These HGTV stars made a pledge to keep their kids off smartphones. Here’s how it’s going.

These HGTV stars made a pledge to keep their kids off smartphones. Here’s how it’s going.

Ben and Erin Napier have made it their mission to keep their two younger daughters off smartphones. So far it’s working — possibly a little too properly.

“The thing that’s happened now is they’re probably a little too judgmental of [other] kids using phones,” Erin tells Yahoo of the couple’s daughters, Helen, virtually 8, and Mae, 4.

“If they’re [somewhere with other] kids who are on phones, they get really frustrated,” Ben chimes in. “Because it’s distracting for those kids, and [our kids] get upset.”

He pauses. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Like most mother and father, the stars of HGTV’s Home Town — which kicks off its tenth season on Jan. 4 — are figuring out how to best set boundaries round screens. The Laurel, Miss., residents have been vocal about their tech-light method to elevating their daughters, even cofounding the nonprofit Osprey (Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth) to assist other households undertake the same method of a “social media-free childhood from grade school to graduation.”

“It’s easy when they’re little,” Erin says. “Since they were infants, they’ve known that [a smartphone] is not a toy. This is a tool for grown-ups. They’ve never held one. They know that there’s a very dark place here that can be found. But we don’t use it for that.”

The DIY stars — faculty sweethearts who married in 2008 — also keep away from utilizing telephones in entrance of their kids. When they must use a smartphone in their presence, they clarify why.

“I don’t want my girls to think I’m on here playing, so I’ll say, ‘Right now I’m texting Aunt Pal,’” referring to enterprise accomplice Mallorie Rasberry and Home Town common, ‘to see what we need to do for our friend whose grandmother passed away.’ I strive to embrace them and narrate anytime I’m utilizing my telephone, however I strive to just not use my telephone round them, if in any respect doable.”

What the future holds is an open query, they are saying.

“I don’t know how the rubber is going to meet the road in a few years, if they start asking for one,” Erin says. “But, like, right now, Helen says, ‘I think that when I become a teenager, I should get a flip phone. I think that’s appropriate.’ And I was like, ‘I think it’s appropriate too. That’s a good plan.’”

It’s not like the ladies are minimize off from the outdoors world. The Napiers put in a landline at house, and the ladies have a Rolodex of contacts.

“Honestly, it feels like it has scratched that itch,” says Ben, who smiled when he walked in on the ladies calling his 91-year-old grandmother.

Erin says she’s already seeing the advantages.

“They’re building great communication skills,” she says. “I’ll hear them say, ‘Hello, Grandmother, this is Helen and Mae.’ [At first], they would just smile when they were asked a question, and I’m like, ‘You have to say something. They can’t see you.’”

The Napiers also comply with the “want, need, wear, read” strategy for gift-giving, specializing in significant gadgets over extra. The ladies got toy catalogs to peruse ahead of Christmas, which has been a work in progress.

“I’m torn over it because I loved looking through catalogs [as a child],” says Ben, who remembers the Sears Wish Book days. “I thought that was over once the internet had been established and everybody was shopping there. So when these catalogs started coming again, I got excited, but [the girls] started going through them, and it’s toys they’ve never heard of [and suddenly want].”

Erin provides that Helen created a color-coded highlighting system to let her mother and father know what she needed — and the checklist shortly grew lengthy.

“I was like, ‘Listen, Sis — circle three things, and we can look at them and think about it,’” Erin says. “It’s been challenging.”

Of course, that wasn’t their only challenge. Just when the couple felt that they had struck a good work-life stability, they added homeschooling to the combine.

Ben teaches the ladies historical past, math and Bible research, while Erin’s accountable for language arts, artwork and the relaxation.

“It’s a lot, but everybody has to figure out work-life balance,” Ben says. “I think that the way that we do it is probably unique for the TV world. We say no to a lot of things just because it’s too much. It pulls away from home life too much.”

Perhaps the best perk of their TV stardom has been having the ability to work in Laurel, the place Erin grew up and the place they’re elevating their household. On the present, they renovate local traditional houses, however they’ve also invested in the bigger community, operating a number of small companies, including Laurel Mercantile, Scotsman Co. and Scent Library.

The faculty sweethearts say that getting to work together is “a blessing” and is one motive why their “marriage is so strong.” (Courtesy of HGTV)

This season, the couple undertakes a huge project: renovating a historic house that presents additional challenges alongside the method. That’s the focus of the first episodes.

“For a typical Home Town project, 10 weeks is really long,” says Ben. “That one [stretched to] seven months. It was the first time we had to get permission to make it two episodes.”

Unlike some actuality exhibits that thrive on drama — we’re you, Bravo — the Napiers keep a exceptional ease with each other, even when costly obstacles pop up. Inspired by Travis Kelce saying he and Taylor Swift never fight, we had to ask: Do Ben and Erin argue while working and parenting together?

“We do disagree, but we don’t fight,” Ben says.

“We get along very, very well,” Erin says. “We communicate really clearly all the time. I know everything he’s worried about. … We have no secrets.”

Ben says they have a look at getting to work together all day, every day “as a blessing” and credit score it as one motive “why our marriage is so strong.”

“And as far as Taylor and Travis go,” he provides, “they’re probably still pretty new. They probably don’t fight. It’ll come. There’ll be disagreements, [but] they’ll work through them. It’s all about being a team.”

Watch on HGTV

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