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Welcome to The Foster Friendly Podcast. We’re bringing foster care closer to home by sharing stories from the front lines. We're talking with former foster youth, foster parents and others who are finding unique and powerful ways to dramatically improve the experiences and outcomes for kids in foster care.
The Foster Friendly podcast is brought to you by America’s Kids Belong, a nonprofit that helps kids in foster care find belonging in both family and community.
Brian Mavis (00:01.701)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I'm your host Brian Mavis with my summer outdoor loving co-host. And today we're going to be talking about not being outside, not loving summer, but about electronics. Boo. But it's, but it's like, right.
Travis (00:20.305)
Hahaha
Courtney (00:20.398)
Another light topic.
Travis (00:24.352)
haha
Brian Mavis (00:25.233)
And man, I don't know if it has any relevancy to people in their lives today with kids and phones. But maybe, maybe somebody out there is dealing with that.
Travis (00:33.111)
Maybe. Well, let me just say, let me just say this, the Amish are dealing with it. I mean, Amish have smartphones, some do. So that tells you the pervasiveness of this. Okay.
Brian Mavis (00:38.203)
What about you guys?
Brian Mavis (00:49.073)
electronics broke through the Amish community. No to light bulbs but yes let's have social media come and wreck our lives.
Travis (00:51.681)
No.
Travis (00:59.127)
Yeah, well.
Travis (01:03.361)
We're learning about better barn raisings.
Brian Mavis (01:05.937)
All right, okay. Well for all our Amish friends who are like listening to this podcast welcome and The rest of you. We'll see if this is relevant Courtney and Travis Tell me just you both are parents What tell the audience like what what's the age range you're currently parenting
Courtney (01:06.827)
Hahaha.
Courtney (01:34.574)
I have 5 to 23 inside the house, 5 to 17. you know, a little bit of everything.
Travis (01:36.983)
Mmm.
Brian Mavis (01:37.073)
You
Travis (01:39.639)
inside the house.
Brian Mavis (01:39.705)
Okay, yeah, so, okay, yeah, you get kindergarten through high school, all right, and then into college, yes, and beyond. All right, Travis, what about yourself?
Travis (01:53.107)
similar age. I do have one in college, but in the house, I'm right with Courtney six to 18. So we have a very similar. Yeah.
Brian Mavis (01:59.281)
6 to 18, yeah. So, okay, you guys, whatever you say today should be relevant to whoever is listening because they're gonna be like, well, they don't know what it is for a teenager or they don't know for elementary. It's like, you guys know. Okay, so just for you guys, just to start off with in general, what are you finding to be the hardest thing about parenting today?
Courtney (02:08.352)
Ha ha.
Travis (02:14.391)
right.
Courtney (02:14.636)
Yeah
Brian Mavis (02:28.427)
And maybe to help bring clarity, what we mean by this is you guys have been parents long enough or presumably that you can say, it feels a lot different today than it did five years ago or 10 years ago. And here's what is making it different and hard.
Courtney (02:51.348)
Yeah, I think for me, you know, there's always the things of parenting that's hard, right? The things that from the time the world was began, right? It's hard to raise kids. It's hard. It's physically hard. You know, all the stuff that's there. That's true still today. But now we have this added thing of electronics and we're trying to guard our kids' hearts and guard their minds and protect them. And you add all that into it and try to get their schoolwork done and be diligent in work and all these things that the electronics makes such a...
Brian Mavis (02:56.645)
Yeah. Yes, it's been hard.
Travis (02:58.155)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (03:20.376)
plays a toll in all these areas of parenting. So it's it's affecting, it's like the overarching thing that's affecting all these other areas that we've had forever.
Brian Mavis (03:28.869)
So this, okay, so you're not saying this just because that's what the topic is today, electronics. You're like, no, that's your reality. Okay, all right. Travis, what about you? All right, is it electric bikes? I bet that's what it is, right? All right, uh-huh. Way harder.
Courtney (03:34.646)
Yeah, no, that's reality. Yep.
Travis (03:40.885)
Yeah, I 100 % so hard to manage electric bikes. They're unsafe and fixing them. Way harder to fix. I would say very similar to that. Only I'm going to put the lens more. Well, I'm going to put the mirror on myself and say that all of these things. I kind of called it like fractured attention. you know, there's just so much I like, you know, whether
Courtney (03:43.99)
Hahaha
Brian Mavis (04:05.562)
Hmm.
Travis (04:10.463)
you know, social media and then screens and, but it's like things are the speed of light it feels like in terms of just information, but also like the things and that includes me. So like, I guess I'm saying for me, the difference I see as well is just in my own inability to focus as well as I should or be present. Cause I'm part of the problem myself of like, can get overly into this stuff, right? So not just them.
Courtney (04:35.406)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (04:36.345)
Yeah, yes, for sure. I can relate to that too. I currently am not parenting any kids in my home, but electronics does distract me. And so that's tough. So Travis, do you have any words of wisdom from like maybe what Abraham Lincoln said about social media, your famous quotes of...
Travis (05:02.443)
man, gosh, what would Honest Abe have said in that content? I'm trying to think. Just be honest about your usage or was George Washington the one about honesty? Okay, I'm forgetting. I wish I did, but I can't channel Lincoln. I can't channel Lincoln on this and I'm sorry I failed this.
Brian Mavis (05:11.857)
Right, right, right, yeah.
Courtney (05:12.525)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (05:16.795)
All right, okay, all right. I thought you would have something. Okay. Okay, all right. Yeah, gosh, I always count on you for some obscure quote. All right, okay. So let's now, yeah, keep down this path and realizing that electronics isn't just because it's the topic of this podcast, but it is what is making...
Courtney (05:23.521)
you
Travis (05:26.152)
Courtney (05:28.088)
you
Brian Mavis (05:46.353)
parenting harder and not just because it's affecting the kids, it's impacting us directly, not just indirectly through the kids. And so we're all being impacted by it. But so specifically to the families who have foster youth and electronics, let's go down this road. So first of all, many of our listeners probably don't know that there's a thing called
the foster youth bill of rights. And it has rights or laws that are trying to give normalcy to kids in foster care. And of course, that is a good thing. They don't want to feel like that they don't belong to their fitting in with their peers and that kind of thing, those kinds of anxieties. But what feels automatically good, I guess, with the bill of rights.
on the surface does bring with it these kinds of issues, the hard realities of allow the bill of rights says the kids have the right to have a phone and have a right to electronics and a right to get onto the internet. So what, let's talk about that a little bit. mean, when Courtney, maybe I'll give this to you. What kind of
are you feeling with that bill of rights versus the reality of what those rights can bring to a kid's life?
Courtney (07:23.67)
Yeah, I haven't read it for a little while, but the Bill of Rights here in Colorado, I know it states something along the lines of have the means of technology to communicate with family and to communicate with friends. Right. So it's all about communication and that's good. That sounds great on the face of it. We want them to be able to communicate. But what that looks like is very like, what does that necessarily mean? We've had GALs, Guardian of Light-Ums, over at our house before. And we had this, we had this teenage boy who was 14.
He had a flip phone. He did not have a smartphone. He didn't care to have a smartphone. He wasn't asking for a smartphone. But the GAL was over here saying, hey, don't you want a smartphone like all of your friends? I'd help you get a smartphone. And it's like, he's not even asking for this. And so I feel like there's just those lines there of thinking that it's normal for teenagers. So we must allow them to have that. And then.
Brian Mavis (08:02.309)
No, thanks.
Travis (08:04.105)
Mmm. jeez.
Brian Mavis (08:06.759)
no.
Courtney (08:14.302)
I know we'll get more into it. And what does that look like in our homes? how do we, like for us, our kids don't, our own kids don't get cell phones at 13, for smartphones at 13, 14. And so then it like has these weird things of these kids have this and our kids don't. And how do we protect them? And it just, it's so hard. It's a really hard to deal with when you've got a kid that you already don't know. And then they have this access to all these things.
Travis (08:26.245)
man.
Brian Mavis (08:35.845)
Yeah, yeah. And you point out that there are what might be seen as like a different set of rules for kids in care versus your own children. And that gets wonky as well. So I'm curious then, just in general, the two of you, when do you, like what ages have you allowed your kids to have access to?
smartphones.
Travis (09:07.959)
Um, for us, we've kind of 16. Um, so what we do is, you know, with the younger ones, they're playing sports. Uh, if it's a matter of communicating with them, um, we, we might have like, uh, it's not a flip phone, but it's, it's one of the, it's not really a smartphone either. Um, and, or it's a basic Android, I don't know. But anyway, basically like that's that situation more just for communication. And then once it's 16, that's kind of been our family thing of like, that's the jump to a smartphone.
navigating that stormy sea.
Courtney (09:40.494)
Thank
Brian Mavis (09:41.317)
Yeah, and do they give you much trouble when they start turning 14, 15 of trying to negotiate it sooner?
Travis (09:54.013)
We, so thankfully in our case, we haven't had a ton of that. mean, I guess we've, and here's the other thing I'll say too, for context. So our kids are homeschooled. So that's a huge, or online public school, but at home. So I think that makes it much easier for us to where they're not just immersed with all kinds of other kids that have that. And then they have that tension. mean, obviously they still have that, but so we haven't bowled that to the extent that, yeah, I'm curious with Courtney.
Brian Mavis (10:08.613)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (10:13.881)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (10:17.7)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (10:23.281)
Okay, Courtney, yeah, what do you guys do?
Courtney (10:27.045)
Yeah, ours is very similar. Our kids don't, they get their own phone at 16, but we say 16 and you must be driving or have a job. Like one of those two things as well. There's, there's never that purpose. And we want to give them a drive to, to get a job or to get their license. Um, but so we've done that for all of our kids. Once they turn 16, they've all been ambitious to get a job or be driving. So at 16, that's their birthday present. They all know what's coming. Um, but we do have a family phone before that. So like right now we have a
Travis (10:34.017)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (10:40.011)
Yeah.
Travis (10:50.487)
Yeah.
Courtney (10:54.062)
15 year old and a 13 year old who share the family phone and then they can take it if they're going on a sport trip or something where we really need to communicate with them. And it's, is, there's that fine line of letting our kids be normal as well, but we have our family lines. So they have a phone number. If their friends want to call, they have a phone number and they can text them on there, but there's not much more they can do. And it's a shared phone. So.
Travis (11:09.58)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (11:18.222)
My son Owen's gonna be reading Addy's text and she's gonna be reading his text. They know that, so it just kinda keeps them in line too at those ages that we don't feel need much more than that.
Brian Mavis (11:26.959)
Yeah, so let's keep talking about some of the rules you guys have, because there might be something that we say here that someone is listening or like, I'm going to do that. like, for example, a few things that we did when our girls and some of the kiddos, kiddos were here, like rules we had in general one was if you had a laptop and you could not take it into your room, we had the laptop in our
Loft space is where they could do it. And so is where our house is situated It's easy for us to kind of glance from our room or from the staircase or whatever like what's on there. We also had When they went to bed their phones could not be in their room with them and then also no phones during dinner and so What what what do you guys do?
Travis (12:13.601)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (12:25.55)
Very similar to that, no phones in bedrooms. We say no in general spaces only. So electronics are in general spaces, meaning spaces where there are other people, pretty much. They turn them in at night. And if we've had kids before, we have this common space in the kitchen. And if we find out that it was left taken in the middle of the night, well, then it's taken away for a little while. Their consequences are based around the things that we set in place as well with the kids. But yeah, very similar to yours, not behind closed doors, not in bedrooms.
Travis (12:45.121)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (12:52.433)
Okay. Yeah.
Courtney (12:54.478)
turned in at night. and we always have their passwords. That's the other thing. As long as you're in our home, we will have your password.
Travis (12:57.227)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brian Mavis (13:00.101)
Yeah, okay, good. Yep, Travis, anything unique?
Travis (13:04.755)
Yeah, man, I'm, I'm, I'm really vibing with everyone else here on everything. So I would just add for us. So at 16 smartphones. So that's when we allow like Instagram or Facebook. but it's a limit. So we've kind of have like an hour cap, I think on that. And with smartphones, what's awesome with is you can do so many like settings, like you screen downtime, you can have it shut down. So overnight they can't access stuff. You can do a lot of cool settings on it itself.
And then I think I would just, we like no Snapchat or Tik Tok, cause it's kind of our deal. and then what we, that last thing I would add that we kind of, have is we try to instill a gradual lessening of, like as the, know, from 16, as I get older, so it starts to taper down towards a lot more self-governance so that they can fail or that, that, you know, cause we don't want them to just leave. And then all of a sudden you just have those freedoms suddenly. then we're not having conversations about, can I,
Brian Mavis (13:53.425)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (14:03.647)
look at your Instagram account right now, like, cause that's part of the deal too. Like we random phone checks and stuff and they're cool if they understand that. And so like, if there were to be something that, man, there, there's been a lot of some of the stuff maybe you're viewing and we can have those conversations, but we're not guilting them, shaming them, but then trying to have them take more account for what they're doing.
Courtney (14:05.582)
like that's part of the deal too, like, we're on a phone call, we're cool with it, I understand that, so like, if there were to be something that, hey man, there's gonna be of, some of the stuff that you're viewing, and we can have those conversations, but we're not working on changing that, but then trying to have it down, take more account of what they're doing. I, um, that's, I don't know.
Brian Mavis (14:26.181)
Yeah, I've, gosh, I don't know the name of any particular tools, but aren't there tools out there that either block or alert parents to if a kid is visiting a pornographic site or something like that? Do you guys know any of those tools or any guidance there?
Courtney (14:38.222)
Yeah. Yeah.
Travis (14:40.449)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (14:52.078)
We use bark in our house. So bark is a little box that plugs into our router. so anything that goes to our router, even guests, anybody will be automatically blocked for whatever we set the parameters to be. We can also shut off the internet for everything at a certain time period or certain devices. can, we can choose that on there, but it will pop up and tell us, and it'll give us like a link to they viewed this, this YouTube video, or they watched this video or this they were subscribed to. And it's kind of nice because it will tell you, cause like our
Brian Mavis (15:01.806)
Okay.
Courtney (15:18.734)
some of our boys that are older, have YouTube now and they can subscribe to certain channels. And it'll tell you if it was like a subscription email or if it was something they actually watched, which is nice. Ours kind of gets annoying because we're hunters, our boys are hunters, they're big into airsoft and so they're always looking up different gun stuff, but it alerts you for anything like, you know, weapon related or, you know, you can set all your different parameters, weapon, suicidal ideation type stuff. Again, you can go through there and you can select things that you really want it to alert you on.
Brian Mavis (15:22.98)
Uh-huh.
Travis (15:26.455)
Hmm.
Travis (15:34.935)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (15:36.786)
Okay.
Travis (15:43.511)
Mmm.
Brian Mavis (15:47.122)
So that's called BARC. Interesting, that sounds really helpful. Okay, so let's go back to specifically foster care and let's play this scenario out. Here you are parents of your own kids and then you have a placement, a youth come in and say, let's say they're 13 years old and you guys already have your rules set at 16, but this 13 year old comes in and they have a smartphone.
Courtney (15:49.518)
called bark. Yep.
Brian Mavis (16:16.773)
How do you guys go about that?
Courtney (16:21.056)
Yeah, oddly enough, it seems like, I don't know why this happens. It's probably just the way that the day plays out. But it seems like we always get placements from five o'clock on. We never get a placement, you know, in the middle of the day or in the morning where you can sit and get to know them. It's like at the end of the day or 10 o'clock at night. So typically a kid will come into our care, you know, late and they're nervous. And so we we have decided for that first 24 hours, we don't go over our home rules. We don't sit down and take the electronics. We kind of just let the day play out that the first 24 hours play out.
Brian Mavis (16:33.85)
Mm.
Travis (16:35.169)
No.
Courtney (16:50.658)
And then we sit down and we go through our home rules and we have it printed and we tell them, like, I think the big thing that we want every kid that comes into our home to know is these are the home rules for our kids. These are the home rules for any kid that comes into our care. It's not like we're sitting down with this brand new list of rules because you're here. We want to know this is for your safety, for your protection, for our safety protection, for everybody. And it's the same across the board. And so, yes, the one thing that's different is the age. And we don't just don't even have that on our list of rules, but.
when we're talking about food and we're talking about chores and we're talking about expectations and then we bring up electronics and we again just really make them know this is for your protection and our job is to protect you while you're in our home. And then we lay out the rules and one thing we've tried to do typically most more likely with teens is we'll even ask our caseworker, hey, we're gonna go over our house rules today, could you come over? And it's just helpful to have somebody else there because sometimes she'll even jump in and say stuff where it doesn't paint us as the bad people.
Brian Mavis (17:41.329)
Mm.
Courtney (17:47.022)
She's like, yeah, this is a rule for you because you know, da da da da. And when she explains or it's coming from her, it's not like they're instantly mad at us.
Brian Mavis (17:47.131)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (17:47.319)
You
Brian Mavis (17:50.203)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (17:50.455)
That's cool.
Travis (17:54.475)
Yeah, that's cool.
Brian Mavis (17:54.637)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Brian Mavis (17:59.73)
So, still specifically about kids in care. Of course, phones, kids have the world at their fingertips and can allow in all sorts of strangers and dangers into their lives that you would never allow in real life coming through your doors. But I wonder, again,
Any kid is susceptible to that. Any human is susceptible to that. Do you think kids that are in foster care, there's an extra element of temptation or danger? And if so, why would that be?
Courtney (18:48.984)
First off, think a lot of them come from homes where they've had so many freedoms, more freedoms than they should, in our opinion, their ages. Sometimes being treated as adults, acting as adults, being the mom or the dad in the family. And so they've been exposed naturally to a lot more things than we would hope for a kid of their age to be. And so when they come in with those exposures, naturally that's going to mean more exposures online, more exposures to things they...
Brian Mavis (18:57.131)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Travis (18:58.732)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (19:19.31)
they've probably seen or witnessed, whether it's online or in person. And so I think that alone, just the curiosity, the things that they're looking up, the things they're discussing, it's darker and deeper than the typical childhood in our experience.
Travis (19:19.767)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (19:35.127)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And I think if you're coming from trauma and coming from where you are and living in a story that you're just trying to cope day to day, I mean, the temptation to just want to be validated and seen. I mean, you can see why predators are all over this because you're so susceptible to wanting that stuff, wanting attention, wanting to belong, I guess. Right? I mean, so you can just, it's a perfect storm.
Brian Mavis (19:51.941)
Mm-hmm
Brian Mavis (19:57.329)
Mm.
Mm.
Brian Mavis (20:04.101)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Yeah, yeah, I, I have that same gut belief that, you know, the social media and internet access all those things is we're all susceptible to some of it somehow. But when kids are feeling displaced, lost, looking for hope, meaning the those.
Courtney (20:06.765)
Hmm.
Brian Mavis (20:35.985)
the willingness to allow danger into your life, unknowingly, because you're just so desperate for help and help that you become more susceptible. Okay, so talking about being susceptible to things, Courtney, your husband brought up something, gosh, it just never occurred to me. It had to do with having, on your phone you have location set so that we can know
where so-and-so is and where you are. What was it that Bobby brought up that it was like, hmm, how should we think about this location setting?
Courtney (21:16.217)
Yeah, we've thought about it in the past, but not as much as we had to in one instance. So we had this teenage boy with us pretty recently. He was 17. He had just got out of jail and he was going through some hard stuff. He's explained to us different affiliations with gangs and fights he's been in and how he moves to this new town and how it's already coming up here. And he's like telling us all this. This is within 48 hours of coming to our home, right? So he's telling all this. We're talking.
Brian Mavis (21:35.247)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (21:45.453)
And no joke, within hours, we look outside and we see this guy walking up our driveway. We live out of town, we live 15 minutes out of town and we see this guy just walking up our driveway. And my husband's like, who was here? Didn't look like he was up to any good. And so he goes outside and starts talking to him and it's like, well so and so tell me this is where you guys live. And he was like, you need to leave right now. And so all this to say, we ended up having this talk with the foster youth and we're telling him, obviously he told us that he saw his location and he was able to come to our house.
Brian Mavis (21:58.513)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (22:15.342)
And we said, you just got them telling us that there's guys after you. Within hours, this guy is walking up our driveway. We're here to protect you. Our mind's going to, is this somebody coming to beat the crap out of you? Is this somebody coming to take care of you? You know, like that's where our mind goes when we're here to protect you. And you see some guy just walking up our driveway that looks like he's up to no good. And he was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't think about that. But it just really made us realize, you know, we're welcoming these teens into our care. They have access to internet. They have.
Travis (22:18.551)
Hmm.
Travis (22:25.473)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Courtney (22:43.714)
different social media things, whatever, even just on the phones now, their friends can see, you know, the Find My and all the things they, I don't know if your teenagers do this, Travis, but ours, like they share with certain friends their location at all times. Like, why do you guys have to do that? But then when we don't have access, like there's certain things, like I said, with that bark system we have, and even with cell phone and like Apple screen time and other things, you can set parameters in there. But when it's their phone that we don't have all those parameters on,
Brian Mavis (22:47.889)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (22:53.931)
Yeah.
Travis (23:08.257)
Yeah. Right.
Courtney (23:10.668)
BART doesn't have the access to shut off their locations. So that's something you've got to do on the phone. And if they've got those turned on or they can easily turn it on, we wouldn't know. It just puts them, it could put them in danger, could put our family in danger. And that was one of those situations that really made us open our eyes. Like something's gotta be, we gotta talk about this. We went to our case workers and we brought up the situation and they said, like as a team, like we've never really thought of the severity of this before.
Brian Mavis (23:28.123)
So what did you guys do then?
Courtney (23:38.848)
And so this is still kind of an ongoing conversation. They've said they're going to look into it and kind of come up with some solutions for us foster parents, but it's kind of a continued conversation.
Brian Mavis (23:47.698)
So I'm wondering just what I would do in that situation. think you can turn off your location on your phone, but then use a app like Life360 or something like that. And then it's very specific as to who can know as well. It crosses platforms.
Travis (24:03.105)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (24:15.089)
Yeah, I'm just wondering again, I'm definitely not the expert on this, but that seems tough because you want to protect yourself and them from people who shouldn't know where their location is, but it'd be nice for you to know where their location is.
Courtney (24:28.492)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Travis (24:31.169)
Well, and can on social media, they can just say where they're at. mean, there I've, I've got a friend that he has kids creating fake profile, you know, and there's ways they can interact that way too. I just, you know, there's no, it doesn't seem like there's any fail proof way that there can't be that possible knowability of where someone is, but, yeah.
Brian Mavis (24:41.637)
That's true, that's true, yeah.
Courtney (24:46.606)
Hmm.
Brian Mavis (24:53.957)
Well, I guess then the lesson then is, even though there is no 100 % safe, assured way, I said fail proof, I would say to our listeners, mean, first of all, take this seriously, be thoughtful about it. Don't be naive. Your job is to protect the child.
and yourselves, of course. And so be diligent as to defining what the reality is. Like, do you have a phone? Do you have locations set? Who knows where your location is? Have these conversations of, do you understand that some people shouldn't have your location because they're not safe to you? And just have these very real conversations. I can't help but think that, you know, as we share some of this,
Courtney (25:47.8)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (25:51.142)
People who were listening are like, I didn't think of that crap. I'm not doing this. We just pushed you off the fence.
Courtney (25:53.984)
that?
Travis (25:55.967)
Well, that's kind of what I'm, mean, I'm thinking if you're on the fence, this is the final straw. I'm off the fence. So, but it is a good thing to come back to of like, also to kind of balance, counterbalance this and the fear and kind of maybe even Courtney speaking into all of your experience through the years and through so many families that while this is a concern, you know, I mean, if, if you go into that ditch where then
Courtney (26:10.798)
Mm.
Courtney (26:16.974)
Yeah.
Travis (26:25.299)
Okay, well then we would have no people fostering because risks, if you can't eliminate all risks. But I mean, just from a very general standpoint, I think, can't we say that if you're a birth family who maybe you don't have anything nefarious in mind, but you're really curious and you're trying to whatever, you want to go to the location or if you're not careful, you can really jeopardize your court case.
Courtney (26:28.406)
Yeah. risk that you can't over-ment on. But I mean, just from a very general standpoint, think you can't just say, if you're a birth family, you don't have anything on various, you're curious and you're trying to know happened, want to know what happened in the location. If you're not careful, you know.
Travis (26:54.519)
I don't know, guess I'm just trying to counter some of the...
Brian Mavis (26:58.691)
I know was gonna say just foster Amish kids but apparently that's not even safe anymore.
Courtney (26:59.32)
Yeah.
Travis (27:01.943)
Well, see, I mean, there's nowhere to save. it's the world. What's that quote? The world is always a dangerous way to spend your time living on earth is a dangerous way to spend your time. Abraham Lincoln. Thanks, Abe. Abe came back.
Courtney (27:06.572)
Yeah.
Courtney (27:15.222)
about... Yeah. You redeemed yourself.
Brian Mavis (27:15.345)
There that was Abraham Lincoln who said that right We wanted to attribute something to Abraham Lincoln, okay, so How should how should we land this plane? She somebody shares something wise right now
Travis (27:24.343)
No!
Courtney (27:34.095)
I would just say for us, we are so open and honest with the kids that come to our care and we tell them that from the get go, we're not hiding anything from you and we're asking you to, I mean, we know they're gonna lie to us. We know they're gonna hide some stuff. But when we talk about electronics, we have to paint this picture and we have to be honest. And we have little kids. We've had people before share pictures of our kids with people in other countries, like men from other countries. It's like, what are you doing? And then we sit down and talk to them. They're kind of like, well.
Travis (27:58.705)
man.
Courtney (28:02.53)
They just asked if I have a sibling and I'm showing them a cute little picture. I'm like, no. And so we have to be pretty blunt. Do you realize what these men in these other countries, or if that's even where they live, are grooming you for or trying or these predators? And sometimes I just really, truly don't know. I think for the most part, I think kids now kind of know, but they still are pretty naive and it's easy for them to find that validation and some person online who's giving them the validation. And so these just have to be ongoing conversations and ongoing honesty and openness with them.
Travis (28:13.067)
Right. Yeah.
Courtney (28:32.398)
They appreciate it. feel like also when we always go back to our job is to protect you and love you well when you're in our home. And I hear that over and over and over and like, care about you and your wellbeing. They really like that too. Like they want to feel cared for. And you know, I had this friend growing up, she had no curfew and I used to get mad at my mom. I'm like, mom, she has no curfew. I've got to be home. Like my mom did though. was like 10 o'clock, your 10th grade year, 11, you know, whatever.
Travis (28:58.347)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (28:58.573)
Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. All right.
Courtney (29:00.47)
And I was like, she can come on one for sure once. And she's like, do you really think that's love? And it really hit me like in my teenage years of thinking, well, my mom cares enough to protect me and actually saw this certain friend get in some pretty big trouble, you know, late at night and some things that were going on. And it just opened my eyes to my mom is doing this, even though I didn't like it necessarily, she's doing it because she cares and she loves me. And I want the kids in our care to realize that as well.
Travis (29:14.273)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Mavis (29:14.362)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (29:22.917)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. if you, yeah, share, can share just about anything with a kid. If you do it with that kind of motivation and, and, know, you tone and approach, then they'll, they can at least appreciate where you're coming from, the motivation behind it. I would say for me, if I'm to give a word of wisdom is I think that
Courtney (29:35.15)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (29:55.058)
I don't know how far this applies. I it certainly wasn't this way when I was growing up where my parents, they did not know where I was a lot. And so I was out running around wild until, you know, night. And then I hear my dad's voice screaming in the distance, you know, and it's so, yeah. So I come and, but then with our,
Travis (30:15.735)
Where are you?
Brian Mavis (30:25.271)
our age and your guys' generation, we became hyper vigilant in knowing where the kids are at all time and then saying, hey, there's danger out there in the world and you can get kidnapped and all those kinds of things. And I believe to a fault that that it wasn't as dangerous as we said. On the other hand, we're lackadaisical about
what is happening online, where there actually is real danger and we're not hypervigilant there. If you're going to be hypervigilant, apply more of it towards the online world than the physical world.
Courtney (30:56.462)
Hmm.
Travis (30:56.467)
Yes. Yeah.
Courtney (30:59.342)
Yeah.
Travis (31:01.812)
Yes.
Travis (31:06.454)
Yes.
Travis (31:10.945)
That's man. That's why I'm sure you've read the anxious generation that is okay. Really? Because that is okay. You saying that whole thing, the one of the taglines from that book was written by a social psychologist is today's kids are overprotected in the physical world and underprotected on it. It's exactly what you just said. Like that's the book. And so yeah, you could have, you could have read that book, but, what's fascinating to your point is,
Courtney (31:11.084)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Mavis (31:15.257)
I haven't, no, no. I haven't read that, okay.
Brian Mavis (31:30.171)
See, Travis is coming through with a quote.
Courtney (31:31.764)
You could have wrote a book a long time ago.
Travis (31:39.485)
I mean, this is a thing to just kind of think about is exactly what you said. It's an overreaction from the eighties and nineties and thinking sort of, and rightfully so in some cases, you know, you hear about abductions and you hear about these things. But then what happened is even in that sense of like, kind of clinging to control and protection is I was reading this one thing too, where it talked about the lack now of like things like physical safety, like climbing trees or.
Brian Mavis (31:51.377)
Sure.
Travis (32:07.071)
letting kids work out, you know, kind of conflict or building a bike jump or some of these things that we've kind of eliminated has, has taken away their ability to like overcome fear and master fear. And that's just led to anxiety. So it's like all of this stuff's connected. So it's not just that technology is the problem. It's, it's sort of a pulling away. I mean, boredom is a whole nother. We could just talk about boredom and how kids.
Brian Mavis (32:20.069)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Courtney (32:32.526)
Yeah.
Travis (32:35.669)
the inability to be bored has taken away so much potential for creativity or, you know, it's a blank canvas to like problem solve or reflect or just like chill. Well, that's gone because now we're just like scrolling. So it's all like, it is interconnected.
Brian Mavis (32:42.001)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (32:47.557)
Yeah.
Courtney (32:50.638)
Interconnected, yeah.
Brian Mavis (32:52.944)
Yeah.
Well, to our listeners, hopefully there was something here that was shared, a tool, insight that was helpful to you, but also recognize that you might know something that is helpful that we didn't mention. so Courtney, there a way maybe for them to communicate to us on like, hey, did you guys know that here's an idea or here's a resource that could be helpful?
Courtney (33:22.83)
Yeah, I would say just go back to our social media. That's likely where people are clicking on and listening to this from, and put a little comment after this episode or under this episode reel of suggestions. think it's a great place to have some dialogue and share with us. And if there's great resources, we'll even like to include them on our resources tab too. Cause I think this is a topic I know for me, when I go to support groups, we have foster care support group here. The two biggest things we're talking about are electronics and big behaviors.
Brian Mavis (33:34.021)
Yeah.
Yeah, we'd love to hear it.
Brian Mavis (33:41.019)
For sure.
Courtney (33:51.043)
And so this is a big topic. It's a topic people are dealing with every home, but then again, you add the layer of foster care and it gets even deeper and more complicated. So it's definitely something we need to be keeping up on.
Brian Mavis (33:51.429)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Mavis (33:55.27)
Yeah.
Brian Mavis (34:02.201)
Yeah, great. Well, guys, thanks for sharing your insights. And is there a FosterCon coming up that we can share about?
Courtney (34:11.55)
Yeah, it was actually just released in middle of September and it's called Understanding Fostering Adopting Teens. And we've got a panel on there, one who was a youth in care. She was then adopted as an adult and she's got a lot of great things she's sharing and then my husband's on it and as well as another foster adoptive mom on our team. just talking about more specifically teens in general, but we do get into electronics a bit, but also.
Brian Mavis (34:17.818)
Okay.
Courtney (34:38.22)
This is generally around the teens topic. So I encourage people to go listen and hear that.
Brian Mavis (34:38.459)
Great.
Brian Mavis (34:42.235)
So how do you sign up for FosterCon?
Courtney (34:45.196)
fostercon.org is where you can find all of our fostercon webinars we have. They're free online. And we also have CE credit for people who want or need the credit for their training hours.
Brian Mavis (34:55.845)
What's CE mean?
Courtney (34:57.986)
Continuing education.
Brian Mavis (34:58.993)
Gosh, for a second I I was going to tell you the answer. You only knew the initials. All right, so that, yeah, so for those of you listening in aren't sure what that means is as a foster parent, if you're not one, you have to continue your, have a certain amount of hours of continuing education and FosterCon, the resource that we provide.
Travis (35:00.024)
Jeez. Wow.
Courtney (35:07.742)
Putting me on the spot.
Brian Mavis (35:27.915)
is one way to continue to get that kind of education. well, Courtney and Travis, thank you so much. And our listeners, thank you. If you have any help and advice, please share that with us because this is a huge issue. It's an important one. And we want to do the best we can to protect the kids in our care, both the ones that we birthed and the ones that we're fostering.
We all need to pull together and help each other out.
Courtney (36:01.891)
Yes.
Brian Mavis (36:03.545)
All right, bye guys, thank you.
Courtney (36:04.599)
See ya.