For parents
Your attention is the first thing you give your child.
Everything on this site is about reclaiming attention. This is that work at its most important: being fully present for the people who are learning how to be human by watching you.
Why this matters
The attention economy reached the nursery
Parents are on their phones. Kids are on their phones. To a small child, a parent absorbed in a screen reads as a blank, unresponsive face, and it happens dozens of times a day. This is the first generation raised by distracted parents and then handed distracting devices of their own.
If that lands heavily, read this part carefully. You are not failing.
This is not about bad parents, and it is not about mothers being at fault. Parenting has never been more isolating or exhausting, and the phone is often the one bit of relief or adult contact you get all day. You are a normal person in an environment built to capture you, at the very moments your child needs you. And there is a way to protect what matters.
Where to start
Four things that protect a family's attention
You don't need to be a perfect, phone-free parent. You need to protect the moments that matter and model a healthier relationship with the screen.
Model it first
Your kids learn what to do with a phone by watching you. Work on your own attention, and you've done more for them than any rule you could impose.
Protect the key moments
You don't have to be phone-free all day. Guard a few windows of full presence: mornings, meals, bedtime, and play.
Make phone-free zones
Simple rules that apply to everyone: no phones at the table, none in bedrooms, and a charging station that lives in the kitchen overnight.
Delay and protect childhood
A basic phone early if needed, a smartphone and social media much later. You're not depriving them. You're protecting a childhood.
Read
Essays for parents
Deeper reading on phones, presence, and raising kids with their attention intact.
What Age Should My Kid Get a Phone?
It's the question every parent dreads. Here's a clear, research-based way to think about it, and why 'later than you fear' is usually the right answer.
Phones and Parenting: How to Raise Attention in a Distracted Home
Parents are on their phones. Kids are on their phones. It may be the most important attention problem of all. Here's what's happening to family life, and how to protect it.
Coming soon
Parent coaching is in the works
One-to-one and small-group coaching for parents who want help building a calmer, more present, less phone-ruled home. It's in development. Join the Weekly Attention Report to be first to know, and to get new parenting essays as they're written.
Reclaim your attention
You can't pour presence from a distracted self.
Start by reclaiming your own attention. Your kids are watching, and they learn it from you first.