HGTV
Erin and Ben Napier have become household names thanks to their hit HGTV show,Home Town.
Their design style leans heavily on the sentimental and the nostalgic.
Now the Napiers are hoping to give family life a makeover in much of the same way.
Credit:HGTV
The couple occasionally post photos with their children in them, but they hide the girls faces.
They have also said that their children wont have access to social media.
They feel so strongly about this that they launched a program to help guide other parents called Osprey.
Its Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth.
And we dont want it to be like phones are forbidden fruit.
We want to replace that addiction, we want to fill that void with engagements, Erin said.
It is an actual addiction.
The dopamine hit that kids and teenagers get from it make it impossible for them to not be addicted.
And its not their fault.
It doesnt matter how good your parenting is.
It doesnt matter how morally sound and level-headed you think your child is.
So its easier to prevent addiction than it is to cure it.
So how do you fill that void if devices are taken off the table?
Erin has some ideas.
So were trying so hard to focus on letting our girls use their hands and explore.
Build a fort, pillows or sticks, in the trees or under the dinner table.
Sidewalk chalk all over the driveway.
Hide gnomes inside the hollows of the trees if you live in the woods.
do check ins on them weekly!
hang it on the wall like it’s a masterwork.
Play the board games you loved when you were little.
Just let them be outside, unsupervised (or supervise from afar) and unstructured.
She noted that these are things that her family does every day.
Every day I have to bathe my kids outside.
We got a hot water spigot so I could bathe them outside.
The dogs roll around in it with them.
They go swing for a few hours.
They might go build a treehouse.
They climb into a tree and take their toys up there and thats a house then.
We just let them be kids.
And I wanna let them be kids for as long as possible.
Now, the Napiers have launched the first ever Osprey Old School Festival in Laurel on March 9.
And there will be several informational sessions to educate adults on topics like cyber crime and adolescent screen addiction.
And thats what Ospreys all about.
Its about re-discovering what our kids have been missing out on for the last 20 or so years.
Our real hope is that Osprey is obsolete in a few years.
I hope that this is so obvious and self-evident that this program doesnt even need to exist anymore.
