Kids First Co-Parenting with Dr. Royster

The Five Decision Framework: A strategy to make tech decisions in Co-Parenting

• Dr. Karalynn Royster • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Court-ordered FaceTime, late-night pings, and surprise speakerphone moments can turn tech into a battleground—unless you have a plan built for high-conflict co-parenting. We break down a practical five-decision framework that transforms chaos into clarity: precise call windows, allowed platforms, device-free anchors, clear privacy norms, and a calm problems protocol for when things go sideways. You’ll hear why judges dislike being dragged into phone debates, what the research says about delaying smartphones and social media, and how small wording changes in your parenting plan stop late calls from steamrolling bedtime.

We keep it real with scripts for missed-call boundaries, tips for choosing simple, low-drama platforms, and ways to protect your child’s nervous system with shared anchors like phone-free meals and device-free bedrooms. You’ll learn how to teach kids to assert privacy—no more hidden recordings or third-party coaching—and how to create a digital incident log that tracks issues neutrally, strengthens your case if needed, and keeps communication with your co-parent steady and brief. The goal is simple: a calmer home, a steadier routine, and a child who feels safe and seen across both houses.

If you’re ready for tools that work when personalities clash, this conversation gives you the structure to reduce conflict and keep your kid at the center. Check out our Co-Parenting Tech Agreement kit for scripts, worksheets, and a fillable incident log, and don’t miss our High Conflict Communication Bootcamp for Moms for fast, usable strategies. If this helped, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a mom who needs steadier evenings and better sleep. Your support helps more families find calm.

Snag your seat in the Co-Parent Tech Agreement Workshop, use podcast bonus code POD10 for $$ off.

Check out Jonathan Haidt's book, the Anxious Generation

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast, the podcast for smart, intentional, millennial moms raising resilient kids after separation and divorce. I'm Dr. Carolyn Royster, a child psychologist, coach, and a mom. After thousands of therapy hours with kids caught in the middle of high-conflict households, I'm here to help moms like you do it differently. From peaceful co-parenting to total chaos, I've got you. Here we talk boundaries, regulation, and how to raise a great kid, even if your ex is beyond difficult. We blend science with real life, and as always, keep focused where it matters on raising great kids. This is Kids First Co-Parenting. Are you tired of every FaceTime call, of course, required by the court, turning into a big problem? Your child's crying, screaming, refusing to do it, not wanting to do it, your co-parents recording, the times are an issue. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the five decisions that I want every co-parenting mom to think through when they're talking and thinking about technology. Whether that be a phone, social media, FaceTime calls, any of those decisions, we're going to talk about all of it. I'm very, very excited to bring this episode to you because this is a very common question that I get asked and that we have to kind of sift through with each individual parenting plan because they're always a little bit different about how and when and in what ways tech is used in your parenting plan. If this episode really resonates with you, we are launching a new co-parenting bundle for tech. It's called the Co-Parenting Tech Agreement, and it really is a full kit. It has, of course, a class taught by me. It also has this five-decision framework as a handout and guide for you to follow. You also get additional things, scripts, you get a digital incident log that I created. It has an example for you to use in it, but then you download it and it's your own spreadsheet that you can use to keep track of things. So incidences can be things like lost passwords. They can be things like bullying on the FaceTime call. They can be things like your ex's grandma is sharing a picture on Facebook, and Lord knows what her privacy settings are with your kids' school logo in it. It's kind of anything that falls into that area that you may or may not need to be documenting gets put on that spreadsheet. Again, I have found over the years that this, that having a framework for how and what you're documenting is incredibly helpful, which is why I created this document for the moms inside the Kids First Community, whether that's those that are working with me more individually or in small groups, or folks that go through the co-parenting tech bundle course, which isn't really good use of your time. It also has some scripts in it. And then I have a fillable worksheet that you and your co-parent, if you're more collaborative, can use. If you're less collaborative, you can fill it out on your own and use it as some guidelines to put things into your parenting plan and have discussions with your co-parent. Man, there is a lot here, and there's a lot here for us to talk about. Let's dive in, my dear friends. Are you stuck in a high conflict co-parenting situation? The Best Interest app uses proven techniques endorsed by Dr. Romani herself to reduce conflict and protect your peace. Join thousands of co-parents finding relief. Get 22% off a yearly subscription with code LITLEHOUSE22. Download Best Interest from the App Store or the Play Store today. It is fall in Colorado. It's beautiful fall weather. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that I'm wearing my therapist superhero cloak, which is a cardigan. And I have a nice little cup of warm coffee. It's like moody and cloudy outside. It's raining, which isn't very common for Colorado. And the colors are changing. Like it's just peak fall vibes right now. I've been watching the Great British Bake Off. Last night it was like rainy, and I had my cup of tea, and I was just like full vibes for the fall. And I'm into it. I love the fall. I like the lattes and I like the vibes and the hats and the sweaters and all the things. I'm here for it. I did a masterclass on this, and then I developed a whole product within our program that is just specific to technology. And that is because in today's world, this is not something we can escape. This is a really, really difficult question for a lot of parenting plans. And many of you will have started out with parenting plans that were designed for younger kids or were designed by folks that aren't seeing what our kids are dealing with in terms of technology in today's world. I can tell you, I have heard judges say how annoyed they are when co-parenting parents have to bring something like, can our kid get a cell phone to them? They don't want to be dealing with that. They have so many bigger issues to manage. And I get it. I get it. And I also get that people feel very, very torn on these issues. When and how and in what ways, and who controls it, and who's monitoring it. These are big concerns for co-parenting moms. Then you add in the potential for manipulation and the potential for people to abuse and use their children's technology for their own advantage. And we've got a big, big landmine of issues. Most of the people, most of my listeners are not folks dealing with collaborative dynamics where they can sit down over a cup of coffee at a coffee shop and have a fairly civil conversation about when and in what ways their children can have phones. These are this is not that. If you could do that, you wouldn't need me. I say that all the time. And I also say if Google could do what I do, I wouldn't have a job, right? The whole point is to have someone tailoring things specifically to you and to be thinking about your unique situation. This is part of why this podcast exists, because we need to be able to speak to the nuances and the difficulties of those high conflict dynamics. And that's what we're going to do. So if you are re-evaluating your parenting plan, if you are creating a parenting plan, if you have one that's solid as a rock, which most of you don't, but if you do, you will still encounter some of these tech issues. No parenting plan, in my experience, has fully addressed all of these because tech is changing all the time. The ability to be able to stay ahead of it and to have a plan that was written two years ago, three years ago, five years ago that adequately addresses what your children are going to be bringing to you just as children in today's world is unlikely. I guess what I'm saying is that everyone can get something out of this episode. The five decision framework that I teach is really a nice, you know, some of the steps you may think, well, we've kind of got that covered. We know what we're doing here with that. And some of the steps you might be like, oh, that's kind of new for me. So depending where you're at, take what serves you and leave the rest is what I typically say. What are the five decision frameworks? My five tech decision frameworks. This is going to be things like windows of time, call windows. That's number one. What platforms, what technology is actually allowed. That's number two. Device-free times that everybody agrees on. Four is privacy norms. Five is problems protocol, which is a very fancy way of saying what do we do when things don't go to plan. Let's start with the first decision. First decision is call windows. Now, what do I mean when I say what are the windows? The windows of time are preset times as well as durations about when the connection time can and or should happen. We like structure here at Kids First. Kids like structure in in life. Moms like structure because we need to know what's happening when and how to plan for it. Parenting plans that have language around child will face time with parent on Monday nights are not super helpful. That's not very structured. What we would prefer is something like we do calls between 6 and 7 p.m. at night to allow for bedtime and play practice and all of the things. The calls last a maximum of 30 minutes. If we miss a call, we call back within 10 minutes. During that window, now, some of you, I already know what you're gonna say. You have the type of co-parent that will call you then at 6.55 and expect to talk for 30 minutes. So then you're at 7.35. This is the type of thing that I want you to be really clear about. In your your language and in your five tech agreements, you're stating the call will start between 6 and 7. It will end no later than you could say 7:15. If that feels important to you, some people can can stop with the boundary of between six and seven. And that's good. They just know to expect a call during then and to be prioritizing it. This helps because then if you're picking up from practice, you're gonna get dinner, you maybe have something going on in the evening, you can all plan around it. And then there's also a predictability to it for your children. So this is a really important distinction to make when the calls happen, how long the calls happen. I do have some scripts inside of the tech plan about what to do when the call comes in at 7.05 or when the call comes in at 545, and you were not expecting it, and it's a person that you need to hold boundaries with. Sometimes, and again, for some of you more collaborative folks, you're gonna respond to that with like, okay, not a big deal tonight. For a lot of you, that is a big deal because that's pushing boundaries, that's not following your parenting plan, that's this lot of like kind of subtle post-separation abuse that's starting to happen or has been happening. And so that boundary will be important. Decision two, what platforms and ways are we going to communicate or let the kids communicate? When they're little, often the most common thing I hear is FaceTime. FaceTime andor Google Meet. You could do that. I have some families that use Zoom and they use Zoom because it's recordable. We'll get to that because I don't love that. But I have people that use all different things. If you're using something like Zoom, then you have to decide who's paying for it, who is sending the invitation, whose responsibility is that. The same is true for FaceTime. Who's calling who? Do you both have iPhones? If you don't both have iPhones, are you using Google Meets? It's helpful to just have that set in stone ahead of time. As kids get older, there's going to need to be decisions around what technology they have access to and what they don't. Perhaps you've agreed we have a phone. They have a phone, they take it back and forth. Our kids, you know, 14, 15 years old. Notice I said much older than you might have initially thought. And that's because the research is extremely clear. The longer we delay cell phone use and smartphone use, the better. And the longer we delay social media apps, the better. I will also link this really great book by Jonathan Hayt called The Anxious Generation. You've probably heard me talk about it before. I would say the first half of the book is just really scary about technology and how it's impacting kids and deteriorating mental health and risky play and like all these things that kids really need. And then we get some really nice, actionable things to do. But one of the big takeaways is delay it as long as possible. And even in high conflict dynamics, we really need to be thinking as much as we can about how to delay, delay, delay, delay. And there's some safety things in there, which we'll talk about at another time. But um yeah, delaying is a good idea and definitely delaying social media use. So if you decide to do some sort of tech, a smartwatch, a phone, an iPad that they can text on, keeping as many social media things off of there as possible. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, all of that stuff, TikTok, Lord. I mean, nothing against those apps. And my goodness, I'm on all of them, as you all know. But they're not good for developing brains. And there's a lot of research to support that. And there's also a lot of evidence to support how easily children can just go down a rabbit hole of finding things that we may not be ready for them to find, or they might not be ready to find. Anyways, I digress a little bit. You may have decided we have a smartwatch that goes back and forth. We're pretty good about it. They can use it to communicate. We sort of agree on this, and that's fine. What we need to decide on is when they can have Facebook, when can they have Kids Messenger? When can they access YouTube? Is it YouTube Kids? Is it just YouTube? These are things that you guys want to work through. That's what decision two is about, is kind of thinking through these very explicitly about what makes sense and what doesn't. If you've ever opened a message on your co-parenting app from your ex and felt your stomach drop, you are far from alone, my friend. High conflict co-parenting plays by a completely different set of rules. And if you keep trying to just be reasonable, you're going to keep feeling blindsided. This is exactly why I created the High Conflict Communication Bootcamp for Mobs. It's a short, self-paced, three-day training that will teach you exactly what to say, how to respond to toxic or manipulative messages, and how to keep your child out of the middle. You'll get scripts, strategies, and a printable workbook you can use right away. And it's only$19. You can grab your spot by following the link in the show notes, or go directly to learnwithlittlehouse.com slash bootcamp and start today. That's learnwithlittlehouse.com slash bootcamp and start today. Protect your piece, protect your child, and stop letting someone else control the energy. Decision three, device free anchors. Device free anchors simply means when and where are we protecting our children from having devices? The most common things would be school, bedtime, and or meal times. Dedicated family time. At the dinner table, we have a screen-free rule. You know, we want to keep phones and technology out of children's bedrooms. There is a really startling research around how just having technology in the room is enough to disrupt a child's sleep, even if they're not looking at it. They're charging it across the room, it will still disrupt their sleep patterns. And we all know that most kids aren't charging them across the room, right? They're next, they're next to their bed. We wanna have a rule that they return to the charging station, which is not in their bedroom. A lot of people do around dinner time. Now you have to be careful because if you've had your call window set for six to seven, you can't have dinner from six to seven if you can't have access to your phone. You have to kind of think about how this is gonna work with your family. You see how these things build on themselves. No child should be expected to text back during school. There really isn't a reason for that. They need to be focusing. And definitely in the middle of the night, like we want them sleeping, not on their phones. Having some screen-free times that you both can agree with across homes might be really helpful. Or just in your home. You may not be able, you are not going to be able to say to your co-parent, like, we're not going to have phones at dinner time. For many of you, that will just create a conflict that creates dynamic where you're kind of trying to control or influence what's happening at their house. And you've probably decided that that's not something you're going to be doing. I respect if you can't do that. And then you just are in charge of what happens at your house and you're saying, you know, we're not doing this here. Decision four, privacy norms. What are we going to do about privacy? What are the rules? Is there how do we feel about speakerphone? I hate being put on speakerphone when I don't know that I'm on speakerphone. And a little heads up is nice. Hey, you're on speakerphone with me and dad. Or you're in, you're on Bluetooth in the car. Everybody can hear you. As well as recording. And then a lot of times we add in no third-party coaching. We don't have somebody standing in the sidelines, literally, or through AI, that's saying, say this to the kid. Don't say this. Tell him about that. We're trying not to do that kind of stuff. It can't, I mean, I think there's kind of harmless things around that. Like if you're driving or something and the phone rings, you might be like, hey, you should tell your dad about that great award you got at school today. That could be great, but that could also be seen as directing their time together. And so you may choose not to do that, depending on how conflictual things are. We also talk with kids about how they can respond when they feel like their privacy is being pushed. They could say something like, I don't want my tick picture taken, or I don't like when you record me, or I don't really want to answer that. These are all hard things for kids to learn how to do, not just with a parent, but also in life. We're working on that skill with them. All right, decision number five, our last one. It's the problem protocol. I need you to think ahead a little bit about what is our plan for when rules get broken, because of course your children are going to break the rules. Andor tech goes wrong. We find out someone was bullying someone, somebody's password got lost, somebody got hacked, somebody got into a place in Minecraft that we didn't even know they could go, and now we've got a big old problem on our hands. Yes, we create the plans so that the problems hopefully were ahead of them. However, we don't always know the problem until we have it. I want you to not only have a way and a system of how you document things, thus the digital incident log, but I also want you to have a framework for which how you communicate those problems to your co-parent. It is important in a in the spirit of co-parenting that, you know, you can share some of these things with them as potential dangers. Let's say your kid does have YouTube and let's say they wind up a video about I don't know, how to bully other kids. Or, you know, a few years ago when kids were seeing this like horrible video pop up on children's content and it referenced suicide. And let's say that happened on your parenting time. You had all these things in place, you had no idea this was gonna happen. None of us had any idea that was gonna happen. When it did, what is your system? What is your protocol to then let your co-parent know, hey, she was on YouTube kids, this crazy video popped up. Here's how I handled it, and I also want you to be aware of it so so you can take precautions at your house. You want to have a system for that. That's what the problem protocol is. That is also what the digital incident log tracking is gonna be good for because it will tell you what did you do, then what did you tell your co-parent, and was there any follow-up needed? Well, you know, in this situation, let's say it was on a school computer. Well, then you need to follow up with the school. There's a lot of layers to these problems that can come up, and they're very tricky and complicated. I want you to have a protocol of what you do. Typically, that's going to look like something along the lines of document the event in the digital incident log, send a neutral notice through your co-parenting app, usually within a day, 24 hours, you could say, This is what happened, this is what, this is how I handled it, offering a repair option to the child and or to your co-parent if you need it. So, hey, I don't really know what to do about this. Or this is what I did. I, you know, I put X XYZ parental control on. Or I we had a long conversation about what she saw and what it meant. And I encouraged her to also ask you questions. You can escalate if needed. So this would be more along the lines of something, something like repeated calls outside of your agreed-upon call window. So we're getting a lot of calls at 7:30. We're getting a lot of calls at 8 o'clock. We're getting really, really upset when you can't answer the phone because it's outside of the window. And so we have some scripts and things like that. You do the same thing. You document it, you'd send a neutral note, notice that you called a little late tonight. Uh, we'll return your call tomorrow between our agreed upon six and seven o'clock. And what to escalate and when if the pattern continues. This might seem like a lot, and it and it can be. And it also isn't a lot because as parents in today's world, we are navigating technology all the time, anyways. And we need some guidelines. I think this framework is a very helpful thing for you to think through kind of the five big areas around any tech decision. It helps if you can apply this to each scenario and use it to make your decisions and to make rules and expectations. Tech is not really something we can fly by the seat of our pants on, unfortunately. Like many things in parenting, we were like, well, we'll figure it out as we go. Tech might be for other families, but in high conflict co-parenting, it really isn't. You need to have preemptive discussions, preemptive thinking about these things because it will happen. You want to post these five frameworks on your fridge. You want to work through the worksheets, you want to have your scripts ready to go, and you want to have systems in place to track what you need to track, as well as be monitoring your kids and what is happening. Potential landmines that I want you to watch out for are bending the rules just this once, letting missed calls kind of hijack what you're already doing, handing a phone to a really dysregulated kid, knowing that things are going to be really rough, and still making them sit on the call, which is a whole other episode, and we'll talk about how to handle that. But I think this is a place to get you started on managing technology and making some of these decisions. If you need more support, we have it. The co-parenting tech agreement kit is just a really good tool for you to have. It is on our website for$97. Podcast listeners can use code pod 10 and get$10 off when they're ready to do it, which if you're listening to this episode, you probably are. As always, I'm grateful for your time. If you have any specific questions that you'd like me to answer, do them my way. Thanks again, y'all. See you soon. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Kids First Co-Parenting. The best way you can support the show is by following, rating, and reviewing wherever you listen to podcasts, and by sharing it with another mom who could use the support. You can also connect with me on Instagram and Facebook at Learn with Little House, where I share daily tips and encouragement for moms raising kids through high conflict divorce. And if you're ready to go deep and get more tools, scripts, personalized support, and coaching, come join us inside the Kids First co-parenting community. You'll find the details at learnwithlittlehouse.com. Until next time, remember, your kids don't need you to be perfect. They just need you to be steady and grounded. And as always, put them first. Thanks for being here.