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FAMILY DIGITAL DETOX
Reclaiming Our Home from the Screens Outside It
A practical, compassionate guide to helping families live with technology without allowing technology to take over family life.
Phones at the table. Tablets in the bedroom. Gaming that was meant to last twenty minutes and somehow swallowed the afternoon. A television playing while everyone else is scrolling on something smaller.
None of this makes you a bad parent.
It makes you a parent raising children in a world that has changed extraordinarily quickly.
Family Digital Detox was written for families who have begun to wonder whether the balance has shifted a little too far, and who would like to shift it back without declaring war on the Wi-Fi.
By Shane Warren & Laurence Catzel
FAMILY DIGITAL DETOX
Reclaiming Our Home from the Screens Outside It
Are the screens starting to feel like another member of the family?
Technology has become woven into almost every part of childhood and family life. It entertains us, educates us, connects us, distracts us, rescues tired parents at the end of long days and occasionally gives everyone twenty blessed minutes of peace.
We are not pretending otherwise.
The difficulty begins when something that is useful starts occupying more space than we intended to give it.
Sometimes we notice it in the arguments about putting the phone away. Sometimes it is the child who seems unable to tolerate boredom anymore. Sometimes it is gaming, social media or endless video content. Sometimes it is bedtime getting later and mornings becoming harder.
And sometimes the uncomfortable realisation is that the child is not the only person in the house who reaches automatically for a screen.
That is where this book begins. Not with blame. With noticing.
This is not a book about banning technology
We do not believe modern families need to retreat from the digital world.
Children are growing up in it. Adults work in it. Friendships, education, entertainment, communication and increasingly much of ordinary life happen partly through screens.
Trying to pretend otherwise is unlikely to get us very far.
What families can do is become much more intentional about the place technology occupies in the home.
Family Digital Detox helps parents step away from the exhausting question of:
“How many hours of screen time should my child have?”
and begin asking the more interesting questions:
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What is the screen replacing?
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Is it replacing sleep?
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Conversation?
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Movement?
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Boredom?
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Play?
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Family rituals?
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Being outdoors?
Or simply those strange little moments when nothing particularly exciting happens but families somehow get to know one another?
That shift in thinking matters.
What we explore...
Throughout Family Digital Detox, Shane and Laurence bring together psychology, education, parenting experience and the realities of contemporary family life.
The book explores:
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recognising the quieter signs that screens are beginning to dominate family life;
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understanding why changing digital habits can create resistance, frustration and big emotions;
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looking at the digital behaviour of adults as well as children;
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creating realistic boundaries without turning every device into the beginning of an argument;
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rebuilding family rhythms around sleep, meals, conversation, movement, play and connection;
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helping children develop healthier relationships with boredom, stimulation and emotional regulation;
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responding to setbacks without deciding that the whole experiment has failed; and
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creating a family approach to technology that can evolve as children grow.
It is practical because families need things they can actually do.
But it is also reflective, because the most useful family change rarely comes from another rule stuck to the refrigerator.
Sometimes it comes from understanding why we need the rule in the first place.
Perhaps this sounds familiar…
You ask everyone to put their phones away during dinner. Then yours buzzes.
You tell the kids that they have had enough screen time. They point out that you have been answering emails for the past two hours.
Someone says they are bored approximately eleven seconds after the tablet disappears. A negotiation begins. A negotiation becomes an argument.
Someone dramatically declares that every other child in school is apparently allowed unlimited access to everything. You wonder whether living in 1987 might have been easier.
We know. Families are messy.
That is why Family Digital Detox is not based on the fantasy of perfect parents raising perfectly regulated children in beautifully organised screen-free homes.
We are much more interested in what can actually work on Wednesday night when everybody is tired.
A detox does not have to mean disappearing into the wilderness
The word detox can sound dramatic. But reclaiming family life does not necessarily begin with removing every screen from the house.
It might begin with dinner. Or bedtime. Or one afternoon.
It might mean phones stop sleeping beside us.
It might mean a walk without devices.
It might mean allowing a child to become bored long enough to discover what happens next.
It may simply mean noticing how often we reach for a screen without consciously deciding to.
Small changes matter because family culture is largely made from small things repeated.
The aim is not perfection. The aim is creating enough space for something else to return.
What might come back when the screens move aside?
Conversation. Boredom. Imagination.
Arguments that have absolutely nothing to do with battery percentages.
Cooking. Walking. Music. Playing. Reading.
Looking out the window.
Being ridiculous together.
Perhaps even knowing what happened in your child's day without first seeing it through a photograph.
None of those things requires abandoning technology.
They simply require technology occasionally making room.
About the Authors
Shane Warren
Shane Warren is a psychotherapist, coach and family practitioner with more than three decades of experience working with individuals, parents, children and families. His work has consistently explored the relationship between emotional wellbeing, behaviour, relationships and the environments in which families live.
His contribution to Family Digital Detox brings a psychological lens to digital habits, emotional regulation, avoidance, connection and the sometimes uncomfortable business of examining what adults model for children.
Laurence Catzel
Laurence Catzel is an educator, parenting facilitator and experienced leader in education and school-age care whose work with families spans different communities and cultural contexts.
Her perspective brings together the practical realities of parenting, children's development, education and the everyday challenge of creating boundaries that families can actually live with.
Shane and Laurence have worked together facilitating parenting programs through the Poppet Centre for more than a decade.
Perhaps that is why they agree on something fairly fundamental:
Families do not need to be perfect. They need opportunities to be present.
Before you decide you need to “fix” anything…
We would encourage you to begin somewhere quieter. Notice.
Notice when the screens appear.
Notice when they disappear.
Notice who becomes uncomfortable.
Notice what becomes easier.
Notice what becomes harder.
Notice what your children do.
Perhaps most importantly, notice what you do. Because a family digital reset works rather differently when it becomes something we are doing together, rather than something adults are doing to children.
That is the spirit in which this book was written.
Keep the conversation going...
The Poppet Centre has always been interested in the ordinary, complicated and sometimes wonderfully ridiculous business of raising children.
Digital life is now part of that story.
Across the Poppet Centre we will continue exploring screen habits, parenting, emotional regulation, online life, family connection and the changing world in which our children are growing up.
So whether you buy the book, borrow it, skim it, argue with it or simply take one idea away from this page, you are welcome to stay part of the conversation.