Author’s practical guidance
You keep getting interrupted by your phone
Book title: What costs is the interruption, not the minutes
Source named in the book: mismatch and repair in early interaction (Tronick)
Parents count hours because hours are countable.
Say this now
“I went away for a minute. I'm back.”
Names the break and closes it. That is the whole move.
“Where were we?”
Picks the thread back up without a discussion about it.
Do this
- Come back out loud rather than sliding back in and hoping it went unnoticed.
- Protect the joins — arrivals, meals and bedtime are where breaks cost most.
- Take one longer break instead of twenty short ones, when you have the choice.
- Stop counting your hours.
- Let some interruptions stand — a child who sees you return does not need you never to go.
Avoid this
- Measuring your own use in hours. The number tells you almost nothing about the cost.
- Trying to be uninterrupted all day. Nobody manages it and the attempt makes it worse.
- Going quiet with guilt after dropping out. The silence is the problem, not the dropping out.
If it repeats
If you cannot find a stretch of the day without interruption, pick one join and defend only that. Arrival home works best for most families, and one protected join is worth more than an intention spread across the whole day.
Why the book suggests this
Parents count hours because hours are countable. But an adult reading quietly for twenty minutes while a child plays nearby is not the same event as an adult who is present and drops out of the exchange every ninety seconds, even if the totals match.
Decades of work on how adults and small children coordinate shows the pattern that matters: they fall out of step constantly, and what makes the difference is whether they get back in. Mismatch is ordinary and repair is the skill. A break that gets closed teaches something useful. A break that never closes is the one that costs.
Related prepared situations
What happened next?
From this collection
Same Words: Every Screen
45 prepared situations in this family area.