Show Notes
Have you ever looked down at your phone to find a flood of messages, ten, twenty, even thirty texts from your child all in a row? Sometimes it’s about something small, like wanting a snack or permission for a new game. Other times, it’s a full emotional storm, with your child texting in distress, upset, or desperate for reassurance.
It can feel overwhelming. You’re torn between exhaustion and worry; afraid to miss an important message, but frustrated by the constant notifications.
In this episode, we’ll unpack why kids do this, what emotional and neurological factors might be driving the behavior, and how to respond with calm, clarity, and love. You’ll learn practical ways to set healthy boundaries while helping your child build emotional regulation and resilience.
Jennifer's Takeaways:
Understanding the Problem of Constant Texting from Kids (00:00) Factors Contributing to Kids' Urgent Texting (01:28) Behavioral and Neurological Aspects of Urgent Texting (03:36) Parental Reactions and Emotional Triggers (06:03) Strategies for Managing Kids' Urgent Texting (07:17) Practical Tips for Teaching Kids to Wait (09:42) Reflecting on Personal Triggers and Modeling Calm (13:37)
Meet Jennifer Kolari
Jennifer Kolari is the host of the “Connected Parenting” weekly podcast and the co-host of “The Mental Health Comedy” podcast. Kolari is a frequent guest on Nationwide morning shows and podcasts in the US and Canada. Her advice can also be found in many Canadian and US magazines such as; Today’s Parent, Parents Magazine and Canadian Family.
Kolari’s powerful parenting model is based on the neurobiology of love, teaching parents how to use compassion and empathy as powerful medicine to transform challenging behavior and build children’s emotional resilience and emotional shock absorbers.
Jennifer’s wisdom, quick wit and down to earth style help parents navigate modern-day parenting problems, offering real-life examples as well as practical and effective tools and strategies.
Her highly entertaining, inspiring workshops are shared with warmth and humour, making her a crowd-pleasing speaker with schools, medical professionals, corporations and agencies throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
One of the nation’s leading parenting experts, Jennifer Kolari, is a highly sought- after international speaker and the founder of Connected Parenting. A child and family therapist with a busy practice based in San Diego and Toronto, Kolari is also the author of Connected Parenting: How to Raise A Great Kid (Penguin Group USA and Penguin Canada, 2009) and You’re Ruining My Life! (But Not Really): Surviving the Teenage Years with Connected Parenting (Penguin Canada, 2011).
More from Connected Parenting
What does healthy masculinity really look like, and how can we help boys grow into strong, kind, and emotionally healthy men?
How do we raise boys who are emotionally strong, empathetic, and accountable for their actions?
What if the challenging behavior you're seeing isn't really the problem, but a sign of what's happening underneath?
When a child has a major meltdown in public, it can feel like suddenly everyone around you has an opinion about your parenting.
As parents, we often act as a substitute frontal lobe for our children while their own executive functioning skills are still developing. We help them regulate emotions, remember what they need, organize themselves, solve problems, and make decisions. But sometimes, without realizing it, we can cross the line from guiding our children to doing too much of the thinking and problem-solving for them.