Dr. Anna Lembke

Catherine, you as the parent could always step in and say, we're gonna take the phone away.

Like what we talked about with you, you could do that.

And again, depending upon the severity of his behaviors and I might even recommend that you do that.

So I'm not saying you never do that, but I don't like to just talk about taking the devices away because some parents are just simply not in a circumstance where they're going to be able to do that.

So that's where I think at least opening up the dialogue, you know, again, identifying what you see that's distressing, eliciting from him what he thinks is problematic.

And he didn't honor the contract.

Right.

And this is key to thinking about a family as something that requires the mutual investment of all members of the family who must abide by the family expectations and rules.

So, you know, even if you're not going to take the phone away, you could say, but we still expect you to do X, Y and Z, to show up, to talk with us, you know, with respect.

And then you could even use what we call contingency management.

Contingency management is well known in the addiction field to be a potential way to treat.

It's essentially using punishments and rewards to shape behaviors.

So the way that we'll often use contingency management in this situation is say,

If you can meet certain expectations, we expect you to go to school, we expect you to do these chores, we expect you to speak to us with respect, to not have the device in the bedroom, to not use the device.

And we'll give you a month to do that.

And if you're not able to do that, then we are really dealing with a more serious situation.

And then we're going to take you to see a mental health care professional.

We're going to consider, you know, actually taking the device away.

Beautiful.

Thank you.