New Life LIVE

Voiceover: Welcome to the New Life Live podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's Word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.

Brian Perez: Aren't you grateful for Christian radio and aren't you glad there's Christian counseling radio? You can call us with questions about anything: anger, grief, gaslighting, relationships, relapses, lapses in judgment. We are here for that and more.

This is New Life Live. I'm your host, Brian Perez, and I'll be in the studio for two hours today, joined by licensed marriage and family therapist, author Mark Cameron, and another author, Jim Burns, parenting expert and founder of Homeword. Jim's got a new book out. It's available in the newlife.com store. It's called When Your Adult Child Strays. Jim, the subtitle of the book is Trading Heartache for Hope. We get calls all the time at 1-800-229-3000 from parents whose adult children have made choices that blindsided them. How is there hope? Where is the hope?

Jim Burns: The hope is in the long run. It's not in the short run. So what happens is we panic. Our kids make a poor choice, maybe they violate our values, they stray from faith, they call us and say they're moving in with their boyfriend or their girlfriend, or we find out they're doing tough stuff. They have addictions, they're smoking pot, they're doing whatever they do.

A lot of times what we do is we panic, we get angry, we tell them how wrong they are and how right we are. To be honest, we're probably right, but that's not the way to do it. What we've got to do is see it in the long run. I have no problem with us saying, "Here are my concerns," but then we can't be a one-topic parent.

So when our adult kids stray, we've got to make sure that we're handing them the passport to adulthood. As much as we would like to see the changes, the way to change is to stay in the relationship, stay in the story. When that happens, good things happen. A lot of times we're so afraid that this is going to be for life. Well, especially if they're a little bit younger in the adult emerging adult world, they sometimes grow up.

I see this in a positive way and there's great hope in that. I see this when they get married, when they make babies, that they come back. Or sometimes you just have to embrace the shift and realize that you can still have a very healthy relationship with your adult children even though they don't vote like you do or they don't believe everything that you do. So there's good hope and we've got to stay at it. We get the hope by being around people. We get the hope by leaning into God. We don't get the hope by going into the pit and staying there.

Brian Perez: The book is called When Your Adult Child Strays. It's available at the newlife.com store. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. What's been the reaction so far?

Jim Burns: Great. I'm shocked. What happened is people are telling me exactly what I had hoped would happen. They're saying, "We are getting hope. It didn't change my child, it's changed me." That was the first thing I got from somebody who read it. I don't know how they read it so fast because it was the day it came out on May 5th and this was May 6th.

But when they said it didn't change my kid but it's going to change me, I went, "Bingo." Mark told me this, in the parent-adult category, it was the number one release and I'm really excited about that.

Brian Perez: And that's the point of the book. It's not that you're trying to change your child, it's what happens if your child doesn't want to change.

Mark Cameron: That's actually the point of New Life Live. People call and want to change their kid or change their spouse. What we need to do first and foremost is change the way we look at things. Our circumstances may not always change, but our attitude can, and that makes all the difference in the world. You can't do it alone. You do it with people like us at New Life, you do it with counselors, you do it with people who are around you, your circle of support.

Brian Perez: Dr. Jim Burns' book is available in the newlife.com store, so get your copy. You can also call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. But if you want to talk to Jim about parenting or if you want to talk to Mark about marriage or family therapy, we've got everything here that you need. We're going to be in the studio for the next two hours, so give us a call at 1-800-229-3000. If you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, you can call in too. Can't wait to hear from you.

Getting used to the new setup. Mark and Jim, do you guys like tongue twisters?

Jim Burns: I love tongue twisters. I like the new setup too, although I'm still getting used to it.

Brian Perez: Okay, well, the tongue twister has to do with—hang on here. This is great. This is live radio. How do you like New Life Live's new look? Five times fast. Go.

Jim Burns: How do you like New Life Live's new look? I already messed up. How do you like New Life Live's new look? It's great, it's great, it's great, it's great. I cheated. Is there a prize?

Brian Perez: A copy of your book. Perfect. So yes, if you're watching us on Facebook or YouTube, you get to see it. It's right behind us here and in front of us and all over us. So tell us what you think. Make sure you like and subscribe to New Life if you're not already part of the social media crew on Facebook, etc. But yes, this is our new look and we like it. I can't wear shorts anymore, though, because I think it shows the pants.

Jim Burns: I've come in here before with my real nice shorts, but I've got to clean up my act here.

Brian Perez: Mark, your book just came out not too long ago too. Yours is called Understanding Your Attachment Style. What's the feedback been on your book?

Mark Cameron: Really good. As Jim pointed out, I was able to look and see his book hitting some number ones in categories and my book did the same. I was astounded by that. I've had just really good feedback, some good reviews from people letting me know.

Again, it's what Jim's saying and that's the purpose of my book. Viktor Frankl said when you can't change a situation, you're challenged to change yourself. So it's really all about our own personal growth and that's what my book is about: understanding your attachment style and the ways to grow into secure attachment and what the individual needs to do for that. As you become more secure, you learn more secure responses and you learn how to set and hold healthy boundaries.

Jim Burns: I love his book, by the way. The reason it's getting great response is because it's a really good book. I've told people recently that I passed it out and said, "This is the book that I think I've gotten the most out of in the last several months."

Brian Perez: Two great books for you guys to look at in the newlife.com store. I don't want to say the word checkout because it makes it sound like it's a library and you can just return it in two or three weeks in good condition, but that's not how it works. So purchase the books, several resources there at newlife.com.

A new episode of the Every Man's Battle podcast dropped today and it's one you'll want to share and hear too. JJ and Doug wrap up their series on using technology safely while in recovery, discussing the heart beneath your screen habits. They explain why the real battle is about desire, story, and community, not just discipline, and how authentic brotherhood helps heal the wounds that drive you to your phone or laptop in the first place.

You can find today's episode at newlife.com, on our YouTube channel, and app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and catch up on everything you might have missed. Our next Every Man's Battle intensive begins in less than three weeks. You can get all the details at newlife.com/EMB. If you sign up by this Friday, you'll get a discount.

The wounds that drive you to your phone or laptop in the first place. Can we talk about that for a little bit? Because we think sometimes we just pick up our phone just to scroll through social media, but there's something a little deeper in there. Would you say?

Jim Burns: Absolutely. I think when people scroll, there's actually a dopamine drop, and what that is is a pleasure hormone that kind of comes from your brain and drops in to your head. So when they scroll, they're doing that partly out of loneliness, sometimes they're scrolling because they're desperate to find answers.

But the fact is there's probably better ways to do it and that's why we have New Life, that's why people can call us, that's why we have friends, and that's why we need to go get coffee with our friends and not be in our home alone all the time. That's why we need the trust of people in the church that we can talk to. Again, the internet is great, but I don't trust the internet with every piece of advice. I use the internet every day, obviously, but I don't trust every piece of advice, I don't trust every quote-unquote expert. So I think you've got to be really careful with what you do with that.

Mark Cameron: I think people scroll when they feel anxious. I know I do that sometimes when I want to be distracted. If you walk into a room, it's a waiting room or something like that, and you're sitting down, sometimes I'll get out my phone and I'll start to scroll because I'm not sure what to do in this moment. Even though it's called social media, it actually isolates us because if I didn't have my phone, I would most likely be talking to the person next to me and we'd be engaging. So I think people use it very much as a distraction when they feel anxious.

Jim Burns: I was doing a seminar Saturday in New York and I walked into the room and there's all these people and it was really quiet. Usually, seminars people are talking and there's a lot of energy. I realized everybody was on their phone. It was a Saturday morning, they were on their phones. I was talking on creating a media-safe home for your kids, but here were the parents scrolling and looking and checking out things. How interesting. But there wasn't energy. Now, at the breaks, there was energy because they were off their phones.

Mark Cameron: It also blocks connection in the sense of if I see you looking like you're really engaged in your phone, I'm hesitant to talk because I don't want to distract you.

Brian Perez: Very true. The society we live in nowadays, you can see two people sitting at a table at a coffee shop or a dinner and they're just looking at their phone the whole time. How do you guys interact at all?

Jim Burns: You see that with couples on date night and they're both on their phone. One time I took a picture of that and my wife was so frustrated with me because she goes, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm taking a picture of both of them on the phone. I think that's a great thing maybe I can show one time at one of my marriage conferences." She goes, "Don't go there. You didn't get permission." People do it, and you set your phone down. You weren't scrolling, you were taking a photo, so then I got in trouble.

Brian Perez: Give us a call at 1-800-229-3000. Mark and Jim are going to be here for the rest of this hour and all of next. Let's take a call right now. Here is Maria in Birmingham, Alabama. Hi there, Maria. Welcome to New Life Live.

Maria: Hello there. Thank you very much. I guess I'm just supposed to tell you my question. My granddaughter, who recently turned 13, we found out at school she got a citation for vaping marijuana. Then the night before court, she cut her wrist and went to the ER. Then she was discharged to come home. When she was supposed to go back to school, she was not supposed to have any social media or her phone. She became violent and has threatened to cut her mom's throat if she can't have her phone.

Ultimately, when you look in her phone, there has been evidence of where I guess you would call it where she's been solicited sexually by grown-ups or whatever. Then anyway, she became violent when she was supposed to go back to school last Monday and that's when she became violent with her mom. Her mom took her to the mental health facility and that's where they were doing an evaluation. They're discharging her this Wednesday and I don't think there's been any or really any progress made. So we need a resource for her to go to, to get hopefully Christian help in an inpatient setting before she comes back home, so whatever resources you guys might know of.

Jim Burns: Your family's doing the right thing. She got an assessment. Is she in the hospital? Is that where she is?

Maria: When she went to the ER on the fifth, she came home that night and everything was, I'm her grandma, so I went there and stayed. Then when she went to go back to school Monday and she couldn't have her cell phone or the vape, she became violent and that's when my daughter basically tricked her and took her to the mental health hospital where they admitted her for evaluation and she's still there now.

Jim Burns: Actually, that's what you do in this situation. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying there's an easy fix, but you want to have the evaluation. Typically she's going to walk out of that evaluation with somewhat of a plan. Depending on the facility and what they do, they're not going to just let her go. They're going to probably have a plan, they'll probably meet with your daughter and you may be able to be invited to that too because she's such a minor, and depends on what your daughter wants.

Part of that plan, yeah, would be to go and she's going to need some help walking through that process. And yeah, there's two avenues. One is she gets some counseling, that's a given. Two, if that counselor believes it or if the discharge people think that she should go to inpatient, there's some really excellent Christian facilities for kids. None of them are easy and none of them are good because all the other kids are struggling with some of that same stuff, so don't think that it's going to be this quick fix. But I've seen those kinds of facilities be very, very good. And they're doing what she's doing. They're vaping, they're cutting. When a middle schooler her age screams and shouts and says, "I'm going to do this to her mom," you've got to make sure you're evaluating and assessing that. Was that true or is it that that's just how she copes with her pain and stress? A lot of times when you talk about even cutting, that's how she's dealing with her pain, whatever that pain is. So you've got to get to the root of it. There's a reason for it and that's why it would either be inpatient or a counselor. But I'd find out what the plan is. So they're going to give you guys a plan as they walk out in terms of what you can do and different options.

Maria: If I might interject something else, that's part of why I guess I'm calling you guys. They honestly haven't been very helpful. They were supposed to do a drug test, give some feedback on that, haven't got that. Honestly, all they've done is they haven't given a diagnosis. They just basically called my daughter and I was on the backline. They're just telling her she's being discharged Wednesday and my daughter's like, "I don't really feel comfortable with her coming home right now." Well, they went back and just told Jada that. Jada called her mom and blessed her out. Then Nikki asked, my daughter asked what are her options and they said she is—if she doesn't come home, then they would send her to the social work, DHR. Like she would, I guess, go to the state custody, basically is what they said, which didn't sound like a good option to me.

Jim Burns: No, there are better options. I'm surprised that they wouldn't be—again, they might be in the middle of this looking at evaluating. They're going to do something on Wednesday unless this is the world's worst, no offense, but the world's worst mental health facility for a young person.

Mark Cameron: She's in the hospital, is that right, Maria?

Maria: Yes, she's in the mental health facility being evaluated.

Mark Cameron: Those facilities are really short-term. They're really just meant to stabilize. They're not meant for long-term care and then they're meant to pass on. So usually you should have a social worker or someone there to help you coordinate that care. But I've got a couple of questions for you because this is a kid in distress. She's giving a fight or flight reaction. She's getting violent or she's wanting to cut herself to get away. Who is she closest to in the family and what are the stressors in this kid's life?

Maria: I would say she's closest to her mother. And stressors, she's got a great personality, but she's very pretty but she's very developed. She looks like an 18-year-old, but she's 13. In terms of stressors, the thing that she will get the most angry about is the phone. Even when she was little, she would take her great-grandmother's phone. We saw where she was going to those Instagram where it disappears and took the phone away, but she would honestly get my mom, which is her great-grandmother, to give it back to her and then we'd take it away again. That's when she would cut herself and she tells her mom sometimes she doesn't deserve, like she feels bad about herself, I guess is how you would say.

Mark Cameron: Where's Dad in the picture?

Maria: Dad, as far as I know, I met him, of course, I knew him when she was 13, when she was a baby, when they were pregnant. They never got married. He's in jail now. I'm not sure what for. I think it was some kind of theft or receiving stolen property, but he's not around. He wasn't like a bad person, but he obviously wasn't real smart.

Mark Cameron: I think there's more stressors going on in this kid's life than you realize. This is a kid who doesn't know how to keep herself safe. So she's probably feeling unsafe. She's reaching out to men who are much older than her. She feels out of control. She feels disconnected. Social media is supposed to be connecting you, but it actually disconnects us. We were talking about that earlier. It disconnects us from the people right in front of us. This kid's in an anxious state of panic.

So yes, you're right in the sense when she's making these extreme comments and these extreme gestures, you're going to want to seek help for stabilization. But we need to remember that when we put kids in a hospital, even though the mental health providers are safe, they're strangers. And it's very difficult to bond and connect and feel safe with a stranger. When a parent typically calls me and says, "Hey, I need help with my son or my daughter, can you help them?" I often will say to them, "Why don't you come in? Because if your kid came in, my goal would be to get them to bond with you. So why don't you come in, you tell me what's going on, and we'll work on some strategies to see how I can get your son or your daughter to bond with you."

I think that Mom and maybe you too involved in family therapy need to be getting some help too, need to be getting some skills so that you can learn to have a conversation with this kid and say, "Hey, you're in a high state of distress. I'm so sorry that this is going to go on. What can we do to help here? What are you stressed out about?" Because she's learning to go to social media to find this comfort which she's ultimately not going to get and she really needs to learn to find that with you, with whoever are the closest people in her life to her. I understand that there is this panic. Sometimes we get so caught up in the clinical plan: what is next, what is the diagnosis, and what is going to be the treatment? Sometimes we forget that it's learning how do we connect with one another. Teens are going to have stressors in their lives. When they're 13 years old, kids are going through something called neuropruning, where their brain's getting rid of information that it thinks it doesn't need to make space for new information. There is a real pull away from a parent. There's this push-pull that happens. They need their parents, but they need to push away too to learn where they're at in this world. But really, it's a 10-year process for kids to really learn how to leave the nest and be independent by themselves. So they need their parents then.

I think the book How We Love Our Kids would be a really good resource, a really good place for you to start to learn how do we learn how to have these conversations with our daughter, with our granddaughter.

Brian Perez: How We Love Our Kids, that's a great resource by Milan and Kay Yerkovich. It's available in the newlife.com store. Parenting is about the parent. So it focuses on what's the attachment style of the parent and how's that impacting the attachment style of the kid and how do we learn secure bonding, secure attachment, how do we learn how to do something called the comfort circle to engage a child in a conversation to understand the emotions that are going on inside so that we can contain, so that we can soothe, so that we can comfort and we can help supply the corresponding need. When you do that, that's how connection, that's how comfort and bonding occur. Maria, get that book. It's in the newlife.com store. Thank you so much for calling in today to New Life Live at 1-800-229-3000.

Hello, it's Becky Brown. I am so excited to launch our 99 for the one partner initiative. Every day we hear from people all over the world who are looking for hope. They've been lost in a relationship struggle, addiction, anxiety, depression, all kinds of ways and it reminds us of the story in Luke 15 where the shepherd leaves the 99 to go rescue the one. And you know, we've seen God work in the lives of so many people over the years here at New Life and we want to invite you to be part of what God is doing. 99 for the one is our partner program that you can give to the ministry on a monthly basis to make sure that we continue to reach out to the lost. Call 1-800-NEW-LIFE, 1-800-639-5433 or newlife.com/9941.

Remember here on New Life Live, we don't necessarily have a topic that we talk about for an hour. You guys choose the topic when you call in. What is it that you're going through? Maybe a family member, maybe somebody at church that you spoke with this past Sunday and they kind of poured their heart out to you and you're wondering what resources are available. Well, you can call in or have them call in to 1-800-229-3000.

Every day people reach out to New Life looking for hope, guidance, and a way forward. Today you have the opportunity to meet that need in a doubly powerful way through a $250,000 matching gift. Your gift will be doubled, touching twice as many lives. Double your impact by giving at newlife.com/match, by texting the word match to 28950, or by calling 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Thank you for your generosity, which truly changes lives and right now it can change twice as many lives. Thank you for whatever you can do.

Let's talk to Kay in Stafford. Welcome Kay to New Life Live. How can we help you today? What's going on?

Kay: Thank you. So I am calling to get some insight. My husband is in rehab, the second time now. We've been married for two years, separated for one full year. I have two children, his step-children, both under the age of eight years old. In rehab, he was recently diagnosed with Bipolar 1. I do not think it's a great idea for him to come back into the household based on our first-year experience, as well as the diagnosis and the substance abuse issues. I want to do the biblical thing by staying married, but I don't feel that it's safe and stable for the children to welcome that situation back into their environment.

Brian Perez: How old are the children?

Kay: Seven and five.

Mark Cameron: What's unsafe, Kay?

Kay: Based on what I experienced: the mood, the anger. Knowing that there was something going on, the substance abuse. I couldn't tell basically, but once he admitted to a minor usage of something, that's when I decided we needed to separate. It went full-blown after that. Over a year period, it got real bad and then he finally decided to go to rehab, but I'm still also very much feeling the effects of what I experienced, like walking on eggshells daily while we were living together.

Mark Cameron: You did the right thing if these kids are very young and an adult male's mood swings and anger can be very scary to a seven and a five-year-old. We get to pick who we live with, but kids don't get to pick who they live with. So the first priority, even though you're married, is to protect your kids because they're so young.

The good thing is that you got a diagnosis here: bipolar disorder. So that can make sense of these manic behaviors, impulse control, substance abuse. Is he on medication, like a mood stabilizer or an antidepressant to tackle this?

Kay: He is on medication and he's still in rehab and then to a sober facility soon.

Mark Cameron: What I would advise here is more of a wait and watch. You wait and you see how is he progressing in his recovery. Is he going to stay consistent on the medication? Oftentimes people who have a bipolar disorder can stop taking the medication because they feel so good because they have these manic episodes. So you need to see: is he going to be consistent on this medication? What is his mood stabilization like on this medication? Does it need to be tweaked to find the right dosage, to find maybe even the right medication here?

And then also what steps is he taking toward recovery, toward anger management, which may resolve once his mood gets stabilized, but also then toward sobriety? If he's still in rehab and he's about to come out of that, does he have a resource or a place for him to land while he continues his recovery?

Kay: He's headed into a sober living and then after that, they will help him find employment, which I would advise him to try to find somewhere to rent or something because I just physically feel nervous at the thought of reuniting under the same roof.

Kay: I feel like I'm doing the right thing for the children, but the biblical aspect of staying married and not getting divorced, but still not feeling like you want to be in the same household with that person for very legitimate reasons, is all very confusing to navigate.

Mark Cameron: That makes sense. I think you're still in the recovery process to see what is he willing to do and how much is he willing to seek help. I know you've been separated for one year, so that can feel like a long time, but he's just now getting out of rehab. So I think that in a sense starts the clock to say, "Okay, now you've got a diagnosis, you've got some help, you're getting out of rehab. What happens next?" I tend to guide people to look at things in six-month increments because you can't really assess sustained change for any less amount of time than that. So I would consider thinking about what would you hope to see in six months and maybe communicate that over to him. And then in six months' time, you evaluate where we are at toward these goals of being safe.

Jim Burns: You married an addict is what you're saying in some ways. You didn't know it, but he was an addict. And of course, obviously, you didn't know he had bipolar. So he's in the right place, regardless of what happens, he's in the right place because we can't work on a relationship when an addict is still in full-on addiction. It doesn't work. You've got to help them get through that. So what Mark is saying, if the medication is working and if he's working on his program and you see this, so I would say don't rush it. t don't rush it either way. Don't rush back into a relationship. I hear you not wanting that and I think that's great. But I also wouldn't rush going to the divorce or getting you involved in say another relationship or things like that because that's only going to mess the deal up.

So time will tell. You've had a really tough two years. Wow. My goodness. You got married, he's been in rehab twice, you've been separated for a year of that. So now's the time to, I think Mark used the word wait, this is kind of the wait, look and see. And you're asking what's the biblical answer on that? It's a really tough one because you ask 19 pastors what they think and you're going to have maybe 19 different answers. Not in a bad way. I'm a pastor, so I'm not saying that in a bad way. But what you want to do is really clearly seek out clarification for yourself like what you're doing with us.

But if you're asking, do you have biblical grounds because did he ever in the process of his addiction commit adultery or anything like that?

Kay: He said no, but he's also lied so many times and I don't know how far this thing has taken him, so I don't know.

Jim Burns: Because sometimes there's going to be some pastor saying if he didn't commit adultery, whatever. There's other issues involved in this. I'm on a little bit different level than on that in terms of the biblical grounds. Have you talked to your own pastor at your own church about this at all?

Kay: No, we were in therapy with a minister at the church and that kind of waned a little bit, but he went to rehab, so now we're not in any kind of therapy. But I am in therapy and I did join Nar-Anon or something like that and I'm going to try to go through the meetings. But my body is still reacting to the thought of any kind of reunification.

Jim Burns: In some ways your body and your mind right now is telling you to not jump into that. I'd go with your heart on that. I would make sure that you get wise counsel. So you were in therapy with somebody at your church, you may want to, and I think being in a program is a good thing period. I don't have any background in alcoholism, but I went through the 12 steps with a small group a number of years ago. It was one of the greatest spiritual things I've ever done. None of us had an addiction issue, but we sure had our sinfulness and it was really good. So even you learning that will be great for you for the future. It'll also help you understand, so why did I marry this guy? What was that all about? Was there a rebound, what was it? I've been there.

But I think the word for me is don't rush it. Don't rush it in terms of getting a divorce, don't rush it in terms of jumping back into it until you have better discernment and time will help you understand. Bingo. That's what you do. Six-month timeframe.

Brian Perez: Kay, thanks for calling. There's a couple of articles on newlife.com that we're going to drop links in the show notes there: "Understanding and Loving a Family Member with Alcohol or Drug Addiction," also "Four Tough Love Tips: How to Help a Loved One with Alcohol or Drug Addiction." Thanks for calling us today.

So many people talking about mental health awareness this month and that's good. But here at New Life, we focus on mental health every day, 12 months a year. A great way you can help support mental health awareness this month is to share New Life Live with your friends, your family, anybody that you come in contact with. Just tell them to go to newlife.com for some Christ-centered resources designed to foster a healthy mental state. You can also give them our phone number because we're going to be in the studio for another hour to serve you at 1-800-229-3000.

Here is Tammy, who is listening to us on SiriusXM Channel 131. Welcome, Tammy, to New Life Live.

Tammy: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. My situation is I have a 15-year-old. I know you were talking about social media addiction, but she has anxiety, depression, I believe she has selective mutism, and she has post-traumatic stress. My ex-husband was very narcissistic, so she suffered 14 years of that toxic behavior before the judge finally said that she does not have to see him anymore. So now I'm just wondering, she does see a psychiatrist, she is getting medication, and she does go to therapy once a week. So I'm just wondering what else I could do that would be helpful for her. She really doesn't leave the house. I don't think she really enjoys school, but she does go and she does get good grades. She just doesn't seem to have a happy life because it's either when she's home, she's on the computer, and that's pretty much all she does. So I'm not sure what I should be doing at this point.

Jim Burns: That's the thing about phone addiction to and these things is they don't get out and play or get out into nature or anything and they're fine with that. The most recent with 15-year-olds, the most recent thought that just freaked me out is that for majority of 14 and 15-year-olds, they spend less time outside than prisoners do. Whoa.

Tammy: Oh yeah, because I've done research on the addiction of social media and it actually harms the brain. It causes brain damage because it's like you're addictive someone who's like a gambler or addicted to drugs. It's kind of the same type of damage that happens.

Jim Burns: Tammy, I've got a couple of thoughts. One is it's great that you have her with a psychiatrist and a psychiatrist is going to put out some medication that might help her anxiety and depression. You obviously don't want her to probably be on that for the rest of her life because it may be caused by even the social media thing. I've got a couple things on the social media and then I'll let Mark talk about it, but first of all with social media, what we find with 14, 15-year-olds is that we have to make sure that we are monitoring the amount of time. So you're not her best friend and so as a parent, you're going to have to have set some boundaries and she's not going to like it if you haven't been setting time boundaries. At Homeword where I work, we are saying to parents for 15-year-olds that it shouldn't be over two hours a day. Now, interestingly enough, they're doing schoolwork online too. I'm not talking about that. But we're suggesting that you monitor that they monitor the amount of time that you monitor just the amount of time or it gets—it's kind of like you can't eat one Lay's potato chip, well, she's online just kind of goofing off and doing whatever she's doing, but that's not helpful.

The other thing I would say, so I think you monitor a time and we're saying two hours, other people are saying less, some people say more, whatever. But she's—the average kid is on way more than two hours. The other thing I would say, so again, I'm she's not going to come and say, "Mom, thank you, that's amazing." What she's going to say is you're the meanest mom I've ever heard, but you're mom, so you have the authority. "I'm so sorry if I was your age, this is how I would feel. Nonetheless, this is kind of our new rule for the next six months."

But you know, that's what you do and you see how that goes. Secondly, and if she misses then there's consequences. If she does okay, then yeah, great. Award that with saying, "Hey, we're going to go two hours and 10 minutes, two hours and 15."

The other thing I would say is because she's going to school, I would encourage her for extracurricular activities. I find that kids who get involved in a church youth group at 15, they're interacting, they want to go. They're not going just for deep Bible study, although I wish when my kids were 15 that's what they did, but they went because there are fun kids and there were some games and they had fun and they laughed and whatnot. So I would encourage her to go to a church youth group and even if she doesn't have friends who go then, find somebody, she can invite a friend to one of those kind of things. Let the youth worker—say to the youth worker, "She's been a little shy, she's not really been involved, she's been staying home a lot." And let them know. A lot of times just something like that can be amazingly transformative to them because she needs to be around kids, other kids.

But what if these other kids are on their phones too? They are. I mean they are. Saturday I was talking on this subject and I told them a story. I was in Richmond, Virginia, 800 kids. I said, "How many of you believe it's possible to be addicted to social media?" Every kid put their hands up. I go, "How many of you are?" All but two. And they had phones in front of them. So yeah, we it's I'm laughing about that, but when you look at something like Tammy's daughter, Tammy, she does what you want to do is help her get through that. And it is an addiction.

There's a guy named Nicholas Kardaras and he's kind of the main brain thought leader. Kardaras says the problem with digital addiction is that it's still untested territory where we understand so much more about drug and alcohol addiction or even porn addiction, things like that. But when it comes to digital, we don't know. So we don't know what this next generation of kids are going to do, but we see them a lot with like you talked about, the PTSD would be more what happened probably with her dad, but the depression and anxiety, that's a natural response to a lot of kids who are on social media. So as a mom, you have to say, "Wait, she's self-soothing whatever is going on with that with her addiction and what you want to do is help her lose some of it by just simply putting some boundaries around it." And again, you're not going to get Mom of the Year from her, you're going to get Mom of the Year from us. And your other mother friends, if you do that, because they're in the same place. A lot of the other moms that you're engaging with are in the same place.

Brian Perez: Anybody watching or listening who couldn't keep up with what you said, Kardarian, keeping up with the Kardarian? Not Kardashian, Nicholas Kardaras. Just doing some great work in the secular world on brain and digital—this is what my PhD's in adolescence, so I think all the time about these adolescents. And so some of these people are doing some great breakthrough work on how as Tammy knows some of this, but just how social media is affecting kids and it's not all good.

Mark Cameron: So just like you were saying, Jim, is most kids can recognize that they are addicted, but they don't know how to stop the addiction. And so they don't know how to self-monitor. And so we need to be as the parent, the person who monitors. And it can't just be down to them like, "Okay, well just make sure that you're not on your phone for more than two hours a day." We need to put structures in place. We need to either take their phone from them or there's certain apps that are out there. I used an app, it was really a VPN router that limited my kids' time on their devices. It would just shut it off, it would just turn it off once it reached that limit for them.

I'm also hearing from you, Tammy, that you said that she has selective mutism. Does that mean that she sometimes talks to you and she doesn't talk to you sometimes?

Brian Perez: Unfortunately, we don't have time to continue our conversation with Tammy because we've run out of time, but we're going to be in the studio for another hour, so keep calling us at 1-800-229-3000. God bless you guys. We'll talk to you next time.

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