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Orthodox Christian Parenting, hosted by Faithtree Resources Executive Director (and mom of four!) Michelle Moujaes, is a weekly podcast for parents and grandparents navigating the holy struggle of raising kids in the Orthodox Faith. Each episode offers honesty, encouragement, and practical wisdom from the Church—creating space to exhale, freedom from the pressure to be perfect, and openness to grow as you raise children who are deepening their knowledge and love of Christ.
Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Orthodox Christian Parenting, the podcast for parents who are in the struggle to raise children who know Jesus Christ and love him deeply, even when this loud and distracting world that we're in doesn't make it that easy to do so. I'm Michelle Mujias. I'm the executive director of Faith Tree Resources, and I'm a mom of four, and I'm really excited that you're here. Our prayer at Faith Tree is that this podcast becomes a space for all of us who have ever asked this question, am I doing this parenting thing right? To come together and to wrestle with all the hard questions and really all things parenting in the context of the Orthodox Christian Church.
Michelle Moujaes:If this is you, then you're in the right place. So take a deep breath, settle in and let's get ready to grab a little perspective together. Today, we're exploring a topic that a lot of us as parents think about oh so often and that is parenting in the digital age. And we're so grateful today because we are going to be in conversation with one of my favorite thinkers on the topic, Doctor. Felicia Wu Song, a cultural sociologist and an expert on how digital technology shapes our lives.
Michelle Moujaes:Doctor. Song trained at Yale. She's the author of one of my favorite books on the subject, Restless Devices, and you can see that I have read it quite a few times. Restless Devices, Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age. And she has spoken everywhere from parent groups to schools to churches to massive conventions all the way to The Vatican.
Michelle Moujaes:So Doctor. Song, thank you. It is such an honor to have you here with us today.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Oh, it's really my pleasure. Thank you.
Michelle Moujaes:One of
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:the things we've
Michelle Moujaes:been talking about is we've kind of dreamed what this conversation would look like is as a mom, I have four, and I also get to work in the youth ministry space quite a lot, I often feel like I have no agency and no ability to protect my kids or the young people that I'm working with when it comes to technology. And one of the things that I really love about your work is that it doesn't assume that just because we're in the digital age that it just has to happen to us. And that seems kind of countercultural to the message we get a lot. I I think that's why your work resonates with me so loudly. You have a balance on the topic.
Michelle Moujaes:So one of the things I've heard you say that I really love is that even in the dominant technology of today, it's not inevitable. I I think that's the terminology you use. So that as a parent gives me great hope. Can you just tell me a
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:little bit more what you mean about that? Two things come to mind for me. First, I think it's important for us as parents that we recognize that not only do we live in a society where there is an industry that is invested in convincing us that it's inevitable, it's part of their game, the economic marketing game to get us to believe that it's inevitable so that we adopt their technologies. But it's actually when you look historically, that technological inevitability, this sense that its progress is just going to happen, is actually a part of American culture. That it's actually been with us in this society for over two hundred years.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:It's this view that technologies are just inevitably going to manifest, you know, whether it was a train or the radio or the television, it was the same game. So as a sociologist and historian, one of the things I've always been interested in is understanding the construction of that felt sense of inevitability. So, that's one side. So, understanding, I think it's really helpful for us as consumers of technology to always keep in view the long span of history. You know, how have other communication technologies come into society and into our lives?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:The second part of addressing technological inevitability or this sense of it is the purely kind of sociological side of what I do. And that is understanding that all that we live through in a society, all of our institutions are constructed in ways to make certain things feel normal, right? And that as individuals, certainly, it feels much more easier to go with the grain, right? That is the norm, all the things are pushing us, whether it's what our neighbors do, or what the schools are doing, what's happening in the larger community, but that as individuals, we actually do possess agency all the time. We possess agency to go against the grain, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And it doesn't mean that it's easy, right? And it doesn't mean that it's not going to take work. But it's possible, right? That there is nothing about the way that we construct our society or that we construct our families that is inevitable. We can make choices depending on our situations.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Those choices will be easier to make, right, like if we are surrounded by like minded people. It's a lot easier, right, when we get with other parents who are ready to kind of raise their kids up in the same way so then our kids aren't the ones that are like, I'm the only one who
Michelle Moujaes:has the I'm
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:the only one. Right?
Michelle Moujaes:We had a couple of those kids.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:But if we're in situations that for whatever reason there's just not other people that are living the lives that we would like to live for our families, for our communities, then it's going to be an uphill battle. There will be costs, but it's possible that we might find other ways to connect with other folks that might help us have a more collective support in the kinds of choices that we'd like to make.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. I actually think that's a beautiful opportunity for churches. To kind of bring together communities everybody and works sets a new standard. We actually saw that in my children's school. There were a group of the seventh grade dads who got together and they were doing it like a discipleship group in the school for them and their boys.
Michelle Moujaes:And they made a pact and all of them collectively said, No one's going get phones until we start high school. Are we all agreed? And all the dads agreed, but it really made such a beautiful community of like minded families walking together. And I think our churches could be really proactive in doing that as well and creating those opportunities. So then help me understand.
Michelle Moujaes:For parents let's start with this one. For parents in our audience that don't have those like minded communities, do you have any practical takeaways on what they could do to create kind of that against the grain that you talk about? I'm an extremist by nature. Anyone who knows me, will tell you I do things all in. And so for us, we just opted out.
Michelle Moujaes:But our kids really were, until they went to college, they were without that kind of tech. But it, I mean, it had a huge impact socially and with access to things and they just didn't know a lot of things. In some of the schools in our area here in Los Angeles at least, they probably wouldn't have made it through high school because they needed tech to do a lot of the things that were required of them. So, if a family wants to really go against the grain, what do you do? What's the step?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:If only I had the answer.
Michelle Moujaes:No, no, I have the answer.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:I mean, there's no silver bullet and it really depends, I think, on what against the grain looks like for your family. We talking about delaying when you get a cell phone? Are we talking about not using social media? What are we talking about? And I think that's where it's really helpful to recognize what your family culture is, because I think different families have different cultures, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:How the parent and the child relate, what the priorities and what the kind of vision of what a good life together is. And so I think a lot of it is actually taking steps to cultivate that larger vision, right? I think very often, especially in circles of faith, the conversation about technology can become very antagonistic. I mean by that is that it's a very anti technology, right? Like, that's the main, like how do we push this thing out?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:That's right. And one of the things that I'm actually interested in is yes, we need to have those conversations and perhaps set those boundaries that are appropriate for our children and appropriate within our family culture. But I think there is a really wide horizon of answering the question, okay, so if not technology, then what? What's the alternative? So if all the kids say, I need to be on social media to be with my friends, Okay, we don't want our kids to have no friends, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:We would like them to have friends and cultivate a social life and grow in their self understanding of how to be good friends, right? What is the alternative then? Like, how do we cultivate their social lives and their friendships in a way that is fitting our values, our priorities, our hopes for the ways that our children develop? And so very concretely, what that might look like, for example, is instead of just saying, Honey, sorry, no social media, you're just stuck right in our house. And all your friends are off there chattering about.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:The alternative is, okay, no social media, but let's set up something so that every week or every month all your friends are going to come over on this night. We're going to have this really fun game night or movie night or we're going to go roller skating or we're to go camping, like whatever it is that fits your community. That's great. Right? That's great.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:It's like we have to do the extra work, right? The reality is the default for so many of our kids is the online world, right? That's That's the easy place to go. And so, if you don't want the default, if you want to push against the grain, then we have to create compelling enough experiences. That's right.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Love it. Within our families, within our communities, within our churches that are going to say, this is actually really fun, right? Like, why would I be tapping away, scrolling through my Insta, if I could be doing this, if I can be painting, if I could be playing out a stream, if I could be building something out of wood and we're working with tools, like all of that, right? There's so many more things that can fill childhood and even teenagehood, right? I That think with our technological practices, all the apps and the games, it's really easy for us to forget.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And it's easy for our kids to forget that they actually love music, that they actually love being outdoors, that they love working with their hands, they love baking, right? So as a parent, the bad news is that it actually takes more work, right? It's a lot easier to just kind of
Michelle Moujaes:In some ways for sure.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yes. It's easy to kind of default to the babysitter technology, whatever that is. We have to be creative and hopefully find other partners, friends who are also interested in coming together and creating experiences and opportunities for our kids.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. I heard there's an author named John Eldridge and he was asked by some people about taking away young people's phone. He just wrote a book that is wary of a lot of technology and he had a lot to say about it. But somebody asked him, you know, what would happen, like should I take away my kid's phone? And he said, well, if you're gonna do that, you better go blow up a Coke bottle in the backyard, you gotta replace it with something.
Michelle Moujaes:I'm like, oh, that's so smart, I love And actually, in the Orthodox Church, we call it the middle way, which is we don't want to be on either side of the extremes, really. Orthodoxy loves to be in the middle, so you're not overzealous like some of us that just say, no tech until you go to college, or you're not apathetic saying, well, good luck. Here it is. Go get them. Right?
Michelle Moujaes:It's really creating experiences that allow them to reside in the middle way. I love that. Tell me a little
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:bit or tell our audience a little bit about monotasking. I know that's something that you've spoken about. I've heard you several times talk about this idea of kind of rethinking our relationship with technology by rethinking first as parents what it is that we're actually doing and then starting with these little micro moments where we're not doing all the things. Can you speak to that? Sure.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:So the argument for monotasking starts with the assertion that our technologies are compelling to us because they actually sit on top of an existing set of assumptions that we already mainly buy into. And that set of assumptions is that being productive is one of the most important things in our lives. That it is what drives my sense of worth, is what drives my sense of success. And so that's why having technologies that allow us to do multiple things at once is so attractive, right? I mean, it's so powerful.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:It's so good at
Michelle Moujaes:And so, doing
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:tendency then is to multitask, right? And there's been lots of arguments, really great arguments about how multitasking has its limits, that our brains can actually only do so much and multitasking actually starts to fatigue our brains in ways that are not healthy in the long run. But what I'm interested in is in the idea of how do we not just say, alright, I want to get rid of this technology. This is a bad thing. I want to try to attack the foundation, the foundational assumption that being productive is the best thing, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:That is what is the best use of my time. And so instead of multitasking, instead of this kind of cultural practice that we all think is fine and the best thing to do, what would it look like if we engaged in what Jamie Smith calls a counter liturgy, right? A different practice that actually pushes back against the cultural norm, and kind of turns us towards a better vision, perhaps a truer vision of what our lives and our identities should be rooted in. And so, monotasking is what it sounds like. Mono, one.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:When you're doing something, only do that one thing. Which sounds kind of dumb for most of us, I think, if we sit
Michelle Moujaes:around And so, and about
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:I think the examples that I always give that are sort of awkward in the beginning, when I was teaching college students, the obvious thing is when you're doing your homework, you should just do your homework. But they've heard that a million times. And so, what would it be like if we did something like eating? If you're alone, you're just having lunch on your own or breakfast on your own, right? All the kids are out, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Everyone's off on their thing. What would it be like to just eat, monotask? Eat and only eat, no scrolling, no doing that You well, no clean, actually taste your food, you actually just be still, right? And what happens? Another example, driving, What would happen if you're driving and you're only driving?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:No listening to podcasts. And this only works again if you're alone in the car, if someone's there with you, you should probably talk to them. But these monotasking exercises or experiments really are these interesting opportunities, I think, for us. For most of us, if we eat alone or drive alone and don't do anything else and monotask, I would guess that most of you all would feel what I have felt when I have experimented with these things which is very uncomfortable. Feel very uncomfortable in the beginning, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Just like, because we're so accustomed, right, to having contact for doing whatever. And I had this ten minute drive between my house and my kids drop off, right? So, I dropped them off at school and then I would turn everything off, right? And just drive home. In those ten minutes, the first time I was literally breaking out in a cold sweat.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Was like, I don't know what's happening. Right? Like, this is so pathetic. How can I not even just sit in a car and drive? But when I leaned into it and I kept doing it and I kept doing it, this is the fruit, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:The fruit is that I started discovering things in those ten minutes.
Michelle Moujaes:Isn't that something? I
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:started seeing my neighbors and their new container plants or their new pet, right? I started actually hearing myself and feeling in my body what was going on. I'm such a mile a minute kind of gal that I can just kind of like just keep, know Keep going. Yeah, keep my to do list go, go, go, go, go, right? I don't even realize my body is telling me, Oh, you got to slow down.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Take a Yeah.
Michelle Moujaes:I don't know when the last time I actually tasted breakfast or sat without doing something else. I don't know that I don't remember the last time. Yeah.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yeah. And so, as people of faith, I think it's kind of when we monotask, we have the opportunity to encounter what we've actually been missing out on. Kind of taking the FOMO thing and flipping it on its head, right? We always think that, oh, like the cool things are happening online, but there are so many cool things that are happening around us all the time in the people, in the places, in our bodies, in the food that God has given us, right? And as human beings, we're missing out when we're not letting ourselves be actually embodied, right, in a place.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And so one of the things I definitely prioritize because I think what our screens in part do is it takes us out of our bodies, it says our bodies don't matter. And if you've ever sat and been in an airport or seen a bunch of folks on screens, it's this like hunched over, you know, we're all kind of like hunched over tapping. Right? And it's just like our body, we just have no sense at all of these beautiful bodies that God has given us to experience presence with. That's presence of people, even our own presence and certainly most of all, the presence of the Holy Spirit, right, of God in us.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And so I think there is just so much potential in monotasking, you know, and we can take monotasking and you could go down the road of a lot of ancient spiritual disciplines, right, of stillness and solitude and it's like an easy doorway into those conversations. But even if, you know, you're not really ready for that or you're not sure about it, you know, trying ten minutes of doing that one thing only, you know, I'm going to just do my laundry and only laundry. I'm just going to cook and only cook.
Michelle Moujaes:You know, I myself, so if I'm in the Divine Liturgy, which in the Orthodox Church, if you haven't been to an Orthodox Divine Liturgy, they are so embodied. There is so much sensory input and the sights and the sounds and the smells and it's so beautiful. But I have noticed the more I engage throughout the week with my technology Mhmm. The harder it is for me to exit that kind of lack of presence and actually be present when I'm standing in front of the living God and His church. Mean, He's there.
Michelle Moujaes:I always try to be mindful and pare down my tech use or, you know, particularly for me, it's the phone, that's the one that gets me. And I noticed if I could take five minutes and just put it in its place on a Sunday morning, my experience engaged in worship is so different. I think hearing you, really, it's an invitation for people to think differently about that one thing. It sets us up for so much more of a connectedness with God. Mhmm.
Michelle Moujaes:I feel like I wanna, like, get shirts that say monotask. That's right. Something to remind us. I mean, it's a really beautiful invitation to do it differently. But it is pretty countercultural.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah. I'm one of the ones who wakes up and the phone is by my bed, right? It's the first thing and last thing that I do, which doesn't really seem very consistent with being present with God.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yeah, and that's the thing, right? I mean, it's so much about being self aware, taking little baby steps of experimenting and finding out, like you said, like you realize, Oh, even if I just stop using my phone for five minutes before I go in to that Sunday worship liturgy, right? That makes a big difference. I think that's what's so exciting to me because when we read all the great stories of the people that go on these weekend detoxes or thirty day cleanses and whatnot. It's all like, oh, that's really great, but for real, like, I'm not going to do that.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:So, to realize that, oh, actually, it's five minutes, it's ten minutes, like, that's actually how we're being formed, It's not these dramatic steps. It's these little unseen things that we can do that, like you said, can totally shift our perspective and then open up these other new appetites for, Oh, that was really cool. Like, maybe I can try that over in this area of my life. And I just believe that God has created in us a hunger for him, for God's presence and God's reality, right, for nature, for other people, and that if we just kind of open the door a little bit with these little experiments, we can discover all these things that we are often just passing by.
Michelle Moujaes:Let me ask you this question. Would you say that technology is neutral?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Oh, no.
Michelle Moujaes:Okay, tell me about that. I think this is an important one for us to hear.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yeah. I think in American culture, it's definitely a dominant way of thinking about technologies. We like to think that the outcome of a technology only depends on my motivation or my intention. If I'm a good person, I will use technologies in a good way and it will affect me in a If good I'm a bad person, I can use technologies in a bad way and it can affect me in a bad way. I don't think that logic or arithmetic works at all.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Part of it is that it's not just the thing we're doing. That is, we think we're on our phones and it's making me productive so that must be a good thing. But what it's also doing, that's the function of technology. But the practice and the form of the technology, the fact that it's always with me, the fact that I'm constantly looking at my emails and bringing work home and it's with me all the time, right? That is forming me in negative ways because work is with me all the time and I'm preoccupied with it and I'm not with my spouse or my kids, even though I'm physically there, I'm not actually there.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And so the practices can have effects on us in ways that are actually counter to the productivity that we think is good. The other piece of it is just that especially with internet technologies, I think this is something that more and more people know because it has become a part of the cultural conversation now. Netflix documentaries, you know, schools are talking about it, psychologists are talking about Jonathan Haidt's Anxious Generation, right? Texts are all bringing it up now that our technologies, the designers of the devices, the designers of the apps, they are not looking out for our welfare. They are not looking out for our children's well-being.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Their goals are the bottom line. They're going to get there through addiction and hitting under the belt, right? And that's just the reality of the industry. Like you cannot, you know, accept what the facts are and the executives that are, kind of the whistleblowers who are saying, actually, yeah, this is what we're doing, right? They're all coming out and saying, this is just what the game has been.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And so, specifically with Internet digital technologies, I think the claim that technology is neutral is empirically not true. It is meant to drive us to be attached to that technology as much as possible and it wants our data, It's trying to kind of get into all of our lives because that is the way these companies can make their money.
Michelle Moujaes:As a parent, does that change anything about how you navigate tech with your own kids knowing that kind of underlying incentive?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:For sure, right? I mean, I think, you know, my kids are I always tell them that they suffer the most because they have a mom who's been studying this. I tell them
Michelle Moujaes:Sorry, guys.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Tell them, it's kind of like the scientists who are in the lab that were studying cigarettes, and they were realizing that nicotine is addictive. And in the 60s, everyone was smoking. That was just a normal thing. That you did. That's right.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Did socially. But the scientists knew something, they were discovering something that was realizing this is actually really bad for people's health and it is creating addictions. And so, my household, I've told my kids like, unfortunately, your mom happens to be that scientist, right? Like, I happen to have read the data and it's like, this just isn't good for you in the long run. And it's not good for me either.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:It's not like, obviously, their brains are still developing so there's more plasticity and so the impact will be greater, but it's still impacting me. It's not only trying to cultivate a spirit of realism in our children like this is actually what's happening. Let's not be naive about it. But also needing to push back against the kind of celebration of technology that we have in our society all the time and saying, actually, let's be skeptical. Like, maybe you can use this, but let's talk about how, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:What are the boundaries? What are the constraints? Why are we using it? Right? Like, let's be in That's a great question.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah, sometimes we just do it because it's there.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Right, exactly. What I like to tell parents when it comes to digital technologies is even though the reality is we are all guinea pigs and our kids are guinea pigs too, like no one has ever done what we are trying to do right now raise kids in this digital environment.
Michelle Moujaes:Soup, yes.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Like nobody has done this, right? So we need to cut ourselves a little slack, right? It's a lot to handle and a lot of stuff is changing all the time. And at the same time, even though something is very new, unprecedented as we like to say these days, there are some things that are very old. Parenting on the issue of technology in some ways is no different than parenting in any other area of our kids' lives.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:It's the same thing as parenting over their understanding of sexuality and sexual behavior. It's the same thing as their understanding of appropriate ways to socialize with their friends. It's the same mechanism of how am I going to love my child and shepherd them in a way that hopefully provides thriving for them and as you said earlier, sets them up to meet the Lord of the universe. So, again, on your family culture, having the conversation with our kids not in a like interrogation way, but a curiosity way, Right? A true curiosity, like, what is it that you really hope this will bring for you?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Because so often, it's not just that they want to play the game, right? It's that they want to connect with someone or be able to talk about it with their friends.
Michelle Moujaes:So, it's
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:those deeper things that are motivating our children to want to be following the norm. And it's those deeper things that as parents, we can and should, with fear and trembling and the mercies of the Lord, enter into those conversations with our children and be cultivating a kind of conversational relationship with them so that as they grow, they can see us as companions willing to ask truly curiosity questions so that we aren't just the authorities, we aren't just the boundary makers, but that we really want to know them. We want to know their heart and whatever comes out that we want to be able to hold it and bring it to the Lord and bring it to the Lord together right, and help them know how to do that. And in many ways, again, that process is the same in all areas of their life, right? Mean, it's going to be the same when they're picking their major, when they're getting their first job, when they're dating someone.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:The same thing, just particular to technology.
Michelle Moujaes:So good. Alright, I'm going to ask you one last question. Sure. So many parents ask us, Should we just not engage? And, you know, I know myself personally, so I had two boys that went off to college last year.
Michelle Moujaes:We held out through high school. They didn't get phones until they went off to college. We gave them two months to kind of practice in our house with us. And the idea was, I mean, that's how they found their roommates, that's how they scanned their meal plans. It was a little bit of a and they had phones, they were essentially flip phones, they were called the Wise phones when they started driving and things.
Michelle Moujaes:But people often ask, was that the right call? I don't know if it was the right call, we just did what we thought was right at the time and we tried really hard to steward that decision well. But I wonder if parents now looking, you know, especially with younger ones into kind of introducing the technology, the question is should we just not? I don't
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:This is where I tend to and you probably could feel it in the of answers that I have is not draw a particular line because every family really does have its own culture and every child is different. Any of us that have more than one child in our families, we know like we're trying, we have the same environment, but these kids are so different.
Michelle Moujaes:So different.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:So different, And they have different needs, different weaknesses, different vulnerabilities, right? And so I would argue that this is where it's tricky, even the technology rules for kids sometimes might require differences. That's really tricky, right? Because we want to be consistent as parents as well. There's a lot of data on how girls and boys use technologies in really different ways.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And so it just has different dynamics for them. The question of should I just not engage has a lot to do with what we think they will need to live as adults. Again, I think that really depends on a particular family and their vision for their child. I'll give my example. We did never wanted to give phones as gifts.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Didn't want to give them as and we didn't want to give them as markers of certain birthdays, which is a very common practice. We wanted to give phones when there was a function. So just as you mentioned with your children, there was a function. They were going to college, they needed to find roommates, whatever it is, right? So, before we got them phones, we had a long series of conversations.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:What is the function? So that they understand it's not just something that everyone just takes for granted, but we should actually think about why we are using these technologies. And so, you know, some of us are in jobs and some of us will have children who have jobs where engaging is just part of the job. Like you have to use the technology.
Michelle Moujaes:That's And
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:a lot of times, like you said, it's just part of the school system or part of the organizational system that requires you. And so, I think it's, for me, it's very difficult to draw a line, right? Because if we say full stop, don't engage, well, that might mean pulling my kid out of public school. Might mean pulling them Like out all these things. And maybe for one family that makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Maybe for another family that makes no sense at all.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:That's right. And so you kind of need to make those decisions according to what your situation is. And what you speak about so often is experimenting. And Yes.
Michelle Moujaes:It's not this hard and fast set of rules or a checklist, which I love a good checklist, but really, it doesn't apply so well when you're trying to figure out what that landscape looks like digitally for your family. Have to try and then pivot and then reiterate and then try again, which I think that's really reasonable. It offers a sense of balance that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yes, and if that's something that feels really scary because your family has always been highly consistent and regulated, right, then that requires a conversation as a family to say, in this area of our life, in this season, we're going to experiment, right? Like, we're going to do these things for a couple months and then we're going to come together and we're going to talk about it. We're going say, how's that going? Right? And so, I'm going give you the phone and you're going to have it and we're going to have a conversation in three months, right?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And you've already said, you're not going to be on the phone when you're talking to me, right? Like, doing this, know, right? And in three months, we're going to get together and I'm going to tell you whether you're holding up your part of the bargain.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And there's an opportunity then for us to switch and be like, well, honey, maybe it's drawing you in too much. So maybe we need to set up some boundaries, right? Great. That have to reset something. And so kind of keeping that openness, that open conversation, and always trying our best to parent out of kind of curiosity rather than fear.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Know, just really hard.
Michelle Moujaes:So hard. It really is.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:I think that's the work for us, right, to try to kind of love, hold things with open hands and be able to let it be a process.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. Okay, so just I'm going to push one more little bit on the specifics of what you said. Are there any tools that you might offer as great boundary supports? So for example, I have an app called Be Present that shuts down my phone and blocks certain apps and certain things at certain times just for me because I'm, I mean, I'm the one who needs it probably the most. It's like a long leash on my neck.
Michelle Moujaes:But are there any tools that you'd like to leave that our audience might not know about or could know about that could help set up those boundaries and kind of experiment with them?
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, one of them that I'm sure a lot of parents already know is on most of our phones, if you're an Apple user, there's screen time, right, that we're an Apple family for better or for worse. And so, there's ways to set up boundaries of times for your kids of particular apps and even when the phone is on or off, right? And so, you can use those, but there are lots of apps that do kind of what you were saying.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:I just recently learned of one that I thought interesting, I haven't gotten it yet, but it sounded really cool, it's called Brick. You heard Yes, of yes, yes. It's super interesting because it functions the same way, it turns off certain apps or certain functions of your phone, It makes it into a more dumb phone, so to speak, right? Like, like on a Saturday morning, you can tap it, tap your phone on the brick, and it'll turn off all the apps that you don't want distracting you on the weekend, right? Your work, email or whatever.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:And then you have to tap it again on Monday it'll
Michelle Moujaes:come I love it.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:So, it's this physicality that's kind of interesting, right? This kind of action that might be useful for some things. That's interesting.
Michelle Moujaes:That's how be present is. Basically shuts down the dopamine loop. You have to do too many things to click on whatever the Instagram, let's say. By the time you actually get through to go to Instagram, don't really care anymore, you don't need the hit. Like you can just keep moving.
Michelle Moujaes:Oh, I appreciate your time so much. What an absolute blessing to have been with you today and to get to learn from you and get to know some of the good work that you're doing and to share with our audience all that you've offered. And I just have to tell you, I say it again, this is one of my, I don't know if you can see this, favorite resources on kind of thinking through the bigger picture about what devices mean for us and our kind of state of being in the world. So thank you for this and for sharing your time with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Dr. Felicia Wu Song:Thanks so much for having me.
Michelle Moujaes:Thanks to you for listening to this week's episode of Orthodox Christian Parenting. Every week, we're here to help you raise children who know Christ, who love him, and who spend their lives trying to be like him. And hey, listen. If this episode blessed you, would you do us a favor? Would you consider leaving a review or sharing it with a friend?
Michelle Moujaes:Here's why. When you do this, it helps us reach more families. It helps them find the show like you did. Okay. And last thing.
Michelle Moujaes:If you wanna go deeper, you can download this week's free discussion guide in the show notes or at faithtree.org/parenting. This guide is a free gift to you and a great opportunity for you to think more deeply about all that we talked about today with your spouse or your friends or your community at church. So check it out, and we will see you next time.