Break Free from Phone Distractions: Joey Odom on Building Healthier Tech Habits with Aro

I have a very special guest on with me today. Let's welcome Joey Odom. Joey had a wake-up call when he missed his son's first soccer goal as he was glued to his phone. This moment led him on a journey to transform his relationship with his phone and in turn, improve his relationships with his family.

So together with his friend and fellow dad, Heath Wilson, Joey co-founded Aro in October of 2022. Aro has since been embraced by thousands of families across the country, helping parents model healthy tech habits and be more present with their loved ones. Hey there, parents. Welcome back to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Finneman, the founder of No Problem Parenting and NoProblemParents.com. I believe any parenting problem can be turned into a no problem, and it all begins with a shift in mindset.

We tackle real parenting challenges, and we provide practical solutions at work. If you're dealing with behavior issues, setting boundaries, or you're just feeling stuck? No Problem Parenting is here for you. And today, I'm excited to announce our new network. It's called The Nest. Whether you're in that nesting phase, ready to welcome your child home, or you're ready to launch your child out of the nest and you're becoming an empty nester, The Nest is for you. This network is currently being offered to parents who have worked with us one-on-one in coaching and or who have completed our Becoming a No Problem Parent training. Officially, the nest will open in January of 2025, but you can get in at a discounted rate if you act now. There's a link in the show notes to become a No Problem Parent or head over to NoProblemParents.com. Grab your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool and get on our email list where we share more about exclusive access to our twice monthly power hour calls, which includes hands-on resources. And we're bringing experts in on a variety of topics. Join our growing network of confident, empowered parents. Visit noproblemparents.com and get started today. Welcome to the show, Joey.

Jackie, it's so good to see you. Thank you for having me on today. I mean, this is a really fun way to embrace the fact that we're on technology and technology is just a part of our lives. It's part of our kids' lives. You've come up with a way to kind of gamify the phone and the devices. So just give us a little intro to how you got started with this and what sparked missing that first goal out, being there, missing that first goal. I just had goosebumps hearing that. Well, and Jackie, it was to make matters worse, right after Harrison, my son, who's now 16 years old. So when he was five, yeah, when he scored that goal, his very first goal, the very first thing he did was looked over to the sidelines.

So the very first thing he did was, was look just, I mean, Jackie to see the smile and pride on my face. I mean, it gets me emotional thinking about it again. And all he saw was the top of my head because I was looking down at my phone and you would, you would ask and people ask all the time, Oh, what were you doing? And I would love to say that I was, you know, freeing, you know, hostages from a domestic terrorist organization, but I was not, I was probably watching, you know, a silly video, or I was probably responding to a group text.

Who knows? All I know, it was so inconsequential. And it was one of those moments where I just, I said, something's wrong, you know? And unfortunately, this was not the only, this is not the only time that I made this mistake where I missed these moments.

And what's interesting about it is that's a moment that I was conscious that I missed. And who knows how many times, you know, who knows how many times our kids look over to us, especially when they're young, look over to us. And we just don't know it because our heads are, you know, kind of absorbed in our phones. And so it was one of those in my business partner, Heath Wilson, who you mentioned, he'd had the same thing, height of his career, sold a great business, but he realized that, Hey, he was so absorbed in work that he wasn't giving his family the time. And he was on his phone and constantly reachable.

And for the, for us, it was, as we've looked at it, as we've thought about it, it comes down to this core relationship. It really does come down to relationship. And this relationship that I have developed, that we have developed as a society, in 16 years, this is a very short amount of time that the iPhone, I'm not picking on Apple, but you know, the iPhone being the more prominent one for most of us, we've developed this weird relationship with the, with our phones and that's okay. Except for the fact that it's damaging our other relationships truly. Like, and we see it in the stats, but more than just seeing the stats, we just feel it, you know, we'd like, we know. And in that moment, I knew that this relationship with my phone was damaging what I would say is a top three relationship in my existence.

Yet, I still was glued to it and it was still kind of hard for us. And we just said, hey, what if we could do something about it? What if the world could look different? Absolutely love it. So tell us how you even came up with the idea the RO is like a box that your phone goes inside. Parents will say, put your phone in this basket or put it in the drawer or, you know, during dinner and whatever, no screens at the table or at night in your room.

Just describe the box a little bit because we're an audio only podcast, so they're not going to be able to see it until they click that link in the show notes. Yeah, it's funny. I'm sure the listener was saying, oh, what a brilliant idea, a box for your phone, right? I guess we get that, but we realized very quickly that the fact that our phones are with us all the time, you know, everything else in our life has a home. You walk in, what do you do? You take your keys out of your keys in your wallet. If you're, you know, if you put them in your pockets and you put them in a little valet tray, or we put our cars in the garage, like we have a home for everything. But for some reason, we just haven't established that home for our phones yet in the last 16 years that we've had them. So as a result, we have them with us all the time. And so we did, we developed, we had this idea of what if we just had a place for our phones. And so we prototyped with shoe boxes and,

you know, putting them there and that worked fine. But then we realized that there was nothing really compelling that was drawing me to put my phone there, except for just being aware of it, remembering to do it, and then having really kind of the self-discipline to do it. And we all know that we need to not have our phones at the dinner table. And so if you have the discipline, sure, let's go put it in a drawer, let's put it in a box, whatever you want. But there are a couple flaws on the physical one one of them is it's almost like we like this almost like to a peloton like peloton made a bike right there have been bikes around forever yet it took off because a couple things one it was it was kind of a really pretty way of doing it and the results of it being pretty you put it in a prominent place so we knew when we developed our we need this needed to be a beautiful home decor piece i mean this is it's white fabric wrapped it has a bamboo lid we like to say it's wife designed and wife approved. So if I were to design it, yeah, it would have not gone well if I would have done it, but we, we luckily had some smart, some smart females designing it. And so it's a beautiful place and really what it does, it, it not only is a beautiful thing, but it kind of symbolizes your family's intentions. And this is for families and it,

and it's for families to say like, Hey, when you see that, you remember, Hey, this is, we're, we're a present family. This is, we, we want to be intentional with technology, but the place isn't quite enough, right? So we also said, well, what if we could design the box with really intelligent technology that would allow it when you drop your phone in it, it would automatically connect to an app. And what that app would do is begin to quantify the amount of time that you're away from your phone, that you're physically distant from your phone, which is a real distinction from this, you know, the Sunday screen time report we get from Apple that says how much time you've been on your phone. So how much time have you been physically distant from your phone? So by quantifying that, then you can kind of gamify the experience of being away from your phone.

So the RO app will send you nudges. Hey, it's six o'clock. How about, you know, how about some phone free dinner time? Or after you finish a session, you can tag what you've done. So then you can look back and this is really fun. I love seeing this, a roll up of how I've used my time physically distant from my phone. So I could pull up the app right now.

And in the last 30 days, I've had 36 hours of phone free family time and 22 hours working and, and seven hours of morning devotion or whatever, whatever those numbers are. And then you have leaderboards within your home. You can kind of see, you know, how many streaks, how many days in a row you've had physical time distant from your phone, connect your rings and time goals, all that kind of stuff. But it's that connectivity between software and hardware that really that's where the magic really lies. One or the other really probably leaves it slightly incomplete. So that was our thesis was, and by the way, Jackie, we had no idea. Like we had no idea if other people were struggling with this. Turns out they are. We had no idea if this would just work for us. Luckily it works for others too. And it kind of trans, not just kind of,

it actually transforms the culture of a home to have a thing physically present that says, this is what our intentions are. And then a gamified experience that everybody can join in on. And I know this is going to sound crazy, but have some fun apart from your phone. Yeah, exactly.

So, I mean, there's so much goodness in this. And to get the kids and teens, you know, actually excited to put their phone down. You know, they love a streak. They love a good snap streak.

So, you know, this is another way that you can incorporate that, right? It's so true. And even to piggyback on that, one thing that we had a belief that this would be for families who kind of look like ours with teenage kids who had phones. what we found very quickly was families that are really, we're really adopting this. We're families with kids who did not yet have phones because we strongly believe this has to be modeled well by the parents. And we have four ways you can change your relationship with your phone. I'd love to talk about later, but, but, but it always begins with the parents. We have to model this well, but we model as parents all of a sudden gets replicated by our kids, good and bad. And so we're at a moment in culture. And by the way, I'm very encouraged, really, truly. It's very easy to go down a rabbit hole of despair here when it comes to technology. I'm very encouraged by what people's awareness of this and waking up to like, hey, this is doing some bad things.

Kids don't like how it feels. I don't like how it feels as a parent. I don't like the disconnect that I feel from it as a result. And so we have this belief, and I'll say it probably, you know, one, 10 more times. For anybody listening who's struggling with it, the world can look different.

for anybody who wants to get ahead of it. The world can look different. This is not inevitable for your kids. This is not inevitable for your families. I really am so hopeful. And I believe this is the most hopeful opportunity we have in a relationship in 2024. And I know it and I know it because I've seen it in my own life. There was no one worse than me. I know it because we've seen it in thousands of other peoples who have said, this has changed my life. Like this small little thing, this small little shift has changed everything about my family culture. So I get excited as you can tell about it because I'm so hopeful. And we know the future can look different and it is not inevitable, the despair we feel right now. Let's lead. Let's be that confident leader and let's lead by example. And so even when your kids don't have their own phones yet, this isn't just about the kids. This is about you taking ownership responsibility and taking care of yourself,

really. And putting that phone down. What do you say to parents who say, well, there's no way I I can, that's our only source of, you know, that's the only way my kids can get ahold of me is if my phone is on me. We don't have a landline phone anymore.

So it's just a cell phone. What happens if there's an emergency and my phone's in a box? Well, one, I love the question and it is, that is indicative of the attachment we have to our phones, that question alone, because we begin to go to worst case scenarios. And I would recommend to somebody, if you're kids away, don't put it in the box.

That's probably a bad time to put it in the box. It's a pretty good time to be accessible whenever your kids are away. And so you're finding these moments and there's so much nuance in this, but let's, let's find these moments where we just don't need our phones. And I would argue when your kid is, my son's going to play a tennis match at two hours from us here today.

I'm going to probably keep my phone with me because I want to be reachable when he's away. Right. And so, but when he's home, when everybody I love is at home and it's family dinner time, what a great time to disconnect from your phone. You know what I mean?

So there's some nuance to it, and I completely agree. We're not necessarily advocating for a detox of devices. We're saying, okay, at this moment right now, is your phone necessary? And if the answer is no, probably a good time to not have your phone with you.

Yeah. No, that's really good. And step two of no problem parenting is to prepare for the worst. So if you're in a situation where your kids are away and gone, yeah, you're not going to use it.

I think a lot of parents will go to the yeah buts. You know? yeah but i can't this or yeah but you know i need it for that or yeah and again like you say that's our attachment that we've this this connection we have to our phones that makes us and that's very fear-based as well which we're not about fear-based here that's right i'm parenting also you'll find that the more you do it just baby steps putting it away you'll realize oh my gosh i am more attached to that sucker than i ever thought i was so right yeah right this is this is 100% building a muscle. I believe it's just, it's building muscle. And I'll say something that you may disagree with me on Jackie. And that would be, that would be totally fine. But as we've,

as we talk about our phones, I found as a society, we talk about our phones and it sounds a little bit like this. You may have said this. I know I've said this. Other people may, may have heard this.

We'll talk about our phones and we'll say like, Oh, and almost laughing. I'm just so addicted to my phone and, you know, kind of laughing it off, which is one funny, because would we really ever talk like that about any real addiction? Like, you know, me, I'm so hooked on heroin, you know, what can I do? You know, so it's not, it's not like we would talk about this, but I believe, and by the way, when someone laughs, the typical response to that is like, yeah, me too. Oh, I get it. And so we, we have this, we're using this term addiction and you would know a lot about this and that's addiction is a serious, serious thing. And there are absolutely things on our phones that have addictive characteristics to them. The dopamine rush and dopamine hits totally get it. But in terms of an actual addiction to our phones, I would argue that one, because clinically, you know, studies are showing that it doesn't quite show up as,

you know, for most of us, 98% of us, it doesn't quite share those, those characteristics. It's a little bit more of compulsive behavior versus addictive behavior from what we see, what we've heard from smart people who aren't me, but that's, that's, we hear from people, but even more than that, I think the label we put on it on our, on our relationship with our phone is very important because with the term addiction, what do people do when they go into 12 step program? The very first thing they say is I'm completely powerless over this thing. And so what if we shifted this label when we talk about our relationship with our phone, instead of I'm addicted to my phone, instead say, I have a bad habit with my phone. To me, mentally, that makes a huge shift from saying,

one, I'm powerless into saying, oh, it's a habit. Okay, I can do something about a habit. I know what to do with habits. I'll just go read Atomic Habits by James Clear, which talks about, which is by the way, what our system is built on is cue a response reward, the habit loop. And so instead, if you say, I have agency over this thing, this means I can do something about it. And so I would encourage people as they're talking about it, watch that self-talk, watch the way you talk about it to yourself. Watch the way you say it in front of your kids saying that word addiction. I would argue that you don't have an addiction that you can't do anything about. I would argue you have a habit that you can absolutely do something about.

Absolutely. What's the part I'm going to disagree with you on? You know, when I talk to smart people like you, I start, sometimes people say, no, no, no, it's no, no, it's absolutely addictive and dopamine and all that stuff. Again, I completely agree with that. I just think, and I don't think there's no real data that would back up to say the vast majority of us are actually addicted to our phones. So people may get into the nuance there and whether it's, whether maybe I'll lose credibility here, whether that's clinically correct or not, I do think the way that we label things, the way we talk about things has an extreme amount of power. Those words are so strong because we begin to identify ourselves.

Because if you identify yourself as an addict to your phone, then what's going to happen? You're going to do things that a phone addict would do. If you identify yourself as that, you'll just start doing those things that somebody does. So it has to be an identity-based behavior.

And if instead you say, no, I'm a present parent with a bad habit, I bet you're going to start doing something a present parent would do and work on that bad habit. Well, I wholeheartedly agree. And we don't have to be right. we'll just get to to speak our truth and our experience supporting people in this way and from your device it's clearly working for a lot of people so yeah so i love everything about that let's talk about those four ways to change what'd you say four ways to change your relationship with your phone and i would i'll start real quick on on the fact that we have a relationship with our phone let's take a step back here and recognize that's weird for an adult to have a relationship with an object, right? And it's so weird that it actually, you have to look to children to find other humans who have relationships with objects. Children have relationships with objects. Those objects are called blankies and they're pacifiers and they're teddy bears. And you know this,

what those objects are called are transitional objects. Those are, in other word form, are comfort objects. And they serve a really important purpose in a child's development. A comfort object, a transitional object, is something that a child clings to in the absence of their real security, in the absence of their parents. So it gives them a sense of security in the absence of their real security. And over time, a child realizes, oh, I don't need my blankie to do this. I can do this on my own. So it's an actual, it's a super helpful transition from kind of dependence to independence and believing they can do it on their own. It's really, really a great thing. But what's interesting about our phones is it's, we're clinging to this object for the first time since childhood. And it's actually devolving us back to adolescence. It's making us all toddlers again, right? But what's interesting about it is that we're clinging to this and it's not progressing us towards independence. It's moving us backwards towards isolation. We're doing this. Kids hold onto a blanket when their parents are gone, when their real relationships are gone. We're clinging to a device when our real relationships are in front of us. We're doing this in the middle of conversations. We're clinging to these at the dinner table.

So this relationship we have, let's recognize this is weird. And it's a little weird we have a relationship with an object. Now, it's because they're with us all the time. The three defining characteristics of a relationship are proximity, interaction, and dependence.

P-I-D, proximity, interaction, dependence. When we have something with us all the time, the proximity, we're going to use it more, the interaction. When we're around somebody more, we're going to interact with them more. And then you begin to get into a state of dependence, whether it's on a relationship.

And I'm not saying dependence in necessarily a negative way. Just you need something or someone. So the dependence is a really interesting one because our phones are really helpful. We like having them.

They do great things for us. We're not going to get rid of them. But we start getting lulled into these false dependencies on our phones. And a false dependency, I'll give an example.

The best one is the fact that people say, we all know we shouldn't have our phones with us overnight in our bedrooms. We know the blue light kills our sleep. We know it's not good to start the day off kind of scrolling the news. We know we shouldn't have our phones in us yet.

A lot of us do because, well, it's my alarm clock. I use it for my alarm clock. Just email me, joey at goro.com.

I'll send you $15 to go buy an alarm clock if that's really your problem, right? Like we don't really need that, but that's a false dependency. And because we have that false dependency, what does that do? That pushes us back towards proximity.

So we're still going to have it with us more. So this PID loop, we call it the PID loop, P-I-D, PID loop, continues on proximity interaction dependence, and it keeps feeding on it. And we have to break the beginning point of that, which is proximity. So can we break that? Can we get our phones physically distant from us? This is a shocking stat to me. Every time I say it is that 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. 91% of us don't have to move our feet. So they're just with us. And by the way, this is okay. What's okay about it is don't beat yourself up over it.

Yes, make a change, but don't beat yourself up. We're still learning. This is so brand new to our brains. So that's a long way to, that's kind of a prologue into the four ways to change your relationship with your phone.

And I'll make a definitive statement for everybody. I, you, society, we need to change our relationships with our phones. It is, we are in a dire circumstance where we have to, we are in a cultural intimacy crisis where I believe that our relationships are dying. The intimacy in our relationships are dying and it's death by a thousand glances, death by a thousand glances at our phone.

It's not death by a thousand cuts, death by a thousand glances. And so we have to, we have to change this relationship with our phone. And when you do, the hopeful side of it is when you change your relationship with your phone, you change your relationship with everyone around you, including yourself. It's a beautiful thing that happens.

So let's just, so, so as a, again, as an intro to the ways to change it, let's understand how important it is. We do have a relationship. We do need to change it. One interesting thing on the interaction side, 89% of our smartphone usage is self-initiated. It's not inbound notifications that are getting us. It's actually us having them with us, seeing and thinking, oh, yeah, gosh, how did the Timberwolves do last night?

And then the Timberwolves score shifts into what's the weather tomorrow? Hey, you know what? I wonder what's happening. And so then all of a sudden we're gone. And so that's us that's doing that. So it's us self-initiating that behavior. And it's because it's with us all the time. I'll make the most obvious statement. And you'll probably kick me off the podcast after I say this because it's such a dumb statement. You can't use your phone if it's not with you.

So let's go to the root of it. Let's remove the need. Let's remove the need for self-discipline. Let's change that environment.

Again, back to James Clear, he says an environment is always stronger than willpower. If you're relying on your willpower for something and your environment's not conducive to it, you're going to fail every time. Environment eats self-discipline's lunch every single day. Absolutely.

That is step one of no problem parenting. Seek first to understand why is my child behaving the way they are? Why am I responding or reacting to my child's behavior the way I am? And at the root of a lot of what parents come to me with, there's this like fear-based or this, and we're doing it to ourselves, right?

One of the first things I say when people are glued to their phones is, number one, put your notifications on the second page. Don't have that be the first thing when you pull up your phone if you need to make a phone call, right, or something. But you're right. It's not just about notifications.

Everything is on demand right now. If we have a thought or a question or an idea, we can just pick it up. And instead of delayed gratification, it's just instant gratification all the time. And so, yeah, so I could go all over the place, but we can't get to these four ways.

There you go. Like a drum roll now. All that I do. Yeah, exactly.

And we've made these easy to remember. They're alliterative. So they all start with S. So the four S's when it comes to changing a relationship with your phone.

the first one this is kind of a play on simon sinek's book several years ago which was start with why the first way to change your relationship with your phone is to start with i start start with yourself this is not as obvious as it might sound there are the surgeon general says we you know this is a national health crisis you know and initiated largely by smartphones there are a lot of people smart people jonathan height who has a brilliant book called the anxious generation that everybody should read. He says that we need to ban phones in schools. Totally agree. I totally agree on, we need to have legislation around this. The children should not get social media at a young age and that needs to be actually legislated. No question. However, all that, however, we can't wait on other people. We can't, I can't wait. I can't wait on lawmakers. I can't wait on the surgeon general. I can't wait on the schools to do the right thing. I have to start with myself.

am I modeling the right relationship? And we talk a lot about for our kids, am I modeling the right relationship for my kids? I am. We all have this opportunity to be thermostats, not thermometers, that we're the ones that are setting the temperature. So we can do this for ourselves.

And it begins with yourself, right? Because the historical model, when it comes to raising kids with phones, talk about the three Ms, the three Ms, we model a bad relationship with our phones. Our kids mimic what we model. And then we do something crazy. We get mad at them for mimicking what we modeled to them. We're the ones, we're the ones who started it. So to quote Taylor Swift, it's me. I'm the problem, right? So, so we have to start with ourselves and Jackie, imagine, just imagine if all of us started with ourselves, this crisis would be over today. It would be done if we all started with ourselves. So the first one start with, I always begin with yourself.

Don't blame your spouse. Don't blame your kids. The kids are not the problem. we are the problems they learned it from us right got it so that's yeah social media company i know the algorithms i know i do get all that but let's start with ourselves so that's one start with i the second one this is very very tactical it's very prescriptive and i want everybody to spend that's second s spend one hour a day physically distant from your phone one hour per day so i've given, we're using one hour because it's very, very specific. It's very, very achievable. But I understand back to the stat that 91% of us have not done that in a long time. In fact, when you spend any amount of time away from your phone, you join the 9% club, 9% who don't spend, you know,

don't have their phone with them. So if you've not done this, think of this as building a muscle. We said that earlier, start with five minutes today. Just start, start a little bit. It's okay.

Just, just begin understanding that you're running a marathon. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So start with five minutes today and then maybe do six minutes tomorrow. And then the next day, do seven minutes, do it every single day and progress up towards an hour. Now, if you're somebody who is doing, who has, does have an hour a day, by the way, I'm going to say something, and this is not self-righteousness because again, I'm the kid, I'm the guy who missed his sons for a soccer goal. Like there was nobody worse than me. I spend about three and a half hours away from my phone every day, which is unheard of for me. I was absolutely leading the charge in the 91% crowd before, but it's because I've built up slowly in that. So if you are already doing about an hour, why don't you hit an hour and a half today? What about an hour 45, two hours, keep building up that time physically distant from your phone. So the second one, I'll say it again,

second one is spend one hour physically distant from your phone. Third one, I want you to, I want you to establish sacred times and sacred places, phone-free zones in your home, sacred times, sacred places. And again, the concept of sacred that you're, you, we all have the power to establish something as sacred. This is sacred. And so I'll give you, I'll give you a start with this. And this is really, really powerful. And this just becomes the culture in your home. A sacred time could be the first 30 minutes after you wake up in the morning, no phone time, the last 30 minutes of the day, right before you go to sleep, by the way, your sleep will thank you. Your body will thank you. If you do that the last 30 minutes before you go to bed, those are easy, sacred times, sacred places. The, the, the one that I would recommend for everybody is make the table a sacred place. If all else fails, if everything goes wrong, the table is your sacred place. And that could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

The table. And people wonder, what do I talk about? Do high lows with your families. What was your high the other day? What was your low today? High low Buffalo. What's the crazy thing that happened? That's the Buffalo. So establish that sacred place. One that I love for young kids, if you have young kids, is their bedroom is a sacred place where you never bring your phone.

even just set up you have an ro box put in the ro box or just leave it leave it right there in the hallway right outside of their door and it never enters that'll transform that'll that'll bestow value on a child which is a pretty amazing thing yeah love that so that's the third thing establish sacred times and sacred places physically distant from your phone the fourth one is is my favorite the fourth one because there's some you know the the hour away from your phone that's kind of science that's tactical this is a little bit of art on this one and it's and it's a really cool opportunity for all of us is to search for moments of connection. Now this requires you to be on the lookout. So you have to, the term RO, RO means to notice. So this requires you to really be on the notice lookout. And these moments for connection are all around us. And it's just kind of us making the most of them. So I'll give a couple examples. If my 14 year old daughter, Gianna walked in from school and her shoulders were a little bit slumped physical. And I noticed that like,

huh, something's off, right? Or if my son Harrison says, dad, it was a rough day at tennis practice. Or if my wife says, you won't believe what happened in the grocery store. These are all moments. It's almost like the Gottman Institute calls these bids. These are bids that people around us are putting out. They're waiting for us to connect with them.

And we have an opportunity in those moments to make something pretty magical happen. And what I want you to do when my son, if he were to say, hey, dad, you won't believe what happened at tennis practice or it was a bad tennis practice. I can say what I believe are the six most powerful words in a relationship in 2024. And it's crazy and maybe a little bit sad that these are the six most powerful words. All I say to Harrison is, oh, buddy, I got to hear this.

Let me put down my phone. And I go physically remove my phone from the situation. So what that's doing, those six words, I'm not saying, oh, I'm going to be the most present dad ever. I'm making just a quick statement that he may not even hear. Let me put down my phone.

I go physically removed from the situation. I go put in my RO box. I go put it in a drawer, but I get it out of my visual field of sight and away from my body. And then I'm with him and then I make eye contact with him. So, so let me ask you, what, what do you think that would do for a 16 year old boy, a young man who wants to become a good man? What do you think that, what do you think that, again, I get, I get emotional talking about this because of the power that's in this. What would you, what do you think that would do for a 14-year-old girl when she's then confronted with body shaming or body comparison or when she's confronted with bullying when she knows, yeah, this doesn't feel good, but you know what?

I know I have the security of my dad's love because I know my dad looks at me, that my dad's locked in with me. What do you think that does for my wife and intimacy in a marriage that she knows that her words are valuable to me? What you're doing when you physically remove that phone, you're saying to them, to that person on the other side of the table, you're saying that 8 billion people can theoretically reach me on my phone and you are more important than every single one of them. Jackie, this opportunity is available to everyone today. We all have this.

You don't need an RO box for this. You don't need to have, you don't need anything magical. This is available to all of us. This is the greatest lever we have in a relationship. The lever is something that requires minimum input that gives you maximum output. And this is available to us, to every one of us today. This is a game changer. It will absolutely change your life. It It will absolutely change your relationships.

It will absolutely change your family's culture. And it's available and accessible to every single one of us today. Makes so much sense. And it is so inspiring and hope-filled rather than fear-based.

Yeah, absolutely. And so practical. Noticing is one of the steps in No Problem Parenting. It's part of the change the conversation.

Noticing creates curiosity in our kids. And when we're creating curiosity, they're in the front part, the prefrontal cortex part of their brain, not in fight or flight, right? noticing and curiosity, seeing our kids, making sure that they know they are seen and heard and validated and acknowledged. Not that we're lecturing them or we're teaching them everything, right? But we're just present for them and honoring and acknowledging what they are going through without feeling the need to fix it. I love how you say that 8 billion people in the world, and right now you are the one I'm focusing on. You are the one that's important to me. That is brilliant. How do people get an RO? It's A-R-O. I also love the fact that that means to notice.

Didn't know that. So that's brilliant. How do they get a hold of one of these ROs and tell us more about how they can get in contact with you? Yeah. Everybody can go to goaro.com. G-O-A-R-O.

We think of that as a verb. Go, go, ARO. Go live a life of ARO. So goaro.com. ARO is a membership.

So you get access to the app. And then along with that, you get the RO box that comes along with it. Depending on when this airs, we are going through a shift later in the year where you can subscribe to RO just the software portion of it. And then you can purchase a box alongside it.

So that will be later this year. But for now, depending on when this airs, it's something you can get kind of all in one. So that's one way. You can follow us on Instagram.

Yes, we are on Instagram. It's at GoRONow. That's a great community. It's great content that will kind of practically help you.

We have our podcast, which is called the RO podcast that you can tune into as well. But yeah, if you're, this is for, this is for somebody, Jack, that I'll say also is this is for somebody who says, Hey, I'm struggling with this. Hey, I'm, I feel the tension. Hey, this is, I need some help.

I may have tried this on my own. I've tried the basket. I've tried, you know, maybe some other apps. I've tried some other things.

This is, this is for the person who says I could use a little bit of help and I can make a promise. And I feel great making this promise that it will change your life. If you use RO as we, you know, as we kind of guide direct, it will change your life. It will change your family.

This is something that people tell us all the time. Hey, I tried a bunch of other stuff and this is the one that's made the difference. So we'd love to have you. This is not a sales pitch in any way, but I do feel very confident in saying that if you are curious, if you are, if you have struggled, this will make a difference.

So awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and introducing this to my audience and being a resource, another resource that's going to help parents become the confident leader. I say our kids crave us to be. So thanks so much for being on the show today.

Thanks, Jackie. I love the time. Thank you. All right, parents, that's it for today.

Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Remember, with the right tools and a confident mindset, every parenting challenge, every parenting problem can be turned into a no problem. If you're ready to lead your family with clarity and confidence, consider joining us in The Nest. Kicking off in January of 2025, our Power Hour calls, our resource library, and supportive network are designed to help you handle any parenting challenge.

Early bird pricing is available now, so learn more at NoProblemParents.com. And let's keep building that confident, no-problem parenting mindset one step at a time. Thank you.