253 Low Tech Parenting with Erin Loechner

253. Low Tech Parenting with Erin Loechner

I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. Psalm 101:3

*Transcription Below*

Questions We Cover:

Especially for us as parents, what are some motives of the big tech companies that capitalize on our naivety?

1. What are some ways we can borrow the attractive features from social media to optimize influence within our home, as parents?
2. What other ideas do you have for using our homes to build strategic family rhythms where all members can grow and flourish?

Erin Loechner is the founder of global tech-free movement, The Opt-Out Family. Erin is a former social media influencer who walked away from a million fans to live a low-tech lifestyle—and is now teaching others how to do the same. Her cutting-edge work has been praised in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post, as well as on the Today Show. When she’s not scrawling on her trusty steno pad, Erin, her husband, and their three kids spend their days chasing alpenglow, reading Kipling, and biking to town for more tortillas.

Opt Out Family Website

Other Recommended Podcasts on This Topic:

170 Mastering Technology so it Does Not Master You with Dr. Sylvia Hart Frejd

228 Stewarding Technology for More Intentional Relationships  with Joey Odom

226 Tech-Savvy Family with Paul Asay of The Plugged In Staff

195 Tech and Parenting with Molly DeFrank

91 Technology and Parenting with Arlene Pellicane

Erin's Book Recommendations:

Caddie Woodlawn

Pilgrim's Progress

Honey for a Child's Heart

Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company

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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” 

Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” 

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” 

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” 

Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”

Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”

Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“

Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“

Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

*Transcription*

[00:00:00] <music>

Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. 

[00:00:18] <music>

Laura Dugger: Leman Property Management Company has the apartment you will be able to call home, with over 1,700 apartment units available in Central Illinois. Visit them today at Lemanproperties.com or connect with them on Facebook. 

Y'all, I don't even have enough words to adequately describe this conversation with my dear guest, Erin Loechner. Erin left her career as a six-figure influencer with over a million fans to instead pursue a more abundant and fulfilling life offline.

And now in her latest book, The Opt Out Family, Erin is full of brilliant ways to maximize the online algorithms within our homes to spark connection and delight in our family, all without tech. [00:01:20] She is generally just a delightful human, and she's going to share stories and tips and inspirations with all of us now. 

Here's our chat.

Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Erin.

Erin Loechner: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Laura Dugger: Well, some may say that you're kind of an unlikely author for this book about tech-free living. So can you explain a bit about your background and your journey toward eventually becoming an opt-out family?

Erin Loechner: Yes, you are right. Some would be correct. I am an unlikely author for this book. I was a social media influencer with a million followers. I started very early on hosting a show on HGTV.com pre-social media, and then things kind of dovetailed from there. And I found that I had this platform, and what was I going to do with it? [00:02:19] 

The more that I sort of navigated the tension of living a very online life with coming into parenting my own children, I just recognized, you know, if I continue this influencer lifestyle, it is fairly all-encompassing. You know, your job is to kind of capture your life, whether that means behind the scenes in sort of earmarked days. 

I know as an influencer myself I was very boundaried in terms of my children appearing online. I didn't share their faces online. I didn't share their names online. I was very careful about the types of things that I would talk about. And yet, there was that reality that I was parenting with my phone in my hand a lot more than I was comfortable with, especially knowing we were not going to encourage social media for our children. [00:03:18] 

It just felt like, you know, as parents, kids can smell hypocrisy a mile away. It felt like one of those moments where I had to decide, am I serious about this? Am I going to recommend that my children steer clear from this platform that I've built a career on? Truly, I was just not willing to sacrifice their trust and their respect for me as a person when it came time to make that call. 

Now, all of this was so earlier than this was even a conversation. My oldest was probably four or five when I started to pull back. But, you know, you kind of look at the long term and you think, I want to start now to become the kind of person that I know I'll need to be as a parent in that season. 

So my husband and I... he worked in Apple's ad agency. I knew the algorithm very, very well. And so we just knew we're not willing to do this anymore. [00:04:19] If it's not good for kids, it's actually not that great for adults either. So we just cut ties and I found sort of a new way to work and live. Honestly, really, truly the heart of this book is just for the people who are curious, can I opt out? What does it look like? How do I do it? 

Because I was really growing weary of the narrative that tech is a necessary evil or that social media is a necessary evil. I wanted to explore, what does it look like to live without it? Is it possible? I'm here to say yes. Is it realistic? Is it abundant? Is it fruitful? Yes, yes, yes. And that's really what this book was about.

Laura Dugger: Incredible. I want to zero in just on a few things that you said. First, when you said "capture your life", what really struck me is that when we capture a human to put them in prison, it just makes me think of bondage or enslavement language. [00:05:21] 

And so not that this is true for everyone, but to be cautious of that lifestyle that could kind of have invisible handcuffs around us. And it's escaping me now, the second point, but something similar to that, just your language is really rich. And you ended up canceling yourself and wisely modeling this for your children. Oh, it was when you said it's not a necessary evil. Even those words, as we're sisters in Christ, we would agree nothing that's evil is necessary. So I love how you worded that.

Erin Loechner: Great points. Yes, yes. Great points.

Laura Dugger: Well, and just real quick, could you give us a definition of opt-out family and share why it might be of interest for us to consider that within our own homes?

Erin Loechner: Yeah, of course. A big pillar of an opt-out family is just there are no personal devices really out and about. When you have the picture of the living room where everybody's on their individual things, we share tech usage. [00:06:27] We share both the device itself and also what's happening on the device itself. 

So when I talk about shared tech usage, it involves many, many conversations, including also sharing the physical device as well. But it's a wide spectrum. I believe that parents are made up of many, many different strengths and variables and principles and callings. 

For us, what it looks like is I walk around the world with just a dumb phone. I have no internet access, no email on my phone. I can call and I can send texts and I can occasionally use maps. But usually I'm printing off directions. 

So what that does for us as a family, and this is just our version of what it looks like. But what it does is it helps me move through the world alongside of my kids so that we're sort of encountering that friction together. [00:07:26] So that, you know, by the time they get to a point where they would like to purchase their own smartphone or their own device, I hope maybe it'll be a smartphone, maybe it won't. But when they can sort of afford the financial and emotional cost of that and they have to make that choice, what kind of phone do I want? I don't want their choice to hinge on the fact that they haven't seen it modeled any other way. 

So my job is really to encounter those pain points and this tension. How do we board a flight without an iPhone? You know, how do you dine at a place where there's only QR code menus? We have encountered some of these things. I'm helping my kids learn that it's not as crazy as it sounds, and it's not as difficult as it sounds. There's some tension, but all of that tension is very easy to navigate, really, and the benefits are better on the other side. [00:08:28] So that's really what a knocked-out family looks like for us.

Laura Dugger: That's helpful clarification. I love how you write that some families may not choose to go completely screen-free in their home, but if that seems too big or overwhelming, they would even want to move in the direction of choosing to reject the use of personal devices. So there's such an umbrella of grace that you offer in just sharing your own story and examples.

But I want to get to some of your ideas for opting out of technology in lieu of opting into something better. But first, I'm hoping you'll set the stage. So especially for us who are parents, what are some motives of the big tech companies that may be capitalizing on our naivety?

Erin Loechner: You know, the big ones... I'm so grateful that the research is out there, and most of this will probably not be new to your listeners. [00:09:31] But time and attention were really kind of the really big pushes in the beginning. These platforms work on advertising dollars, and so the longer that you are on the device, the longer you have ads displayed to you, the more likely you are to purchase, the more repetitive times that these are appearing in front of you, the more likely you are to purchase.

And yet there was a shift, and a lot of this came out while I was researching this book. The shift moved from the attention economy to, and I credit this phrase to Tristan Harris, who is just a wonderful resource in many, many ways interpreting in technology but the shift happened from the attention economy to the intimacy economy. And so now it's less about, we just want your time, and now it's, we want your trust. We want your companionship. We want to mentor and guide your decision-making skills. 

A lot of that, we see that play out in AI right now. You know, chat GBT-3, it's so much easier to shape the way we use our words and the way that we talk about things. One of the things I write about in the book is a new AI development called Replica, where you can kind of create an imaginary friend for yourself that gives you whatever advice that they think you need to hear. It's wild that we're in this spot that I think that most of us 20 years ago thought was so, so far down the horizon.

But we're there, we're in the thick of it, and it's hard to see because it's kind of couched in this everyday thing that's in everybody's pockets. [00:11:14] So it feels very harmless. It feels very accepted, you know, and it should give us a lot of pause.

Laura Dugger: A lot of pause, indeed. You did such thorough research for your book. So I want to highlight just a few things. You credit Fowler, this is on page 21, and your quote is, "Their algorithms optimize for eliciting a reaction from us, ignoring the fact that often the shortest path to a click is fear, anger, or sadness." And then one other on page 82. You also give credit to Fairplay. "Under a pretense of teaching math, Prodigy is using schools to access and manipulate a lucrative child market."

So can you expand on any of that? That was news to me that the technology in the schools is preying on our children and on their privacy, really. [00:12:23]

Erin Loechner: Really, yes. The data is a whole nother... there's so many sort of boxes in this. But data infringement for children, I don't remember the statistics, but it's a wild number of data points that these tech companies have before your child turns 13. It's in the millions. 

And just the very concept that a third-party company, especially a third-party company, that has been sold as sort of a necessity for us. We think of edtech, we think of iPads, and the one-to-one program in every kid's backpack, and how that was championed in the early 2000s as this thing that was going to create a better future for us. What has happened is we have created a better future for the tech companies, for Silicon Valley, but at the cost of our children and at the cost of their privacy. 

You hear a lot of times the argument that, well, what does it matter? What do they have? I'm not hiding anything, so it doesn't matter. [00:13:27] But I think when it comes to our children, they do have the right to have a small digital footprint. They should have the privilege, knowing that by the time that they age, identity theft has... The statistics, I mean, you watch the curve just go up and up and up. Identity theft is such a huge factor for our generation, certainly, but it's going to be the bigger risk for the next generation. 

And it's all there. How many times a week do we get an email that the latest thing has been hacked and all of our social security numbers have been stolen? I think that we've normalized that so deeply as a society as just another kind of pitfall of tech. But it doesn't have to be that way. 

So opting out really does protect your child from a lot of what will cause greater benefits when they're 24, 25, 26, and beyond. [00:14:28]

Laura Dugger: Well, and just to continue that conversation, too, in the schools, this may be an ignorant comment, but it just grieves me so much that schools, like you mentioned, the one-to-one, where they want every child to have access to an iPad. And I just think when we look at all research, there's nothing positive. You even ask a question in your book and say, why do we choose to hand today's top addiction to our kids? I am floored that they're still in our schools and would love for them to be out. 

But I think also just a few more sobering questions that you ask for us to consider. I'll just quote you from page four. You say, "And why are we as full-grown adults sitting on the bathroom floor watching TikTok content while our toddlers play alone one room over?" That was heartbreaking. [00:15:26] 

And then just a really good accountability question asking yourself, what would I want? I'm sorry. Would I want my child to use technology the same way I do?

Erin Loechner: Yeah. I mean, that's really the heart of this book is how do we build a life? We've all been there, right? We've all felt like we need to take the emotional health breaks in the laundry room or the bathroom or whatever. I don't know that it's healthy to bring our phone along with us. 

But still, I think that the question is, is how do we build a life that we don't need to escape from? That's what I'm more interested in. It's less about the distraction of the device. It's actually less about saying no to the device for kids and for us ourselves and more about how do we integrate something different? How do we say yes to something better than the device? [00:16:24] 

That's really where I wanted to go with this book, kind of picking apart what makes these devices so addictive and how can we put some of those mechanisms, and really a lot are rooted in childhood development. You know, if you talk to a lot of algorithmic engineers and programmers, they know quite a lot about human development and know quite a lot about childhood development. So these things seem very basic, but they work on the phone. And so this book is a bit of a call to returning to make them work off of the phone just as much.

Laura Dugger: Well, let's go there because you've extensively studied what the online algorithm capitalizes on as it tries to promise connection to users, but then can end up producing addiction and loneliness. So I love when you flip all of that upside down in your book and you write about ways to borrow the good tips and tricks from the algorithm to instead make connections within our home and our community. [00:17:26] But still all without the use of a screen. And that does lead to true connection and delight. So can you share some ways we can do this, too?

Erin Loechner: Of course, of course. One of my favorite ways... I always start with this one. It's just really impactful. It's called strewing. It's an educational term. But the idea is just that you are sort of offering an experience to your child that they wouldn't have stumbled across themselves. 

So you are inviting your child into maybe it's an activity, maybe it's just the exploration of an object. In my home I keep a coffee table open where there's something new and exciting to encounter for the fair, probably three to five times a week. Right. Maybe it's just a couple of library books I found that I thought would spark their interest that I set aside for a rainy day. Maybe it's, you know, junk mail and scissors for the little ones to craft with. Maybe it is your old yearbook or family photos for them to flip through and laugh at how weird everyone looked in your day and age. [00:18:38] 

There are a number of things to encounter, mostly free, you know? But the idea is just inviting your child to an experience. TikTok does this right there. As soon as you log into the app, you are met with images and videos and something that is new to you. It's called the For You page, you know, something that has been curated that the algorithm believes will delight you. 

And I think we as parents can do that so much better because we know our kids. We know so much about what makes them tick and we know we can really hone in and zero in on those interests in a way that the algorithm actually can't quite yet.

So that's a really big one. It's just kind of bringing your home into this place of exploration and curiosity and delight. [00:19:36] Physical touch is a huge way that the algorithm, I mean, truly the algorithm tries, but cannot replicate eye contact.

A lot of the book talks about biometrics in terms of social media platforms and how they can kind of track your eye patterns and what is interesting to you and what is not interesting to you. Well, so can we, too, as parents. 

Challenges. Introducing your child to a challenge that isn't so demotivating that they want to give up, but that is hard and difficult, that teaches and expands resilience. I interviewed Minecraft designers on how do you find that balance between a demotivating challenge, right, or something that gives just the right amount of momentum to keep a child going. 

And almost everyone talked about the reward system. And while I don't believe that our home has to be nonstop reward charts and gamification, I do think we know our children and we know when they are just in need of a break. [00:20:39] We know when they're in need of a gentle touch. And can I help you with this? I'm really proud to see how you're doing this. Are you proud of this? All of those kind of those moments that we can sort of platform our kids, you know, and just let them know we're paying attention. Let them know that they play an integral role in the family and that we do have expectations as a family unit, but also that they're their own person.

It's recognizing that that is what is so sticky and addictive about a personal device. It feels like it knows you. My challenge to parents is to have your child say the same about you.

Laura Dugger: Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor. 

[00:21:32] <music>

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[00:23:25] <music>

Laura Dugger: I'm going to zero in on two things. When you talked about not always needing rewards and gamification. But in a positive way, I believe you've been on their podcast before and Joey Odom has come on ours, the founder of Aro, co-founder.

That's a great way if you do have phones in the home already. It's just A-R-O. If you look up Aro, that is a gamification system in reverse to reward you from spending time away from your phone and kind of breaking or changing that relationship.

But then how you also said about physical touch. I love how you quote an author and family therapist, Virginia Satir, who said, We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth. Even mentioning the physical touch or the eye contact and the oxytocin and positive neurochemicals that go through our body through our relationship with our children is really great. [00:24:32] 

Are there any other practical tips you have for capitalizing on the algorithm in our home?

Erin Loechner: Yes, yes. And I will also just piggyback on what you said. This was a really interesting study that I read. Oxytocin will get sort of deployed in your body when you hear the voice of someone you love. So practically speaking to parents where their children might not be in the home and they rely heavily on text to connect with them if their child is in college or if they're raising adults. If a phone call is not sufficient or if a phone call is really hard to manage with time zones and all of that, just sending an audio message is a really very practical tip to bring that connection further in a way that positively reinforces that relationship. So aim for audio message over text anytime if you can. [00:25:34] 

Laura Dugger: Oh, that's good. I love another piece of research that you call out is that surprise is still probably the most powerful tool of all. I'll list that one and a couple others and I'd love for you to share your thoughts. So the element of surprise, bringing that into our home. Also, the invitation to play or the simple task of reading aloud and inviting community. Would you like to elaborate on any of those?

Erin Loechner: Yes, yes. I mean all of those I think are very effective when you put everything into play in your home. But one of the things that we've done is I always tell our community I'm much better at answering the door than answering my phone. So we have always had an open door policy. Everyone can come in. We're kind of the low-tech hangout for our neighborhood. Friends can come over. It's messier. It's louder. [00:26:33] 

If we're sort of unwilling to foster this connection online between our children and their friends, we have to give a little bit and we have to give up some of the comforts in our own home. For us that looks like, honestly, you know, kids will just come in and out, teens will come in and out and we feed them and we invite them into whatever's happening at the moment. We'll throw a bonfire or go for walks or really whatever that moment calls for. 

But fostering community is probably going to be the biggest aid in terms of fighting tech in the long run. We do need each other. We need each other's support. We need many, many people for our kids to look to, to be able to point to and say, well, they didn't have a smartphone around when I talked to them or they never interrupt me when I'm talking or they're not checked out and looking at something else when we're in the middle of a conversation. They don't even have a device. [00:27:38] You know, any of those things, the more that our kids can see that and experience that and feel how that feels, the more they'll be drawn to it because we all know how it feels to be ignored for a device. It doesn't feel good. 

The idea is to keep that from being the norm. They get it a lot elsewhere in the world. So if we can sort of minimize that through our community and the people that we choose as role models for our kids and the people that we bring into their lives, the better.

Laura Dugger: Also, what are some examples of ways that you and your husband have just done little memorable surprises with your kids?

Erin Loechner: Oh, I feel like we're always just dreaming up some little side things and they can be very simple. One of the best examples was from a mother who had shared this with me, but she said that she was having the hardest time. They were habit-training some of the littles and she was having the hardest time getting them to hang up their coats. [00:28:40] 

So she just let it be and she put little treats. I think they were jelly beans, but now I can't remember. Put little treats in their coat pockets and just waited, just waited. Any coat pocket that was hanging up would get a treat. Any coat that was not hanging up would not get the treat. 

And sure enough, one of the kids stumbled upon their treat in their coat pocket and ran, ran, ran, "Mom, mom, mom, look what's in my..." And all she said with a wink was, "Good things come to those who hang up their coats." With a wink and a smile.

Of course, the habit stuck after that. It was just off to the races from there. But that is in almost every one of the video games that our kids... It's the catch and reward. It's the take the moment where you have noticed something that your child has done that you want to reward, that you want to see repeated, that you want to do again. [00:29:39] 

And you just kind of pause and ask, how do we celebrate that moment for just a moment? It doesn't take a lot. It does take presence, but the benefit is when you're not sort of distracted by your own device and when you've kind of limited sort of your own mental load in that department, you can be a little more present to look out for those things to foster with your children.

Laura Dugger: That's a beautiful example. I love that. Big tech companies pay billions of dollars to exploit our longings for connection and belonging. So if we have a completely different and wholesome approach, Erin, what are some ways that we can borrow those attractive features from social media to optimize influence within our own home, especially again, as parents? [00:30:36] 

Erin Loechner: You know, from my time as an influencer, it was always very interesting to me to see what would perform well, I guess is how you would say it. Truly, a lot of we know now how-to videos perform wonderfully, the more vulnerable you are, the more hits that you would get. So that's why you'll see a lot of people crying in their car or kind of showing their closet mess or sort of spilling a large portion of their guts online.

That's not new. It's a call for human connection. It is something that we all desire to see people who have shared struggles or who have shared experiences with us and learn from them.

So when we're parenting, if we're trying to kind of earn trust and influence in our kids' lives, if we're trying to be a voice of authority in their lives, it helps deeply if we can approach that from a vulnerable position, if we can talk about things that maybe we did wrong that we wished we had done better, if we can kind of mentor them through some of those stickier times and stickier seasons of life, helping it teaching them new things, teaching them what we're learning, bringing them into that, just like your favorite YouTube personality would do. [00:32:03] Again, the surprise and delight, you know, a lot of things that we've covered already. But those really matter. 

And then just from a practical standpoint, I do not think that it's an accident that the posts that perform well in terms of a brand sponsorship deal or that... you know, when you think of styling a photograph for Instagram or for any social media platform, you're not just going to show a book, right?

You're going to lay the book out and you're going to have a cozy blanket nearby with maybe a cup of tea. It's making a family unit into a series of experiences that you are in it together. I'm not saying that you have to style everything in your home or that you have to kind of prepare this immaculate environment, but fire pits, you know, looking out at the stars, being in the fresh air.

I don't know very many brands who don't photograph their products outdoors, or at least with the daylight setting. [00:33:08] It's more appealing. There are just things built into our human nature that really do trigger that connection between people and boost our brain development and help us to be more present. 

And those are all things that we can do as families. Those are things we used to do in the family. You know, a good old-fashioned water balloon fight or playing with the hose, you know, fire, water, earth, soil, any of those Waldorf elements from early childhood. If we can recreate those, we are going to be well-positioned to create that environment of delight and of comfort in our home.

Laura Dugger: That's great. And that especially sticks out with the how-to videos being the number one and just how it is such a gift to have somebody teach you something and that we have opportunities daily to do a how-to with our children. 

Another way you've summed it up is to be responsive, rewarding, and revealing. [00:34:10] So that alliteration helps. But then also on page 254, you write, "Our homes reflect our habits." So, Erin, what other ideas do you have for using our homes to strategically build family rhythms where all of the members can grow and flourish?

Erin Loechner: Yeah, of course. I mean, when you think about the way that you're setting up your home, it's kind of the same way you would set up your pantry, right? If you don't want to encourage nonstop eating of cookies, you're going to have your little cookie stash up higher than, you know, what's right in the front.

So I would just say when you're creating a home that supports your family's habits, and there's a lot in the book about how to define those, how do you define your family values and how do you define your family culture and all of that. But once you've sort of established what that is, make those things top line, make them front and center. [00:35:12] 

If you really value reading books, then integrate a home library, no matter what, you know, make every bedroom have shelves all over. If you really support exploration and outdoors, build that time into your calendar, you know, make sure that the weekends are open for free play outdoors or for a hike or a swim in the lake, whatever it may be. 

It's just a matter of working rather than... you know, what the algorithm does is it sort of gives us a passive state of options, right? We're handed all of these things that we could be doing, this, this, and this, and this, and this. But when you're working from your own sort of family culture, and when you're working on your own algorithm path to lead you to a place that does support your values, well, you go first, right? So you just prioritize everything else. 

And then there's no room left over for whatever the algorithm wants to show you. [00:36:12] You prioritize what you want to do and what you value. There are many ways to do that. Reading and outdoors, those are really big ones for our family. But I know many families that prioritize entrepreneurship. And so they do a new project in the weekends. Or some really prioritize community service. So they're out of the soup kitchen every Saturday morning. It's truly what real-life experience can you offer to your child so that when they walk out the door, they have a sense of, this is what we do as a family, this is what we do together, this is who we are, that really does support their identity as it shapes into becoming an adult.

Laura Dugger: Well, and you give freedom with those options, but I do love how your family focuses on reading aloud and outdoor time, because those are proven to be healthy and beneficial for all humans. Even one quote that you write on page 255, the research is clear, kids who spend more time outside are calmer, learn better, and sleep better. [00:37:23] And even your simple follow-up idea for building a habit in your home is the after-dinner walk as a family. So just love how attainable that is.

Erin Loechner: Yeah, of course. And you know, if you think of habit stacking, these are all things where you just... when you're thinking of integrating a new habit, just add it onto something that you're already doing. You're going to have family dinner already. So just throw on your shoes and just try it out for just one after dinner. And then maybe it's three to five after dinners. And then maybe it's every night after dinner.

But slowly building the habits from there, because these moments are our child's memories and we want them to be in a spot in the future where they can sort of look back and recall those feelings of childhood. What did it feel like? That is something a phone can't provide. There's no feeling attached to it. It's just content. And we want connection. [00:38:22] 

Laura Dugger: When was the first time you listened to an episode of The Savvy Sauce? How did you hear about our podcast? Did a friend share it with you? Will you be willing to be that friend now and text five other friends or post on your socials anything about The Savvy Sauce that you love? If you share your favorite episodes, that is how we continue to expand our reach and get the good news of Jesus Christ in more ears across the world. So we need your help.

Another way to help us grow is to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Each of these suggestions will cost you less than a minute, but it will be a great benefit to us. Thank you so much for being willing to be generous with your time and share. We appreciate you. 

Can you also tell us about the TMM challenge?

Erin Loechner: Oh yeah. [00:39:19] So what I do a lot with my kids actually, this is kind of a universal phrase you can use in a lot of different situations, but TMM is just "tell me more". And what I noticed in early parenting, I would tend to just sort of spew out a lecture or two when they would come to me with a problem or if they needed advice or just anything that was happening. I was locked and loaded and I was ready to go.

But I found that they really just needed my ear and not so much my words. And so I would just use the simple phrase "tell me more". So if they come in and they say, this thing happened, "Okay, tell me more" rather than jumping into solution mode.

It's another layer of... again, I think one of the goals for us as parents is to really fight that surface-level information that the internet learning has really given us. [00:40:21] A lot of ed tech feels very surfacy. There's not a lot of room or time for depth.

So if we can teach our kids in their own communication with us and with each other to really mine for the deeper meaning behind things and to give ourselves the space to have those conversations and to prioritize their words and the meaning that they're interpreting from those words, that's really, really important.

So instead of just jumping in right away with a solve or a quick fix or a distraction, I like to start with "tell me more" to really better understand and approach the angle that my kid is seeing this from.

Laura Dugger: I love that. It's so memorable and easy to implement. But let's continue to get even more practical. So merging your background as an LA stylist and design blogger with your current passion to disconnect online in order to connect deeper in person. [00:41:25] Will you provide us with some tips for curating our home to actually give our family the rich content technology promises, but rarely delivers?

Erin Loechner: Yeah. I mean, technology is so good at curation. That's why it works so well. There is a lot of information online and Google does a really good job of curating what it wants you to see. So we could do that as parents as well. Walking through your home and editing out anything that's unused or forgotten, anything that's broken. Curating a space that feels as if it supports your values.

I talked about libraries or beautiful art on the walls, things that... we're all drawn to beauty and goodness and truth. And I think we seek that out online. I think it feels really good when we see a pretty picture online, but it feels even better when we live in that pretty picture.

Whatever your taste or style or budget is, you can find ways to implement that. We are almost always at the thrift store when we're in need of something new. And we're sort of swapping things out by seasons. We use a lot of nature in our decorating. We use a lot of poetry, some written by my kids. [00:42:45] If your kids create a lot of artwork, put that front and center. Encourage that habit to create, not just consume. 

I think, too, William Morris is one of my go-tos in terms of keeping a lovely home, but he just always has said, never keep anything that you don't believe to be useful or beautiful. That's really it, form and function. You need both. But ideally, you would have form and function. You would have them both at the same time rather than just something's pretty but useless and something's useful but not great to look at.

So thinking about how you're incorporating that, I think that's a really good way to sort of fight the instinct to purchase what you see from the magazine or purchase what you see from the Instagram reel because you recognize, well, I could probably do that on my own with just a little bit of rearranging and finagling right here in my own home.

Laura Dugger: That is great. And how you bring elements of nature in and going back to how you said even library books strewn around, do you have any recommended books for adults or for children as examples of good replacement content? [00:44:05] 

Erin Loechner: Oh gosh, yes. Well, I have lots of book recommendations. It depends on the age, but I always revisit the classics. We do a lot of Beatrix Potter. We love C.S. Lewis in my home. I actually really like to read my kids, recognizing that our family path looks different than most.

I like to read my kids' books that really foster independence, standing out from a crowd. I think of Caddie Woodlawn or any of those adventure stories where there's someone who is up against a world that looks very different. We just read Pilgrim's Progress and loved that as a family too.

But family read-alouds. I think when you're looking at the type of book to read, I would think about what issues or character, you know, tricky points in your child's life that you're seeing and just integrate that into your family read-along time. [00:45:08] It's a really simple way to address some of those things because you can often see something in a character that you can't see in yourself. 

I have a book called, you've probably heard of this, Honey for a Child's Heart, Gladys Hunt. I often just go through and I just highlight the ones that we've read. But I'd like to borrow a couple of those at the library each week and just keep them on hand and see which ones fly with the kids. It's definitely a trial and error. Not every book will be loved. But you start with some really good quality literature, and I think they kind of lend into that direction later.

Laura Dugger: Oh, that's so good. And just kind of summing this up as well, when you're talking about curating our home, I want to highlight another quote that I've heard in the Charlotte Mason community. That's kind of our philosophy that we follow for homeschooling. But you credit it to Joseph Anderson who is a 17th-century English poet. [00:46:06] 

He says that everyone needs three grand essentials of happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for. I feel like that's one of the ways you've just brought examples even into your book in this conversation of how we can cultivate our family culture around some of those things.

Erin Loechner: Yeah, absolutely. That's a beautiful pillar to work from.

Laura Dugger: Well, then, rather than making opt-out an all-or-nothing thing, what is one practical step that any of us could take today if we're even just opt-out curious?

Erin Loechner: My favorite tip and my favorite step, this is where I started, was, and this is available on optoutfamily.com/tip. What you do is if you have a smartphone and you just want to experiment with what it's like to just have it not be dinging and buzzing at you all the time, or if you just want to experiment with what it is like to move through the world in a way that your kids will eventually be moving through the world if you're not opting for smartphones, is you just turn on all the parental controls on your own phone. [00:47:25] 

So it's not even turning off the notifications, but you are just making your smartphone into a dumb phone. And we walk you through how to do this. I think that's a very simple shift to make the parental control feature on yourself rather than your kids. I think that's really beneficial. 

The other thing I did, and this actually made a really big difference in supporting that, was I made my phone, the wallpaper in the background, I just turned it black. And what that did was it depersonalized the phone entirely. It became a phone, not my phone. It's like a landline now. It just sits on the kitchen counter. It's available if the kids need to make a phone call. It belongs to no one. It doesn't have internet. It just has phones and messages. And it's just a phone number where we can be reached. 

Without that sort of family photo or favorite Bible verse that you see on the wallpaper, without that, it's just been devoted to a tool entirely. [00:48:31] There's nothing personal. My life isn't on there. My life is actually out here. I would start there. I would just turn that black and just see what happens, see what it does in that little friction point in your brain that says, oh, something's different here. I'm going to treat this thing a little differently now.

Laura Dugger: Erin, you are such a creative soul. I love these ideas. I've never considered anything like that before. But you did start to mention a website. So if we've really enjoyed this conversation and we want to learn more from you, where would you direct us?

Erin Loechner: Well, I'm not on social media, of course. But we do have a website, optoutfamily.com. One of the best places to get it... there's a newsletter. We keep everybody up to date on sort of latest tech challenges and how other parents are incorporating some of these ideas in their home. 

But one of the things that I'm really passionate right now is if you go to optoutfamily.com/join, we have a co-op program. And it's free, but it's co-opped out. [00:49:40] You can just register to launch or join a chapter in your hometown. We have, gosh, at this point, over 215 chapters globally. So we have 14 countries, all 50 states in the United States.

The idea is it's a multi-generational co-op. So you are merging lots of different people from lots of different perspectives. And everybody is passionate about this idea of what technology is doing to our children's generation.

The idea is by merging all of those age groups, the young will keep the old young and the old will keep the young wise. And we can kind of swap tips about, okay, what did we do in the 80s? What did we do in the 70? How did we navigate this in the 60s, 50s? Nothing is new under the sun. We know that. And so if we can really gain some wisdom from the people who have walked this longer than us, I'm on board for that. [00:50:41] 

It's a really beautiful program and yeah, it's available and free to anyone at all. So optoutfamily.com/join, and it's called Co-opped Out.

Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We'll add links as we always do to the show notes for today's episode. Erin, you may already be familiar that we're called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?

Erin Loechner: Oh, goodness gracious. Well, I don't know if this counts, but a new habit I'm forming is that if I want my coffee in the morning, then I have to drink two big cups of water first. That's it. It's ever practical, but it's keeping me hydrated from the get-go instead of just kind of waking up leery-eyed and pounding the caffeine. So if anybody else struggles with that, I highly recommend. [00:51:40] 

Laura Dugger: That is such a good idea. Like I said, you are so creative. You're also so kind. I love these ideas that you've shared because they spark delight. So thank you for inspiring us to opt out of technology and to opt in to something far better. It has been such a joy to host you today. I just want to say thank you for being my guest.

Erin Loechner: Thank you, Laura. Thanks for having me.

Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.

This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. [00:52:40] We need a Savior.

But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.

Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.

Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 

So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. [00:53:44] Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 

If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started? 

First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John. 

Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. [00:54:46] 

We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process. 

Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today. 

If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.