Say Goodbye to Screentime Guilt with Carrots&Cake with special guest Meredith DePaolo

we did it. We hit number one international bestseller with our second no problem parenting book, resources and stories that create confidence and connection. Make sure you head into the show notes and grab your Kindle or paperback version today. Hey guys, I'm Jackie Finnaman. I'm a parenting strategist and coach. And after 30 years and with more than 50,000 hours of experience working with kids and families, I promise you there is a solution for your parenting challenges.

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no problem parents. Today, I have a fun guest with an amazing resource for all you parents out there who are concerned about screens and technology and all the things when it comes to our kids and teens. And so I'd like to introduce you to Meredith DiPaolo. She is a TV journalist, a Yale grad, mother of two young girls. And she felt like she was losing her mind during the lockdown and distance learning over her kids' screen time habits. Meredith and her husband set screen time limits, but their kids threw tantrums and rebelled when their time was up.

Life turned into a negotiation. So as parents, they found that fighting against roadblocks, YouTube, Minecraft, and TikTok was a battle that they could not win. And even though they tried parental control apps, the existing technology didn't work. They were hard to set up. Their kids broke through all of the limits and barriers, and they got bombarded with notification requests for extra screen time. I know a lot of parents can relate to this. So fundamentally, they found the approach of simply limiting screen time was flawed, and they believe that families deserve something better. So Meredith and her husband teamed up with teachers, scientists, and child psychologists to create Carrots and Cake, an app focused on improving the quality of kids' screen time. And now their kids have balance, their family is happier, and has more time to connect.

We're going to get into all the things that the Carrots and Cake app does. I'm excited to welcome Meredith to the show. Hi, Meredith. Hi, thanks, Jackie. I'm really excited to be here.

Well, and I'm so excited that we were able to get this episode recorded while you're here in the U.S. on vacation. But you are actually developing all of this and living in Malaysia.

So I'm glad that the time zone, you know, barrier was such that it made it easier for us to connect today. That's right. Either of us are up in the middle of the night, which is not ideal. Exactly. Exactly.

So your Carrots and Cake app prioritizes educational apps and gets kids to learn first and play later. Let's just jump right in. Tell us how and why and all the deets on Carrots and Cake. Yeah. So as you alluded to earlier, my husband and I have two little girls and really as parents and also people that were very interested in education, We just felt like we were being failed by the parental control apps out there.

And we felt like there wasn't a resource that was doing what we really wanted to do. We're pro-technology. We think technology is great. All of our kids can benefit from it.

And there are educational apps out there that are really, really terrific that can really hone in on a particular skill set that a child has and develop them at a super specific and individual level. But what we found is whenever we would like think we found like a really great learning app to put on our child's device, it was never going to be something that they would go to if they also had the choice of going on Roblox or going on YouTube.

You know, you could never win. So we wanted to try and figure out a way that we could balance kids' approach to technology. And by balancing it, the idea is they're going to be able to learn skills that help with their self-regulation. So there will become a time when you don't have to be the mom nagging in the background.

Your hour is up. Come on, get off. No, no, no more five minutes. And the child will be able to put their device down.

So there's a there's a few different pain points that we're trying to address with carrots and cake from a kid standpoint, but also from a parent standpoint. mean? So the obvious is you got to eat your carrots before you have your cake, right? So your approach is really, let's do some learning and something that's going to kind of feed you before you get into all the fun. Right. We're looking at like, you know, the most basic oldest form of parenting. Like you said, eat your vegetables before your cake, have balance on your plate, balance in your life, balance everywhere and balance in screen time. So what Carrots and Cake does is we are a learning platform. So we work with apps that you already own or anything that it's actually anything in the app store. And if you don't have learning apps already on your child's device or on your family's shared device, we can make recommendations of what your kids might like based on their age, based on their interests, based on if you want something that's a free app, if you want something that is ad free, based on if you want STEM or physical education will make those recommendations to you. And what it does is once you have these apps loaded through Carrots and Cake is when your child turns on that device, everything on the device is locked except for those apps that you chose. So when they do their learning, it's super specific to what you've selected. It's distraction free. You don't have to worry about pop-ups or

advertisements coming on. You don't have to worry about them going on email. We lock the app store so they can't download anything. They can't delete carrots and cake. And then when their time is up on those apps that you've selected, so maybe you say, I want them to do 15 minutes of Khan Academy.

When that time is up, then the rest of the device will unlock. So all the other apps that are on there, they're now open for your child to use during what we call their cake time, which is their free playtime. And that's when kids can express their agency and their freedom. You know, we always try to liken it to putting your, taking your child to the playground and there's a 12 foot, you know, protective fence around that playground. So, you know, they're safe, but then you can just let them run free. So they can really express their individuality during that time and not feel like they're being micromanaged or helicopter parented.

That's awesome. We're trying to create like a partnership between the parent and the child and building on the trust and family time and yeah, giving everybody a little bit of what they want. And then along with that, once they do have their cake time, there are limits to that as well. So you don't have to be the bad guy of, oh, screen time's up or screen time's done, right?

Exactly. So the parents are still selecting how long that cake time will be. So maybe you want them to have 45 minutes, an hour, maybe different days of the week. You want them, like maybe on the weekend, you want them to have more free time, you can set that all up within the app. And then when the time is up, the time is up. So the, and the child is not coming to mom or dad and saying, no, no, no, five more minutes. I was just about to win that game, please. We've already given them warning saying you have five minutes to go start to wrap up. We try to down-regulate them as, as their time to come off the app. We'll give little cues saying, okay, your time is up.

How about you go and do this outdoor activity? Or here's an arts and crafts that you could do when your screen time is up. So we prepare them to come off. They know that that's a hard out.

And we give them ideas of things that they could maybe do next when they turn their screen off. Okay, wait. So the app is actually doing that? Or externally the parent is?

The app is doing it. That is so cool. You can be in the kitchen. You can be in your home office.

Yeah, exactly. And we've also just introduced a feature where you can also allow websites. So maybe your child gets their homework from school via a certain website. So you can set it up with that.

And then, you know, if you're at work, when they get off that school bus and run in the house and grab their snack, and most likely the first thing they want to do is turn on their device, you know, the only thing that's opening on the device is that homework website that you set up. So, you know, they're doing the homework without you nagging. you're still at the office because they can't play any of their games until they're finished with it.

That's OK. So that gives me reminders to like if they're doing their what we call their carrot apps, which are the learning education apps, things with a high cognitive load when they're when they say the parents sent 15 minutes, we let them know, OK, the 15 minutes is up now because we also want to be conscientious of not stepping on their cake time, because then they feel like that's sort of a betrayal if they had spent all their time on the carrot apps.

And then they go to do their free time and realize they're all out. So we try to keep the kids informed. We say the app is really specifically aimed at kids in like sort of the four to 10 year old range. And we give visual cues too, because some of these kids aren't at a level where they're able to read these messages yet.

That's perfect. And then what I like about it as well is it's helping the child to figure out their time limits on their own, because I'm imagining the more they use this, the more they're figuring out, well, mom said I get two hours of screen time on Saturday. Do I want to use that all up at once? Or do I want to say, you know, have some in the morning and then save some for at night. So it's really helping them learn on their own how long things take and how much time they have.

The main goal of the app is to try to help kids develop healthy screen time habits and being able to self-regulate is the number one habit that we'd like kids to be able to learn. So, you know, that really introduces the idea of like headed into the future, which we know is going to be technologically charged, that our kids are in charge of the technology rather than the technology being in charge of our children. Yeah. I like how you say, I said at the beginning too, that you're not anti-technology, which, you know, it's so hard as a parent when we didn't grow up with technology the way our kids are, but it is our children's reality. And I love that idea that carrots and cake is helping to prepare them for that self-regulation, but also encouraging them to learn and to kind of know how to navigate some of the technology and putting those limits on when they're younger is super important, but then also helping them to figure out how and what kind of obstacles or hazards or, you know, things are out there so that they can make conscious decisions for themselves as they get older on which sites and which things are better,

better for them to be on and not. Exactly. We really want kids to be able to explore the internet. We want them to be able to be technologically savvy, but we want to be able to protect them. And what we want, you know, more than anything is to promote balance, And the content of what you're looking online can have a lot to do with how kids react to being online and how they're self-motivated and controlled.

Yeah, absolutely. You say screen time doesn't have to be scream time. That's right. And that's what I was finding, especially when my kids were younger.

Whenever I told them time was up, they would argue with me. They would fight with me. It just became such a battle. And I was, you know, I would always do this like, well, I'm taking the device away.

There's not going to be any more device, but I could never follow through on it because of course, by the next day, I wanted them to have the device because that was the one quiet period of my day when I could, you know, do get some work done or start to make dinner. um and you know one of the things we found is there's a lot of guilt associated with screen time in parents because this of what i just described you want your kids to be online but you're feeling guilty and are you giving them too much and are they going to have a bad reaction to it and are they not outside playing are they going to get overweight are they not learning how to play basically you know there's so much guilt that parents are feeling so one of our goals with carrots and cake was to take this approach where you're putting learning first where you're prioritizing that and you're giving. And when I talk about learning, it doesn't have to be just reading and just math. It has to be something with a high cognitive load that doesn't deliver instant gratification to your kids. So it could be coding. It could be a piano lesson. It could be a chess game. It could be a physical education activity. Like I said, we recommend lots of different things depending on what you want, but you know, the kids are doing something productive.

So you don't, it really takes that guilt off your plate as a parent. And also, you know, this idea that you have to be, you know, over their shoulder looking and seeing what they're doing all the time, because, you know, during the learning activities, during the carrot time, they're doing what you set out for them to do. And then during the cake time, like I said, it's a protected playground. So, you know, they're not getting pop ups that are inappropriate. They're not going to websites that are not appropriate. They're still in a very safe place.

Oh, that's excellent. You know, I think a lot of times the parental controls that we try to impart on our kids and we're thinking we're doing a good job and protecting them, they're actually not working. What has your experience been with that? Yeah, well, we tested out a lot of parental control apps, you know, first and foremost, Apple Screen Time, because, you know, that's on your device and it's free.

And within a limit, it works. But we really found that the kids were able to break out of it very easily. We were constantly being bombarded with these like pop up notifications while we would be in a meeting saying, you know, Margo wants 15 more minutes of this or, you know, you know, it was just such an irritation for us. And then also when Apple would do updates, like all of our screen time limits would go away.

And with the other screen time, the ones that you have to go out and pay for parental controls, very often they're very one sided. It's a parent inflicting what they want on their child's device and there's no buy in from the child. So this creates a very emotional response in children that therapists would call reactants. So they feel like their freedom is being infringed upon and it causes them to rebel, actify, and tantrums can occur.

And what we also found is what these parental control apps do is they really just limit the amount of screen time they have. They don't get to the root cause of why kids can't control the screen time because they're not looking at the quality of what the kids are doing. So when I say learning apps are things with a high cognitive load, what I'm also really getting at is that they're low dopamine activities. So these aren't things that kids are getting these constant and instant hits of gratification like you do on social media with likes, like you do with games.

So they're really learning an important skill of the delayed gratification. And having that low dopamine, carrot time, combined with what will probably be a high dopamine activities of cake time. That creates the balance that allows the regulation to start taking place. So how do you recommend parents set this up and involve their kids in the setup of this app so that even the learning is of interest to them? So if you go to our website, carrotsandcake.com, one of the first things that you'll see is a parent cheat sheet, a digital cheat sheet. So these are issues that a parent can start, like especially parents together, co-parents, or if you work with grandparents or main caregivers, you can really decide what you want your digital plan to be. And if you have a strategy thought out that works well for your individual family and your individual kids, then you're really able to stick to your guns when you come into these like tantrums that the kids are throwing. So once you figure out what your digital plan is, I recommend having a talk with your kids. We also have resources that can prompt you on questions to ask the kids and how to bring this up and figure out together what's important to you as a family and what your values are around screen time. So when the tantrum is happening,

you can say, hey, remember what we talked about before? Remember how we said this was important? And that has a way of getting through to your kids. When you're setting up the app, when you're trying to figure out things that your kids might like, we also have different questions that we'll walk you through. So first and foremost is the age of the child. And then, you know, we talk about what their different interests are. Do you want to have different learning activities on different days? Do you want it to be solely math and reading foreign languages? You know, there's a whole bunch of apps that we've gone through that we've evaluated as a team and we're completely independent here. None of these apps are giving us any money. So when we recommend something to families,

you know, we really feel that it's a strong learning tool that can grow with your child. Yeah, that's awesome. And the fact that you can do this as a family ahead of time, it takes a little bit of time to set it up, but you are saving hours of headache and heartache in the future by taking that time to set up the app and to really discuss with the kids what the intent is. And, and then it puts a positive spin on this too, instead of it being such a negative thing for, you know, when the kids ask if they can play a game or they can download a certain game or activity, it's, it's not like they feel mom and dad are just going to say no right away. Yeah, exactly. Like you said, so if you're downloading carrots and cake,

it does take about five to 10 minutes to set up. And we can prompt you with different apps that you might want their kids to use during that setup process. Yeah, but as kids, our learning responsibility showing you that they're able to start to self-regulate makes it a lot easier for parents to say yes to those different game apps. Another thing that we try to do is encourage families to go on the digital journey together. So, you know, kids, so parents can take interest in what their kids are doing online. I know a lot of us, we're super busy, you know, like I said, that's the quiet time when the kids are playing. So we don't necessarily like know what is going on in Roblox or Minecraft or, you know, what these games are all about. So another thing that we do at Carrots and Cake is we'll send emails to parents saying, hey, we noticed that Fiona likes Roblox. Here's like five different questions you could ask at the dinner table to really get to the root and show her you understand the game and like ask questions that aren't merely superficial and create those connections as a family too.

So you can keep the common interests among your family and parents can feel like they know what their kids are up to. So we try to take all of these things off the parents' plate and make it as easy as possible. And also any other questions you might have when you go to our website, carrotsandcake.com, we have loads of expert advice and videos.

And like I see it said, these different sort of cheat sheets and conversational prompts, lots of resources to support parents. So they're not pulling their hair out like I was a couple of years ago. I just, this is genius. And the fact that you have some questions and things, you know, I often talk to parents. It's hard as it is sometimes when our kids come to us and say, Hey, I made this on Minecraft to come and watch. Like I used to get dizzy watching my son, even when we'd mirror it to the TV. So it'd be bigger for me to see. I would get dizzy, like watching him maneuver around Minecraft and all the little worlds he was building and things, But it is important to take note and to look at the extraordinary creations these kids are making.

Just, you know, be interested and curious about what they're doing. It's really connecting and builds trust and it can create great conversations. Yeah, you're right. And we want to build those those family connections.

Yeah. We never say that all screen time is bad or all games are bad. there's definitely great things and qualities in all of them so that's really where that balance comes into and I also love the fact that when there is a fit or a tantrum kids kids do get really like we do when we're watching a show you know or one of our favorite series or or a movie or even playing a game ourselves on a phone or something like that we know what it's like when you oh you have to get to a meeting or you have to start cooking dinner or you're interrupted by your kids, you know, in the middle of something that's never fun. Right. So we can get kind of crabby about that. Obviously our kids would too, but I, I like that when the screen time is done or time is up that if a kid does throw a fit or a tantrum, you have that opportunity to,

to just say, I, Oh, I know it's so hard to not have enough time or to not be able to finish right now. And you can empathize with them instead of having to be like, well, you know, the rule. And that's it. If you throw a fit, I'm taking the screen away or, you know, like all those idle threats that, that we normally throw out. We're just, you're just dissolving all of that. Exactly. The parent no longer has to be the bad guy. And something I like to tell all parents is that when you feel these frustrations, when it feels like your child is arguing and not listening and they won't get off their device and you're so upset, you know, and things just keep escalating.

you always have to remember kids, their brain, their prefrontal cortex is still developing. So they don't have these control and executive functions that we have to put something aside. They're behaving exactly like they're supposed to behave. Really what the parents argument with is with the smartest minds of Silicon Valley, because they understand how kids' brains work.

And they're the ones that are designing these games that steal the kid's attention and keep them on, you know, five minutes more, five minutes more, five minutes more. So Karrison Cake is, you know, hoping to help support parents as they, you know, battle these things with Silicon Valley and feel like they're not alone. They're not the bad guy. They don't have to feel guilty. It's really hard and we need all the resources that we can, that we can have at our disposal. Yeah, that's a really good point. So what is it that makes these games and videos and things so addictive for kids. You're talking, you know, kind of inkled that. So let's, let's, let's talk about that for a bit. Yeah. Well, you have to realize that, like I said, the smartest minds in Silicon Valley are coming up with these games and everything is, they call it persuasive design. So it's designed to really pinpoint what's going on with kids. And like I said,

their prefrontal cortex is still developing. It develops until you're 25 years old. So it makes it that much harder for a child to control their emotions, to regulate themselves, to put something down? A lot of these games have a variable reward. Like if you think about as an adult going to a slot machine, so, you know, there's excitement there. You know, you're going to win at some point, but you don't know when you're going to win. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with like how skilled you are at this game. And this is something that they do with kids.

They make these like little tiny wins, which allow for instant gratification, and it keeps these dopamine feedback loops going. Also, like they'll have rewards in the game that maybe they're only on a Tuesday or maybe they're only you know once a week or once a month. So children feel like, oh, I have to be on at this time, you know, in this place and or my friend is going to be there. So they're getting that whole fear of missing out. So that's part of it.

Also, some of these games play into taboos that are kind of titillating and thrilling to kids. That could be sex or horror or violence, things that, you know, children are understandably curious about, you know, but we want to try to protect them from that. and you know there's there's role playing involved so there's escapism for kids if it's social media which I feel you know social media kind of comes a little bit later than the target group that we're looking at but you know that really is a very passive medium so you're sitting and you're scrolling but you're getting your likes these are things that keep kids going and keep their attention there's there's just so many things built into these games and the algorithms and you know, the thousands of dollars that are like focused at your specific child through that computer screen, really pinpointing exactly what it is that keeps them engaged in the screen and what can continue to keep them engaged, you know, just a few minutes longer, a few minutes longer.

And, you know, us as parents, we're constantly falling through rabbit holes. You know, in the morning you wake up and you check your social media and before you know it, like a half an hours gone by. It's so easy to lose time on these devices. It's really important that we try to keep the time on screens intentional so it can be productive for our kids. Yeah, and I just love that you have resources and tools about how to have some of the conversations with our kids about the gaming and the people behind the games, the creators of the games, and what their intent is.

You know, we used to say to our son when he'd get frustrated if he, you know, lost a baseball game on his screen, whether it was the Wii or his iPad or what, we would say, buddy, you know, you probably did a better job, but the games, you know, hooking you in, wanting you to lose so that you'll play again. You don't have total control when you're playing these games and really teaching him about that at a young age, that it's not just about his ability because it's on a screen.

It's not real life. Also, my little girls were really into watching YouTube and those unboxing videos that they do for toys. And they, you know, they didn't have the wherewithal to understand that these are actually advertisements. These are advertisers that, you know, these kids, they look like kids online. It looks like there could be their friend from down the road, but they're getting thousands of dollars in order to promote these different things. So advertisers have gotten very savvy to kind of like hide what advertising is. And kids are so young, you know, they're not used to those looking at those cues. So there's lots of different ways that big tech is trying to steal the attention from our kids. I just absolutely love this app. I'm glad you guys reached out and we've been looking for an app to promote at No Problem Parenting. And this is really, you guys are covering all the things that parents come to me with that say this app doesn't do this, or we're battling over screen time, or they're getting around the controls, all of those things. So Carrots and Cake is helping us manage screen time for our kids, prioritize learning,

block inappropriate content and promote healthy screen time habits. And I really appreciate you being on the show today. You also have an offer for the No Problem Parenting listeners today. I want you to tell us a little bit about that. Right, Jackie. So for your listeners today, if they go either to our website, carrotsandcake.com or into the app store and look for Carrots and Cake parental control learning app, when you download the app, you'll be queued for a special code. So if your listeners put in no problem, all one word, they will receive a 60 day free trial of carrots and cake. That is incredible. We appreciate that. I mean, in two months, you can have you'll know after probably the first week how it's working. But that is an amazing offer. Thank you so much for doing that you guys are this app is backed by neuroscience by behavior psychology and by cognitive science parents.

So it is really worth you checking out, especially as you're introducing screens at that young age of four or five years old, all the way up to 10, I think you said, right? Yeah, we stay up to 10, but we do have a lot of families that are using it with teenagers for their homework. Sometimes, you know, it's hard. Once the kids have been used to having the world at their fingertips, it's hard to put that toothpaste back in the bottle.

So it's a little harder to regulate them, but it can also be used for older kids too. Awesome. I love it. And then having that discussion as they do get older with this as an option for you to keep on your phone on your own, if you want to self-regulate, like we don't have to say, oh, now you're just on your own and you don't need to make any of these decisions for yourself. I just absolutely love everything about this. And the fact that you can connect any educational app from the Apple store to Carrots and Cake. You're only on iOS right now, right? So not Android quite yet?

Yeah, we're not on Android yet. Hopefully, we would love to be. And if any of your listeners are downloading it, I would love it if they would reach out to us and tell us what they think about it. Because, you know, we're still in a stage where we're constantly trying to improve the app and looking at what works best for families. So we'd love getting feedback.

So cool. Go to carrotsandcake.com for more information. Learn how you can hand over your devices to your kids guilt-free, enjoy less tantrums, more connection, and protect your kids from tech overuse. Meredith, thank you so much for this resource and for being with me on the show today. Thank you, Jackie. I was really happy to be here. All right, parents, that's it for today. Make sure you head over to the website, noproblemparents.com. Sign up to get our emails.

We're going to be giving away tips, tools, techniques, and resources, updates on podcast episodes, roundtable events, and more. Check out NoProblemParents.com. For now, hugs and high fives.

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