The Thing Hijacking Your Kid's Brain With Michaeleen Doucleff #88

If your toddler refuses to listen, has big meltdowns after screens, or seems obsessed with “just one more,” this video will help you understand what’s really going on beneath the behavior. We break down how dopamine drives your child’s need for more—not because they love it, but because their brain is being pulled into a loop. You’ll learn how this affects emotional regulation, why transitions feel so explosive, and what to do instead of constant limiting, negotiating, or power struggles.

What You’ll Learn:

•  Why your child’s brain treats screens and snacks like a “need,” not just a want 
•  What’s actually happening during tantrums when you turn something off 
•  The difference between real enjoyment vs. dopamine-driven “wanting” 
•  Why limiting alone often backfires—and what works better 
•  Simple, realistic ways to reduce meltdowns and shift habits quickly 

This approach is grounded in modern neuroscience and behavioral psychology—but translated into real-life parenting. The goal isn’t perfection or eliminating screens entirely. It’s helping you stay calm, reduce daily friction, and guide your child toward things that actually leave them feeling good (not just wanting more).

If you’re tired of second-guessing your decisions or dreading the next meltdown, this channel is here to make those hard moments feel more manageable—and a lot less confusing.

Michaeleen Doucleff's book: Dopamine Kids

Transcript

Meet Michaeline Duclef And The Book

Jon @WholeParent 0:08

Today, I am joined by Michaeline Duclaif, journalist, researcher, and author of Dopamine Kids, a book that takes a closer look at how the brain's reward system is influencing the way our kids experience the world every single day. Her work draws on years of research and reporting, bringing together neuroscience, which you know I love, behavior, and lived experience in a way that challenges the way that we typically think about parenting. You might know her from her first parenting book, one of my personal favorites, Hunt Gather Parent, which was a New York Times bestseller. And this conversation is about her latest work and what it might be revealing about the patterns that we're seeing at home. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Michaeline, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Thank you for having me.

Jon @WholeParent 0:58

Yeah, yeah. So you talk about dopamine in your book, Dopamine Kids, and specifically uh in the first couple of chapters, I'm just gonna dive right in because I devoured this book. Like I loved this book. I was getting so much dopamine from reading this book. Uh you talk about how dopamine is not really a pleasure chemical, because I think a lot of people often think that. Yes. But it's more of something that shapes expectations and motivation.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yes.

Jon @WholeParent 1:27

Yes. Which is what I guess research is starting to show us. Can you walk us through that a little bit and how you came to that understanding?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, you know, I think for so I'm a chemist. I was trained as a chemist, and I was taught in school that dopamine is pleasure. The more dopamine we have, the happier we feel, and we and we're motivated to do things out of pleasure, right? We do things to seek pleasure. And um, and I I believed that for a long time. And then I started to study the neuroscience really in the past 20, 30 years. It's been a while. And I started to realize, whoa, this is not right. And actually, when I realized what it is, it it really helped me become a more powerful parent. And I think that's why I wrote Domain Kids is like to give parents that same shift in perspective so they can become more powerful. Because we're living in a new era here, right? For the first time in history, kids have are surrounded by products, screens, ultra-processed foods that are intentionally engineered to make them overuse them. And so we need all the tools we can to handle these products. Um, and a lot of the device out there is outdated. It's based on psychology and neuroscience from 25, 30, 40 years ago. And so dopamine kids is really a guide for parents like you and me in this modern era. So the first step is what you said, to feed to understand actually what dopamine is. And so dopamine doesn't give us the feeling of pleasure or happiness, it's really about wanting and desire and motivation. It's it's what I think of as like the do-it-again button in our brain. So it's not just like I want to watch coconut. It's I want to watch coconut again and again and again and more and more and more. And the reason that understanding that definition is key is that we have products in our lives that pull us, that the dopamine pulls us to them to them and makes us want them, even if they don't make us feel good, even if they don't bring us pleasure or even rob us of pleasure. And so dopamine kids is about actually retraining your kids' brains to reach for and want the activities and the foods that make them feel good and bring them pleasure and don't just give them that wanting.

Jon @WholeParent 3:36

I love that. So it's it's the give me more chemical. I think you you call this the the call dopamine throughout the book or dopamine stimulating uh devices and ultra-processed foods magnets.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

That's right. They're magnets, they are magnets. So I'm a chemist, I'm a physical chemist, and I actually worked with mag very high powerful magnets for like 10 years of my life. And what does a magnet do? Right? It pulls metals to them, right? It doesn't matter where you are in the room, it doesn't matter if you're behind a wall, it will pull you to it. And that's exactly what these products do in our kids' lives. If it doesn't matter that the video console's in the cabinet or the chocolate chip cookies are in the pantry, if our child knows they're there, these products will pull them to the product and they and they'll stick on them too, right? A magnet sticks. So I think just that shift alone can really help parents that if these things are around our kids, they're gonna pull, the kids are gonna be pulled to them. The adults are gonna be pulled to them too. Um, and so we need to give them protection. We need to set up their lives so they're pulled to other things as well. Things that really fill them up, things that don't cause conflict, things that make them feel genuine joy and satisfaction, really, right? We talk about like, oh, we live in this age of instant gratification, but this is completely wrong from a neuroscience perspective. We live in an age of no gratification, right? We just want one more, one more. What's next? What's next? What's next? And so with Dope Kids, you learn like how to get those, get your kids to want the things that le that actually give them gratification.

Jon @WholeParent 5:13

And it's those neurological loops of like completion, right? And that's what I think parents experience so often, where they're like their their kid is just obsessed with this thing. Yes, and they think that that comes from, again, as you said, like this place of pleasure. Oh, my kid loves doing that thing, but they're actually the things that we love, we we don't just have an unlimited amount of those things. There's there's a completeness to the the the finishing of the thing, right? Like I love baseball. I don't want to watch baseball 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I want to watch a game, and then the game comes to an end and there's a conclusion and there's a sense of or or play, right? I would love playing rec league softball, but I don't want to do that 24 hours a day. But yet, screens have this capac, this ability, this magnetic pull that it's like, no, I can do it for so many hours, and then I just feel like total garbage.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And that, I mean, so that so that gets to like how this pleasure center in our brain actually works, right? So we're under this assumption it's like dopamine pleasure. But actually, what's going on, it's really fascinating, is that dopamine in the circuitry that it fuels gives us wanting and desire and motivation to go get something. And then when we get it, how it's supposed to work is that another circuitry in the brain called the hedonic hotspots light up. And this gives you what I'm what you're talking about now, right? Like satisfaction and the real pleasure, the like, ah, I have what I need, I have what I want, I can take a break, right? And so pleasure is also about feeling satisfied, right? And feeling this joy that you you you're filled up enough that you can step back and say, I'm done with that for the day, right? Um, and so that's how the brain is supposed to work, right, with our kids. You know, I want to go outside and play with my friends. Rosie now bikes around with her friends all the time on Saturday. Okay, I'm gonna run outside and go play with my friends for three or four hours. I'm tired. That was so fun. I had a great time, I'm gonna rest, right? That's how the cycle is supposed to work, right? But what's happening is video games, social media, TV streaming, it's is designed intentionally. Detect companies tell us this to crank up the wanting, right? Um maximum dopamine, but actually crank down the pleasure, crank down the satisfaction. Because if you felt satisfied, if cocoa melon made the kid feel satisfied, they'd stop watching. And that's that's not how on YouTube and Coco Melon makes money, right? And so I think I realized as a parent when I was before I wrote this book, and why I wrote this book, was because I realized that I was convoluting, I was confusing wanting and pleasure. Like the fact that my little girl, when she was like six, seven, wanted to watch Netflix so YouTube so badly. I want it so much, I want it so badly. I thought it was because she loved it so much. And as a parent, I felt bad taking it away from her or limiting it because I thought she loved it. But once I understood, oh, this is just cranking up her motivation, and to figure out if she loves it or not, I need to look at how she behaves afterwards, right? Does she feel calm and joyful and full of optimism and hope or tired? You know, if if if that's the case, then yeah, this is something that's giving her pleasure. Or does she feel agitated, uh, demanding more, upset, cranky, bad mood, bad behavior, then this is a sign that she's being pulled to something that is cranking up her wanting, but not actually not giving her pleasure, taking away pleasure. You know, social media is a really interesting example of this, right? Data show us that kids are on social media, tweens and teens, to feel a sense of belonging, right? To fulfill their need for belonging. But we're also seeing that over time these apps actually make them feel lonelier. And and yet kids still want to be on them. And they'll tell researchers, like, I want, I I I hate being on there, but I feel this pull. I feel this like I like I can't stop myself. And so it's a magnet, right? And so I think as a parent, we need to understand one, how these things work, and then some anecdotes to them. And and the thing is, is like behavioral psychology and neuroscience has some really good tools for handling them. They just haven't made them made it yet into the parenting world. They're kind of stuck in the business world. And so Dope Mean Kids is really about bringing these tools and these ideas into the parenting landscape. So parents have power over these products. You know, it's this is the same story with ultra-processed foods. These foods are engineered for overuse, and we we we have to deal with them differently than Whole Foods or you know, off offline activities.

Jon @WholeParent 12:49

I think often about how what you just said, there are all of these tools in behavioral psychology and behavioral neuroscience, and these are actually kind of new. Like this funny thing to me is always realizing how new these disciplines are. Like effective neuroscience. Like, like the all everybody who ever worked in effective neuroscience in like the history of the human race has has been in like the last 20 years, 30 years, and they all know each other, right? Like they're all friends, and and so we don't even think about how new this is. And I think that that that's a big piece of this is that uh we are playing a game that we don't fully understand. That's right. And and the players and the pieces, and I think about what you just said. I think often parents look at YouTube and they say, Okay, well, here in a world that's increasingly expensive, in a world that's increasingly it feels, even though the world is safer for kids than it really ever has been, yes, it feels to us right outside, it feels to us more dangerous. And so we we, you know, oh it's it's it's rough out there, and so we put a kid on a tablet or something like that. And it's free. But what we forget is that if anything in life is free, it means that you are the product, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

That's right. That's right. And the kid, the kid is the product, their attention is the product, right? Like the ads, the time that they're on it. I mean, it it really isn't free. That is, I think, one of the myths. One of the neuroscientists that has parents that studies dopamine and she has kids, she's like, there's this idea that it's free, but it's not, right? If we think of time as cost, our time is money, like that's you know, I get paid, a lot of people get paid per hour. I got paid per hour at M PR, you know, like yeah, then it's not free.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

No, no, not free.

Shutdown Meltdowns And Survival Signals

SPEAKER_00 14:37

You know, and and I I I also think there's a little bit of a like um, oh, it's just kind of TV, you know, and like, oh, it's just kind of video games. People will tell me, well, I played video games in the 90s, and you know, and like but it it it is not, it is not just TV, it is not just video games, right? The business model is totally different, right? In the 90s, the business model is like they wanted kids to get frustrated and quit a game, so they'll buy another game, right? Or put more money in the arcade. Now the business model is they want the kid to stay on the game as long as possible because that's how they make money. I mean, the same with YouTube. I talked to engineers when I wrote Dope Mean Kids, like their sole job, like whole departments of engineers, is to get kids to stay on YouTube 24 hours a day. I asked them that directly. Yeah, that's my job, you know, and these are these are powerful companies, right? With and and since about 2013, 14, they've been using AI to pick to select for your kid the exact video that will keep them on there. Um, and now it's getting even more powerful. And so, yeah, these aren't just like regular toys, these are products that create relationships with children, right? They figure out what keeps them on, and at the same time, they're kind of training the child to stay on, right? And so it's this, it's this relationship. Um, and then there's just so many other things you could do than put them on YouTube. Like that's also what I feel is missing. It's like you don't have to go like, okay, total Luddite, right? That's just there's so many ways to mitigate the effect, the negative effect the screens will have on your family's lives. And we don't mean kids is packed with these ideas. You know, one of the things is just to make it public, put it on a put it on a public screen and so that everyone in the room can hear what the kid is doing and see what the kid is doing. And that one, you'll be like, whoa, what is my kid watching? But number two, it it really mitigates this kind of pull to it and this kind of glue to it.

Jon @WholeParent 16:36

Um there's lots of ideas. It stays, yeah, and and I want to get into them, but I want to start with a specific example if we can.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah.

Jon @WholeParent 16:44

Like your kids getting to the end of a show, or maybe it's a sugary snack. I I'll be honest, the a lot of the dopamine kids, I knew what I I knew what I thought about screens, and and everything that you said sort of verified for me what what I had already studied. Feed my kids uh like 75 to 90 percent ultra-processed foods. So I was not ready for that. I was not ready for that conversation in in our home. Um and and and and and I we need to have that conversation. So I'm I'm grateful to that. But so say in in our example, we have a kid who's finishing up on that snack or that show and they're wanting more. What is actually happening in their brain during that transition where they're not able to get off?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah. So one thing to keep in mind is that dopamine triggers wanting and desire, like I said. But it's not like, oh, I kind of want to go to my friend's house, or oh, I I want world peace, or I kind of want to improve my relationship with my mom. It's not like that, right? It is like I need this to survive. Dopamine is there to keep us alive and make sure we get what we need to survive. So food, water, eventually sex, but for kids also social support, exploration, creation. These are fundamental needs of humans, and dopamine's there to not just get the kid to want it, but to go get it. So a lot of neuroscientists will tell you dopamine is like willingness to work. Like you're gonna work hard, right? And you're gonna fight. You're not gonna give up easy, right? Because this is survival. And so the TV show is what studies have shown is kind of triggering kind of constant or continual little repeated surges of it a little bit more. I want to watch. I want to watch, I want to watch. This is what's holding the attention on the screen, is this kind of repeated surges of dopamine to narrow the attention, to narrow the focus. But what that's doing is a couple things. It's telling the child, this is really important. I need to do this to survive. It really is like tricking them into thinking that Lego Girls or Coco Melon is like somehow fundamental to their survival, right? And and and I I need this, I need this, I want this, I need this, I need this. It's just continually giving them this message. And so when you turn it off, whoa, you know, it's like, wait a second, I need this, I want this to survive. This is the most important thing, and this is fundamental to my survival, right? This is what it's telling the kid. This is a very strong signal. Um, and and when you take it away, the kid isn't gonna just be like, oh well, I needed that to survive, so I'll go to bed now, but I'll brush my teeth and go to bed, you know. The kid is gonna be like, no, I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna fight to get what I need to survive. This is incredibly important. And so they're left with all this motivation and kind of needing to work and finish the challenge, finish the work, right? And and you're taking it away, it feels it feels horrible. It kind of feels like I don't know if anybody is like a smoker or trying to quit drinking, right? When you have a craving, it's it's uncomfortable, right? Like desire and wanting that's not fulfilled is is very uncomfortable feeling, right? Um, there's a whole Greek mythology myth about it, tantalus, right? Yeah. Where he's stuck wanting water and food and he can never get it. And I think this is the feeling kids have when you when you take it away, is like there's all this work to be done. There's all this this need to fulfill, and it's right there, and you're taking it away. How could you do that to me?

Naming The Problem Without Shaming Kids

Jon @WholeParent 20:19

You know? And I love that. I love what you're saying. You know, you're reframing something for me in the moment of maybe this is how I need to communicate this to parents differently, or maybe I this is how I need to think about it myself differently. Is this, you know, we we think about it as the wanting, you know, hormone in our brain. It's the wanting hormone. Maybe it's better said that it's almost the needing hormone. Yes, yes, sense of need. It's not it's not so much I want it, because that kind of lends itself to that old that's pleasure. Because there's lots of things that I want, right? I want again, I want the Cubs to win a World Series this year.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Right, but you're not gonna die without it.

Jon @WholeParent 20:59

But right, right. No, that was in 2016 when the Cubs actually won the World Series, and like there were people who were like, if it doesn't happen, this might be this might be the end. Uh, I will say that uh, you know, I it's emotional, it's emotional thinking about it. It's funny because my dad actually like that was actually his last full Cubs season. He passed away from cancer. And so for many of us, it was like that feeling of like we need the but we know that we don't actually need it. But to an underdeveloped brain in our child, or even to a developed brain, yeah. Our developed brain.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

It feels that way.

Jon @WholeParent 21:34

It's it is this ability. So really what they're hijacking is the survival system.

Habits Beat Limits Every Time

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Oh, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And if you look at the data that are coming out, like the last five years, you can see it in both the like video game world, social media world. You can you can see the kids become, especially as they get a little bit older, you know, tweens, teens, they become obsessed with these things because they're trying to fulfill a need that's missing. So you're absolutely right. I love your reframing of it. This is the knee. It's a need, it's a want, something that I need. Um, and and the the crazy thing about humans, this is this didn't make it into dopamine kids, is that we have this ability to stick in that survival system kind of all these crazy things, ideas, um games, like it's incredibly flexible, our our dopamine system. Um, and and that's what happens is the video game gets kind of just plucked into that component of our brain, and it becomes, it feels like it's essential to life for the child. And that's why they behave the way they do. It's not their fault, their brain's just working the way it evolved to work. The system is taking advantage of this two component, this architecture of the brain where the wanting and the pleasure are kind of split apart, right? And it's it's pulling them apart. And so you're absolutely right. I think thinking of it as like a the neat dopamine is I need this, is m makes it much easier to say, like, wait a second, you don't, but you know what? This thing is is is exploiting you, right? And taking advantage of it. It's not the parent's fault or the kid, it's the product, right?

Jon @WholeParent 23:12

Well, and so that this is something that we did with our kids a long time ago. And I did this kind of intuitively, and I was talking about dopamine, but we call dopamine in our house iPad bugs.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Nice. I love that.

Jon @WholeParent 23:23

And so the idea is that the iPad, and and my kids don't understand the exact mechanisms, but my it was a way of demonizing the device rather than the kid or the parent who's taking it. I love that. And I said, No, the iPad bugs are saying, I want more, I want more, I want more. And the iPad bugs are in your brain. They're coming, they they when when the iPad, and and I had to explain for for my for one of my kids, he really wanted the iPad bugs to come out of the iPad and into his brain. And I said, No, no, no, the iPad bugs are in your brain already.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Interesting.

Jon @WholeParent 23:55

Yes, you get woken up by the iPad. When the iPad turns on, they wake up and they say, I like this, I want more of it. But it's not you saying that, it's the iPad bugs in your brain saying, I want more. And what we saw in our home is it over time, as we kind of followed the you know, it's the APA guidelines, and it's just we were more screen hesitant than a lot of parents. Yes, and it was just because of the format of our life. This is not like a uh moral high ground that I'm taking. Our kids did not all but but less than some. Our kids had personalized devices too. So our kids each had a device, but also uh we were more. More hesitant on them, we saw changes to their baselines. And it was different with different ones of my kids. I can really speak to three of them. And they all sort of got access to those devices about the same age, but one of them it really drastically changed his baseline. And so what do you see in that? Like, this is not just a oh, if I give my kid Miss Rachel one time for 10 minutes at the doctor after they get a shot, this is gonna ruin them forever. This is like I I the time that I use Miss Rachel was I I uh when we're driving home at 11 p.m. Somehow we got delayed on seven flights. I have a a a one-year-old in the car with me. She's just exhausted. It's 11 p.m. There's no air conditioning, and it's July in Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah.

Jon @WholeParent 25:34

And we're in the back of this Uber, and we're just like, have you ever heard of Miss Rachel, Marg? Like, you know, for the for 20 minutes it came out. But it's we're really seeing changes to the baseline, right? Like this is what we're most concerned with.

Swaps That Reset The Routine

SPEAKER_00 25:51

I I think that, and this is one of the things that like is missing in the parenting discussion over screens, is these systems, because they work on the dopamine system, the circuitry, and you know, they create these magnets. Um, what they're really doing, these systems work through ha through our habits, right? And this is where the power comes from. And they're intentionally designed, I talk about it a lot in the book, to create habits. So, what's a habit? A habit is something we do without thinking about it, right? We do it, we just go do it because we've done it before. We've stopped making a decision to think about it. And that's how auto-processed foods and screen activities work on children's brains. And so parents need to be aware that if the if if this magnet is available at a certain time and place, habits work in time and place, the child is going to want it and demand it, and it's going to be very hard to say no if they have the screen or the ultra-processed food available to them in certain times and places. And what happens is I think if you follow the APA guidelines, for many kids, it kind of becomes a point where it stops working. If you look at the data on children and screens, you can see it. It's like an hour, zero to two, whatever, you know, two to four, two to four to eight. And by the time they're 13, 14, the average kid in America is spending seven, eight hours online out of school. So it doesn't work, right? It doesn't work because if it worked, we wouldn't have this enormous problem in the tween and teen years, right? And the reason is because they've formed extreme, extremely strong habits around it. I come from from school and I watch TV. I come from school, I play Roblox. I after dinner, I play Minecraft, right? In my bed, I scroll on my phone, right? And all they're they're doing is the habits that they've learned over their childhood. And so with Domin Kids, is the idea is that you create habits around the offline activities, around the Whole Foods and minimally processed foods. So there isn't this struggle. So that these times and places, these contexts, children are naturally wanting and reaching and have a habit for offline activities, have a habit for uh Whole Foods. And there's no struggle, right? Because you're working with the dopamine system now and the habit system now instead of against it. Um whatever you whatever you give your kid, whatever time they have online, time and place. So the day, the place that they do it, and the time that they do it, it will become a habit. And it will be difficult to change or keep keep at that amount as they get older because the pressure of screens gets heavier and heavier from the outside, from their friends. They learn to explore on these apps, they learn to use them in ways that they never could. And so the idea with dopamine kids is to set up your routine in your home so that there's these times and places where it's not an option, it's not available, and the kid starts building pathways of dopamine in their brain to want to go play outside, to want to practice the piano, you know, knit, whatever you, whatever activity you've you've come up with with your kid, which dopamine kids gives you a lot of options. You will build pathways that say, I want this, I like this, this is fun. So that when the pressure of the screens comes, the kid is already equipped to do other things and fall in love with other things and have these other habits in their lives.

Jon @WholeParent 29:30

I want to talk about that. I feel like this is a perfect place for a conversation to go, but we have to take a quick break. Okay. So let's take a quick break and then we'll be back to talk about some changes that we can make to our routines. I am here with Michaeline Duclef, who wrote the amazing new book, Dopamine Kids, all about how our devices and ultra-processed foods in the modern world are hijacking our kids' survival systems and making them need things that they don't really need. They don't need. If our kids are in this place where they've built these patterns and they've kind of shifted their baseline, they've shifted their habits, what changes tend to have the biggest impact on resetting that system?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

So one of the the things to keep in mind is that setting limits with screens and limiting access with screens doesn't work. So behavioral psychology will tell us this from the last like 20 years. Um, it does not work if we just take it away, right? If we just say, sorry, no more YouTube tonight, go to your room, play independently, whatever that means, you know, or go be bo go learn how to be bored. This is my this is the worst advice. Like this is not gonna work. Like the kids are gonna push back, you're gonna fight, they're gonna crave screens more, and you're gonna fall back into what the habit that you had before. So, what does work is to start to replace it and swap the screen with something that's uh just as engaging, just as alluring, that taps into that survival system and that the kid is excited about. So, let me give you an example. Um we decided at some point, so there's two ways to go about doing this, and I'll talk about um one of them first, and then we can talk about the other one. We we decided at some point no more screens after dinner. I was so tired of the bat the nagging, the begging for it, and then the the struggle to get her off of it. I was just it wasn't helping us in in any way. So instead of saying, Okay, Rosie, sorry, no more screens tonight. Why don't you go read a book? You know, um, I said, actually, Rosie, I've got something better than Netflix and YouTube. Love that. Yeah, exactly. Because it is better. It is better, and language is powerful how we talk about it. I got something better. Why don't you help me? Let's finish cleaning up and then I'm gonna take you outside and I'm gonna show you what it is. So I'm getting her excited about it, right? I'm also moving away from where she watches the screens. So I'm like getting out of the context of it because the context is triggering dopamine, it's triggering desire. So, what was this activity? It was learning to ride her bike alone to the market. Something she had been dying to do, but I was kind of didn't have enough time to teach her, and I was a little bit like on the fence about it. Here I'm taking Netflix, YouTube. I'm basically saying instead of watching kids have fun and being autonomous and going on adventures, you're gonna get to go on an adventure. You know, this is why she's watching it. So in going on adventure, exploration, fundamental need of kids, tapping into dopamine. So we get on the bike, I go and we we ride, we have a great time. It took me a couple of nights to teach her to do it so she could ride around by herself. Um, and then she got to the point where she could ride to the market, and now she's like loves biking. She bikes to soccer practice, she bikes to piano. It's her, it's her one of her favorite things to do. So I'm taking the screen habit and I'm replacing it with something that really fulfills her need, makes her feel really good afterwards, we never argue about, and actually helps her grow as a human being. And the new habit stuck, right? Because I wasn't just leaving her empty-handed. I'm like inviting her to discover something better. And so this is really the strategy throughout the book is like helping kids learn to discover better, more enjoyable, more satisfying activities, and then kind of slowly taking that the screen away, however, however much you want and however much it helped helps your family.

Jon @WholeParent 33:40

I love that. And I, you know, what's so interesting is that a lot of what I've been able to find in the research, I was thinking about doing a YouTube video, uh, which is so funny that like where you know I'm creating all of the content that is like causing all of these problems. I'm creating it for adults, I'm creating it for adjustments.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Somebody needs to do it. So thank I thank you.

Jon @WholeParent 33:58

Um I was thinking about doing a YouTube video about like the negative side effects of screens on kids. The real problem. Not not and and and we get into a lot of this like you know, correlation causation fallacy that I see in my developmental psych stuff where it's like, oh, are screens causing ADHD? Like like a lot of this stuff is is just it's it's I don't want to say it's bad science. It's just it's just not it's half cooked and it's and it's not really like it's not helpful, right?

How Fast Kids Change

SPEAKER_00 34:27

I I mean I tell parents all the time, I'm like the only experiment that matters is what you see in front of you, right? I love that. You know, like the end of one is like, does the screen cause bad behavior in your house? Well, that's it. You know? Do you need more proof?

Jon @WholeParent 34:42

You know, like and that's you know, that's actually when when we when I'll have a uh a couple who's struggling to parent on the same page. And you by the way, plug for uh my own work, if you are struggling with your partner and parenting in the same you know, on the same page, you don't have to be on the perfect same page. You guys can do different things, it's okay. But uh when they're really struggling and they're like, I how can I get my partner to see that what they're doing isn't working? The one of the things that I'll tell them to say is just say, so how's that working? Yeah, that's right. And that's kind of the end of one, what you're doing exactly what you're talking about. Exactly. Like, well, so is this our screens a problem for my kids? Well, what do you think? What do you see? What do you feel? What are you experiencing?

SPEAKER_00 35:26

And then like do the experiment of taking it away, right? That's the that's the randomized control trial, right? Like take it away and then for a couple days and then see see what happens.

Jon @WholeParent 35:35

Yeah, right? Exactly. It well, and so so really, but but back to the the YouTube video, I was like, when I'm doing the research for this and like trying to make sure that I have all my information right, I was like, oh, actually the biggest thing, which is so funny that this is your solution, is the opportunity cost. Like the main reason why we don't want kids to be so addicted to screens is not because it's going to, you know, magically change their brain, not that it doesn't change their brain chemistry, as you just pointed out in the whole episode that it has, but but that it's going to you know create a neurological deficit in them or something. It's that it's that when they're on the screen, they're not writing to the market and they're not building, you know, friendships outside. My kids spend three to six hours a day outside. Like that's you know, that kids who who are spending three to six hours on screens literally do not have enough hours in the day to do that. That's right.

Hope For An Offline Comeback

SPEAKER_00 36:26

That's right. And and and you know, it's I think I think what I learned while writing this book is like when you limit the screen, you're not taking away joy or depriving them, you're giving them more joy. You're reclaiming joy, right? That's what that's actually why I wanted to write the book, because I was like, wait a second. So if I actually we figure out a way to do this, like sh we're gonna be happier. We're gonna like Rosie's gonna be happier, right?

Jon @WholeParent 36:52

Like this is and so it was like Thank you for giving the social media sound bite for this episode. That that's perfect. I love exactly what you said.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Okay, so how long is true, right? You just said it, right? Like, like I've seen a kid sit and play video games for six hours, and I've seen a kid ride their bike around town for six hours, and I can tell you which kid is happier.

Jon @WholeParent 37:13

So I have I have one of two questions to ask you. I have I have a quick question, and I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you both because we have a c a couple minutes. We might go a little bit over time uh as far as the typical episode length. But two questions. Rapid fire, the first one.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Okay.

Jon @WholeParent 37:28

One of the things that's most surprising to me in your book is how long does it take for us to notice a difference when we start to make these changes?

SPEAKER_00 37:37

I think with most kids, you're gonna see like big differences in a day or two. Like I'm not I'm not kidding. Yeah, and in older kids, teenagers that the habits are more entrenched, give them give them five, six days.

Jon @WholeParent 37:52

But within two weeks, we can basically entirely rewire the dopamine system.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Oh yeah, because the kids are the dopamine system in kids is super flexible. And there's lots of data that show this. They it it changes really fast. Adults take longer. Um, but I know of many parents who have kids that are really entrenched on video games and they saw major changes in like a week. And we saw massive changes in Rosie's eating habits. You know, she was seven or eight when we did this in like less than ten days, like from going to not eating any dinner to like uh scarfing up uh lamb chili.

Jon @WholeParent 38:30

Yeah, my my four-year-old, when we went no screens, if we were using screens to survive in certain mornings because he was getting up really early and we didn't want him to wake up the whole house. And so we were using screens to survive, but just at that time of the day, but really behavior for the rest of the day was brutal. So we just figured out an alternative. Yeah, a a more positive thing that he wanted to do. And uh I I can say within without a doubt, I really started to notice changes the same day that we did no screens that morning. Within weeks, we didn't ask for it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Yes, yes, I think parents think I think the it a lot of parents say this is too hard. And I'm like, this is not as hard as you think, number one. But number two, like you're gonna change the system. It is easier than constantly pulling kids off the screen, constantly policing it. It just a couple days, and you'll have a system where you no longer are struggling with like manually doing it all the time, right? Where it just flows and it just works.

Jon @WholeParent 39:32

Okay, so to conclude our conversation, it's a big question.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Okay.

Ratings Reviews Sharing And Substack

Jon @WholeParent 39:38

If we continue to go on this on the path that we are currently on, what is your biggest concern for the world if we continue down the path that we seem to be on? And uh related to dopamine and kids, I should I should I should specify not in the in the political landscape. What are your thoughts on geopolitics, right? Yes, I won't go there. I don't have many. Well with the with with respect to kids and dopamine, um, what is concerning you the most and what is giving you the most hope?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

You know, I I am hopeful that the pro that the problem that the power of video games, screens, and the food will become so strong that parents will it'll open parents' eyes. That's what it did to me. You know, and if it continued like 80s, 90s, early 2000s, they were they weren't so powerful. And so we were, it was easier to just say, oh, that's one hour or two a day, and you know, but I think they're so powerful in kids' lives right now that a lot of parents are being like, I don't want this. You know, and they're starting to value and really seek out what's in front of them in the life offline, and they and I and that's my hope, right? Is that we get the information, we learn about how these things work, and then when you have the power to say, like, whoa, I really want my kid to value and love being outside with real friends, with you know, real, you know, face-to-face interactions. And so I think it's it's almost like it's good. These things are gonna push parents too far to the edge. And then we're gonna say, this is too much, and we we're gonna come back and we're gonna, we're gonna really start enjoying life offline and and prioritizing, valuing it, you know, because otherwise it hurts kids' mental health. It really does, you know, and I'm not saying it gives them anxiety, depression. I'm not saying it's the cause and the only cause, but it it erodes the pleasure and joy in life, you know, it really does. And I think that my hope is that parents are gonna wake up and say, Oh, I want, I want, I want our lives to be full of pleasure and joy.

Jon @WholeParent 41:47

That's such a beautiful way to end. Thank you so much for your time today. Uh, for those who are listening, wherever you're listening, or if you're watching on YouTube, go down in the show notes or the description, find the link to Dopamine Kids. You are going to absolutely love the book. It's a resource. It is not just a book that you can check out from the library. You're gonna want this in your home as you continue to navigate different types of screen habits for your child's whole life. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Thank you for having me. It was it was an honor and a pleasure.

Jon @WholeParent 42:27

Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings, and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds, and if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, following me on social media, of getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom, and like I said in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh I don't have that many people doing it, and yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving. I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not gonna break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast and sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast, spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.