How do you manage screen time for yourself?

If you’ve never tried to set healthy screen habits while your children are conjuring glitter storms in the living room, then I envy the simplicity of your life.

Managing my own screen time in this house isn’t about discipline. It’s about survival with dignity.

I really do try to keep my phone use to a minimum when they’re awake. Not because I’m aiming for some Mother Earth Goddess of the Kitchen title, but because the moment I pick up my phone—even to check the time—three tiny sorcerers suddenly materialize like I’ve rung a summoning bell. The chant goes like this:

“Mama’s on her phone.”

“Screens exist.”

“We too shall screen.”

And then I’m in negotiations with creatures who can literally open the fridge with telekinesis. So I try to show them that real life matters. That we touch the world. That we look each other in the eyes. That we can play without glowing rectangles. That magic doesn’t need charging.

But also—let’s be real—my phone is sometimes the only adult contact I have before sundown. It’s how I message my husband when I need someone to confirm that what I’m currently experiencing is, in fact, reality and not a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and spilled juice. It’s where I write down blog ideas before they evaporate (ideas now disappear faster than the leftover mac and cheese that no one admitted to eating). It’s how I remember appointments, grocery lists, and the location of that one stuffed fox that is, apparently, the only acceptable bedtime companion.

And it’s my quiet corridor to the outside world—the non-sticky world—where people finish sentences and no one cries because a sock “feels too loud.”

So I set limits. I model presence. I put the phone away for stretches of time so I don’t disappear behind the screen and miss the childhood magic happening right in front of me: the potion experiments, the blanket fort kingdoms, the dramatic reenactment of the Great Snack Denials.

But I also allow myself grace.

Some days, grace looks like not checking my phone for two hours straight.

Some days, grace looks like hiding in the bathroom scrolling memes so I don’t weep into a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget.

This is not hypocrisy. It’s humanity.

Little wizard eyes are watching. So I show them what balance looks like:

Be here.

Be kind.

Be aware when you’re disappearing.

Come back when you drift.

And yes, sometimes I need the phone to help me come back to myself.

Because even in a house full of magic, the mother keeps the center from spinning apart.

And she deserves a few quiet minutes to breathe.