I work with many families in this age range, and a common theme that comes up is that kids feel “always on,” parents feel like screen referees, and evenings get tense. I wouldn’t frame this as bad parenting or “addicted kids.”

Today’s post is about a natural stress response that our bodies instinctively go into when we feel overwhelmed or unsafe. You may have heard of it before, but here we’ll break it down a bit more and look at how we work with it in therapy.