Free Screens and Teens by Kathy Koch

form. This is one reason my brother and I are so close. He and I always played together, and we still do! My brother and his three children, now young adults, are close and enjoy each other so much because they have always played together and still do.
    In their book
The Big Disconnect
, Catherine Steiner-Adair and Teresa Barker talk about the power of play:
    It is this “just being together”—really together—with parents and family that gives children confidence, pride, and security. They feel they belong, they feel the connection, and they are more likely to talk about things that matter to them in that setting than at any other time.… In addition to family play, a child’s solo and peer play nurtures curiosity, grit, and zest and a host of social and emotional learning closely linked to well-being and success in school and life. Play is where children discover their own talents and inspiration. It is where they practice concentration and how to work through frustration. Play is the best fertilizer for growing kids. 14
    Sometimes a parent’s style of play can take the teens by surprise. They’re just not expecting Dad to sneak up, ninja-style, witha can of Silly String or Mom suddenly to whip out a deck of cards and shuffle and deal like a cardsharp! Drag out the board games on a rainy night. For sure, make the most of power outages (hide the batteries if you have to!) for playing games or telling stories.
    One friend of mine found that when she and her husband invented seasonal games, her children immediately made those into family traditions—and looked for them to happen again the next year. They hide their kids’ Easter baskets along with the eggs and make them hunt for them (they do it on the Saturday of Holy Week to keep it off the celebration of Resurrection Sunday). They have a treasure hunt late on Christmas Day, hours after the regular presents have been opened and enjoyed. The clues are goofy and take the kids all over the house. The treasure box usually holds books or art supplies, wrapped for Christmas. When the kids were little and they made caramel apples for the first time, she and her husband kidnapped the plate of apples while they were cooling and left a trail of clues for the kids. Now they expect caramel apples to disappear
every
time the family has them. Her kids are high school and college students now, and guess what? They haven’t yet outgrown their joy in the family “games.”
    There’s a timeworn saying that the “family who prays together stays together.” I’d add, “the family that plays together stays together” too. When your teens see that you enjoy being withthem, those deep core needs for security and belonging and identity are being fed.
    Cultivate Gratefulness
    Grateful children act less entitled and are more content. They’re less selfish, self-centered, argumentative, and demanding. We’ll dig into these character issues in the next chapters as we discover how technology and gratitude are related. For now, let’s simply understand the importance of growing grateful kids.
    Thankfulness
is actually an old Anglo-Saxon word that means “thinkfulness.” 15 Thinking leads to thanking. I’m not talking about teens who say “thank you” because their dads glare at them. I’m talking about
grateful
being who we are, not just what we do and say. Gratitude can be a built-in part of our identities. This is what allows us to be thankful “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
    The first and best way your kids will grow in thankfulness is for you to practice being thankful—and verbalizing your feelings of gratitude, toward God and toward others. If this kind of speaking up about your feelings of thankfulness feels awkward, start small, maybe by expanding your thanks as you pray over meals or by speaking up about one thing you feel thankful for, perhaps when