic and where kids are now, or the level of gosh? I mean, Stacy, you see, but with teens, there’s so much depression with teens, and there’s so much anxiety.
There’s so much more agitation, it seems, in kids’bodies since the pandemic. Thoughts about that? Well, I mean, Lisa, the reality is media trauma is a thing. It just there, and there’s research about it.
I think it was the Boston Marathon bombing, that there was research after that that kids that were looking at the tragedy that happened there many times they will watch it over and over and over again, that the effects of screen time on their nervous systems and their behavior was worse than the people that were there experiencing it in real time. And this is researched information. I’m not making this up.
And there’s hundreds of studies out there about this now. And so I would just know my husband is a biofeedback neurofeedback guy, and I think that being able to communicate via Zoom is a beautiful, wonderful thing, because we are connected right now, Lisa. And you’re in Colorado, and I’m in Tennessee, and I love that, right? But the reality is that having access to tragedy after tragedy and news story after news story and every bad thing that ever happened and watching that stuff over and over again can create trauma responses in our bodies, in our kids bodies, and developmentally, many of them just cannot digest that much information.
When you think about what’s happening in our culture now with so much suicide and depression and anxiety and isolation, we really have to be honest that screens are a part of that. It feeds into disconnection and dysregulation, and I don’t want to go backwards. I love my GPS.
My husband, I used to call him Kit. That show Kit back in the day, I would be on the side of the road. I’d be like, Honey, I’m on this corner of blah, blah, blah.
And he would try to get me out of wherever I was. And I’m so thankful I don’t have to call him to get me out of a mess anymore. So I don’t want to go backwards, but I think we can go forwards in a way that’s healthier, that’s more balanced, and sometimes taking a pause is what’s necessary in order to artfully.
Figure out what you and your family can handle, where it is the dessert of your life and not the main course, and it doesn’t take over your whole entire life. And then all of a sudden, you’re 90 on your deathbed, and you’re like, well, I sure wish I had gone for a hike. Sure wish I had.
And you’ve just wasted so much time unnecessarily because you didn’t have a chance to really analyze what you were doing if you’ve listened to or watched the social dilemma. There’s so much science behind the reality that we’re getting dopamine hits and we’re getting this false sense of connection many times through our phones and our screens when we really need to balance that out with more personal, one on one eye contact in real time connection. I just heard a final piece here, too.
Even for individuals that aren’t necessarily ready to do a 30 day blackout or a gray out, even just pausing and considering of of the screen time that is happening, just what’s the impact of that? So maybe it’s just turn the news off around kids. Yeah. And when I talk about this or just one night a week to connect a blackout night, a blackout night where we do something as a family, but just such amazing information, Stacy, for us to do a lot of thinking.
So thank you so very much. Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate you.
Yeah, I appreciate you too. So you mentioned a couple of things. So, first of all, 30 day blackout they can get on Amazon.
Amazon, absolutely. Yes. Mountain Method that you talked about.
You do trainings in the Mountain Method, where can people read more about you and Mountain Method and what you’re up to? Yeah, if you go to Stacyjagger.com, my first full blown CEU training in the Mountain Method is this fall, so you’re welcome to reach out to me and I could send you that information. And for those of you, it’s Stacyjagger.com.
Perfect. Yeah. We also referenced also you have a children’s book, a letter from Emma.
You have also done an incredible work with the Amish community. And this was beautiful, beautiful story that you wrote for the Amish community around I did sexual abuse. What else would we love for everyone to know? You’re available for speaking engagements and teachings.
And if you want to hear more or have Stacy provide some more education to organization on this topic or even just family systems, Stacy’s just brilliant in working with the whole family system. They can also find you@Stacyjagger.com. Yeah, and just a quick you know, we are carrying so much stress right now.
I know you know that Nashville just had a school shooting last week, and I have a real heart for first responders, therapists, nurses, physicians who need a place to rest. And I do have a farm in Columbia, which is right outside of where my office is in Brentwood, where I create personal retreats and workshops and all kinds of fun things, yoga. And we’re doing a silent retreat at the end of April.
So if there are therapists that just need a break and you need a place to rest, feel free to reach out to me for some self care. I’m happy to help with that piece as well. And I can vouch.
Listeners, I have been to this farm, and it’s magical. Okay, listeners, let’s all take a moment and pause and take a breath. And I hope that this episode has given you some things to think about or to just get curious about and dialogue with people about.
What do you think about this and how are you feeling about this, and to reflect and question and wherever you are in the world, take care of yourselves. You are the most important toy in that playroom. Until next time.
