IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective

3 Simple Steps to Break Free from Distraction

• Ben Pugh • Episode 266

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Are you too distracted to parent the way you want to?

In today’s episode, we’re talking about something that’s affecting all of us—parents, teens, and even younger kids: distraction. From endless scrolling to binge-watching, the world is louder than ever. And it’s keeping you from being the parent you want to be.

But here’s the good news—there’s a way out.

I’ll share 3 simple steps to help you break free from distraction and start building the kind of discipline that brings connection, peace, and freedom. You’ll learn how to spot the distractions, subtract the noise, and build one small habit that creates big change.

This isn’t about guilt or shame—it’s a wake-up call to help you lead your teen by example.

Are You Caught in the Parent Trap?

Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.

Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.

https://benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz




Ben:

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

ben_1_07-08-2025_151235:

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here Today. We are going to be talking about something that I have been noticing in my own personal life, and I'll be honest with you, this is something that I am noticing in. A lot of teens, especially right now while I'm coaching high school football, I'm coaching a lot of teens in my one-on-one coaching program. I'm coaching some parents. I am seeing this problem all over the place, and I'm also seeing this problem in my own personal life. So as we talk about this. I don't want you to feel judged. I don't want you to feel condemned. I am hoping that you realize, oh dang, this is happening to me too. How do I fix this? So today we are going to be talking about distraction versus discipline. And if you're like me, you may have been too distracted to parent, and this podcast is going to help you get back on track, and this is going to help you reconnect. With your teenager, in spite of the noisy world that we live in. And a lot of people don't realize this, but distractions are at an all time high and discipline matters more than ever. So this podcast, hopefully it's a little bit of a wake up call as it has been for me. Hopefully it can help you. Have a little bit more awareness so that you can help yourself get out of the distraction and build your discipline while also. Helping you help your teen with this. Now I want to just reiterate, this is something that I've noticed lately in myself, in my clients, in my teenagers, like in my own home, also in my teen clients, my teen football players, and. This is something that I feel we need to address. We are constantly distracted and our distractions are increasing, and I think that's in large part due to our lack of discipline. So I just wanna reiterate, this is not a judgment. This is meant more to be. Kind of a wake up call to help you realize, oh, hey, I am going through my parenting distracted, and this is not who I want to be. So today we're going to explore how distraction and the lack of discipline I. Might be keeping you from being the parent that you want to be. You'll probably be able to see some of the effects of distraction and lack of discipline in your teen's life, and that's okay. We're gonna talk about how you and your teen can get back on track. I'm going to be doing these things so that I can be on track with who I want to be. So let's just talk about. The reality of the world that we live in. We live in this time of endless scrolling. Like just today, my 9-year-old was like, dad, are you constantly scrolling Facebook? And I was like, no, I feel like I'm doing better at not being on my device as much. He is like, oh, you should download this app that encourages you to go touch the grass, or something like that. But like. My 9-year-old sees it. We are creating apps to help us be on our screens less, which is crazy because your app is on the screen anyways, we live in a time of endless scrolling. We have push notifications all over the place, like social media wants to push notifications to us, our email, our phones with phone calls and texting. And we also live in a time where we constantly have breaking news. And I don't wanna minimize like the importance of the news. Like recently, there's that flood in Texas, which by the way, I am just heartbroken. And if you are in Texas, I want you to know my prayers, my thoughts are with you. And if you're not in Texas, I wanna invite you, like guys, let's pray. Let's help where we can. Anyways, I don't want to take away from like these type of events, but if you look at like, I. The news related to politics and controversy. We live in this time with a lot of distractions and there's one more that I haven't even mentioned yet. Everything is bingeable, and I'll be honest with you, my family, just a couple of weeks ago, he binge watched some Ryan Trahan videos and. I'm in a time right now, like, I don't know if you know who Ryan Trehan is. Your teen? Probably does. Me and my kids. My oldest is kind of too cool for this, plus he's always working or out with friends or girlfriend, like whatever. But. My second oldest and my two younger kids, we have been enjoying watching this Ryan Trahan YouTube series where he is going to 50 states in 50 days. Guys, that is a distraction or it has the potential to be a distraction. When you start to become aware of this, you realize that distractions are everywhere and so often they feel urgent or important or entertaining and just like I was. Mentioned a second ago, like my family has been sucked into that. Like I don't have a problem with Ryan Rehan. I love his YouTube videos. He's probably my favorite YouTube personality. The thing is, I don't want being entertained and watching his videos to become a distraction. Like we spent way too much time on a slow Sunday afternoon just watching YouTube videos and. I want you to have the power to be aware of distractions, and we're gonna like. Look at the difference between the two. I want you to be willing to increase your awareness when it comes to distractions, and this is something that affects both parents and teens. For parents as often, like work and work emails or social media or Netflix or worrying for teenagers, it's always like Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, texting. Sometimes gaming and anxiety and all of this input, all of these distractions can come at a cost and it can become hard to stay focused on what really matters to you and your family when your attention is constantly being hijacked. So let's put this into perspective real quick. Like me and my family watching. Ryan Trahan. right now we are pretty much caught up on his going across the 50 states in 50 days. He's about halfway through. That could totally be a distraction if we were going to watch that at the cost of everything else or above all out for us. Like right now, we're caught up. My kids. Waited for me yesterday. I had a long afternoon working. I coached high school football from like six to eight 30, and it was like nine before I got home, and the kids were like, oh, good. Can we finally watch the latest Ryan Trehan video? I'm okay with that. I don't feel like that is necessarily a distraction because it's helping us. Gain the gold, the bigger picture, like I want to connect with my teens in a way that's relevant for them. If they think this is cool and it's wholesome, it's fun, I'm gonna go watch it. Like let's make this be fun. I. The problem is when we don't have the discipline to allow entertainment to be something that brings us together, and entertainment becomes this huge discipline that inadvertently pushes us apart as parents and teenagers. So let's talk about like we've, well, let's talk about distraction a little bit. We talked about how we live in this reality that is constantly trying to distract us, trying to take our attention from something and put it on something else. One of the things that I like to keep in mind is like advertising. Advertising isn't good or bad. It just is what it is. Most advertising is built in a way where they're trying to make me feel a certain way so that I will come consume their product and make them money. When it comes to a lot of these distractions, it's helpful to understand like, why am I being distracted? What's the benefit for whoever's distracting me? Sometimes it's to make money. Sometimes it's to move my attention from the important issues to the trending issues. That's important to understand when it comes to the lack of discipline, this is something that a lot of parents don't like to admit to, like we can admit, okay, yeah, I'm falling into the distraction trap. I scroll Facebook too long. But when I talk to parents about a lack of discipline, there's almost like this wall like, no, I'm the mom, I'm the dad. I have discipline, and we're willing to see distraction as a problem. But then we don't realize that we are getting into distraction because we have a lack of discipline to withstand the distraction. So I want to just point out, we as a society have gotten very used to immediate gratification. Like, we wanna watch this thing. We wanna watch it now we want the new close. We're gonna go put it on credit and get it now. This is coming at a cost and this lack of discipline is having a negative impact on our physical health. Like football players that I'm coaching right now, there's a few of 'em that I might, dang. Kids are not as healthy as they were 20, 25 years ago, and it's scary. We can see this discipline playing out or lack of discipline in kids' academic performance. We have a lot of kids that wanted to play football, but they didn't make their gut. Academically. We are seeing the emotional cost. As parents, you are probably seeing the financial piece more than your teens are, but this lack of discipline is impacting adults in their finances. And there's also the aspect of like personal confidence and personal peace and happiness. And when you go through life distracted and. With a lack of discipline, you will feel a lack of confidence, a lack of purpose. And so I want you to understand like it's easy for parents to be like, man, I can see this happening in teenagers, but guess what? This is true for teens and parents. And one of the biggest pet peeves that teens tell me all the time is when a parent looks up from their phone to get after their teen for being on their phone. You can't ask your teen to stay off their phone if you are guilty of always being on your phone. It doesn't sit the same way. I always talk about how your teen is not listening to you as much as you wish they were, but they are watching you. And so rather than say, Hey, teen, I want you off your phone. Lead by example. Start showing what that looks like and also get to know what that feels like. There's this story about Gandhi. I'm not even sure if it's true or not. I kind of hope it is because it's kind of a fun story. But the story goes that there's this mom who goes to see Gandhi and she's like, my son is. Addicted to sugar. Will you please tell him to stop eating foods with sugars in it? And Gandhi's like, you know what, come back in two weeks and I'll have a talk with him. So the mom comes back in two weeks and Gandhi's like, dude, he probably didn't say dude, but anyways, he is like, get off of sugar. It's poison, it's not healthy, it's addicting. And the mom was like, why couldn't you tell my son that two weeks ago? And Gandhi's like, well, because two weeks ago I was eating sugar. I can't ask someone to do something that I'm not willing to do. And this is one of the things that I feel like we're guilty of doing. As parents. We see scary research and scary data that's like, oh, our kids were on screen times way too much. And rather than trying to be part of the solution, like, oh man, what? Am I doing how? Like what does my screen time look like? We're like, oh no, I gotta keep my kids off the screen when we're guilty of the thing that we're trying to protect them from. So here are some warning signs to help you understand and help you catch yourself to see if you are getting caught in this world of distraction and lack of discipline. So. It might look like you're constantly busy, but you're not actually productive. And this is one of the things that kind of opened my eyes, like I am a relatively busy person and it's annoying because one of my biggest values is freedom. And just the other day I noticed like I am not living my life in a way that creates more freedom. I am. Being busy, but I'm not being productive, which means I have to be productive later, which takes away from my freedom. And that was a big eyeopener for me. another warning sign is if you spend a lot of time in reaction mode rather than. Being proactive, and I see this especially in parents when they're reacting to their teenager teenagers or their teenager's behavior, and the parent has never taken the time to really explore who do I want to be? What type of parent do I want to be? How would I like to handle this? Another warning sign is if you're constantly saying that, I don't have time for that, but you have time to eat junk food or. Scroll social media or binge watch tv. another thing is if you avoid difficulty in your life, like maybe there's some hard conversations that need to be had or maybe there's some habits that are going to be a little bit challenging to put in place because you are taking the easy way out. These are little warning signs. And if you are not following through on. Routines and habits and ways of being that connect you with who you want to be. You're going to be defaulting to the standard of your herd. I talked about how human beings are herd animals and we kind of do what we see other people do. If you are not intentional in creating the habits that you need to. Develop to reach the dreams that you have. You're going to just operate according to the standard operation of your hurt. And if you think that's a good idea, I invite you like without judgment and without like criticizing people. I want you to just look around, look at your friends, look at your neighbors, look at the people you go to church with, the people that you spend time with. How are they doing health wise? How are they doing financially? How are they doing? Oh, spiritually. The problem is if you look at Americans, like most people are overweight, they're obese, they're developing type two diabetes. We're not very healthy. We are in in debt, I believe, at an all time high. And these are some questions that we need to be exploring. These are indicators. If you're experiencing any of those, you are stuck in the distraction trap. And the only way outta that is to start building discipline. If you feel disconnected from your teen and you're not sure how to fix it, this is a really good place to start. What are some disciplines that you could start building that will help set you free from distraction? And one of the biggest ones that I talk. With teens about is sleep routines. A lot of times teens come to me, they struggle sleeping. They're, they got high anxiety, they're not doing well at school. And when I explore like, why aren't you sleeping better? Oh, because my friends are chatting with me all night, or I'm watching these series that I can just b binge that. Is overstimulation due to distraction, and it's the result of a lack of discipline. So when I can help the teen build some discipline, we can free ourselves from the distraction. The same is true for parenting. So here are some simple steps to help you break free from distraction and start building discipline. All right, so step number one, I want you to notice and name the distraction. And the reason this is so important to me, I believe there's this process to creating change. And the first step is you have to be willing to expand your awareness. You can't change something that you're not aware of because you don't have power over this thing that you have no awareness of. So really explore where am I? Being distracted. Notice it. Name it. Start by tracking when your attention gets stolen. Like start by tracking things that you habitually go to. Like I've got a few games on my phone or like we're in the, I don't know, there's not a lot of news when it comes to football, but there's some drama going on in college football. That steals my attention sometimes when I see the right thumbnail or the right, kinda like clickbait title. I'm like, oh man, I gotta watch that. Like, what's going on with BYU? What's going on with Utah? I. When you can be aware of where your attention is going with no shame, no guilt, just awareness, like I just wanna understand, once you have that awareness, you can start to create change, and I would invite you to go through that process before. You try and invite your teen to do the same thing, like you go master it and then we can come back and talk to your teen about it. All right. The second step, subtract from the noise. Discipline isn't just about like. All the things that you can do. Sometimes it's about what can you remove? And we live in a world that is happy to ask you to do more and more and hey, you could do this. Hey, we can put this on your plate. Hey, you can do this. And I'll be honest with you, I am guilty of this. Like just the other day, a new opportunity came up and I. I have my life coaching business. I sell solar on the side. I'm coaching high school football, and I'm like, oh, you know what? I could probably do this other thing too. There are times, and you'll know, like as you build awareness, you'll know what to subtract. A few months ago I was just feeling. This weight, because I was trying to go in too many different directions. I was like, I need to subtract a few things from my life. And my wife harassed me about like playing some games on my phone and I was like, dang, she's totally right. I'm gonna subtract this game and this game and this game out of my life. I don't need it. I can reclaim. That attention and put it to something that's more important, something that you could do that's really easy. There are things on your phone, like phones are marvelous. I love phones. They're just so empowering. I. But if you're like me, you might have notifications turned on for things that aren't even important. Go ahead, turn those notifications off. It's okay. Delete one Time Wasting app. There are ways that you can subtract noise. One of my favorite ones, and we aren't great at this in my home, we're getting better, but create tech-free times or zones in your home. We try and not allow phones at the dinner table. We don't let our kids have TVs in their bedrooms. These are things that you can do to create. In tech free times or zones that can help to subtract the noise. But I want to throw this out there. If you are not willing to do it in your own life, it's going to be hard to get your teen to be willing to do it as well. So. Like, imagine sitting at the the dinner table saying, no, no phones at dinner table. But you're sitting there checking your emails and scrolling Facebook on your phone at the dinner table. Your teen is gonna see that. They're gonna see that lack of integrity and they're. Gonna resist what you're trying to implement. Okay, so the first step was name and or notice and name the distraction. This brings awareness. The second step is go ahead and subtract from the noise. It's okay. Turn off those notifications. You don't need them anyways, step three, choose one small discipline and stick with it. Discipline is like a muscle. It takes repetition, and as you get more reps, you get stronger and stronger. That's what we talk about when we talk about the Wheel of Life, like pick the discipline and get reps in at the top of the wheel that will prepare you so that you now have all these reps, you have the muscle to do it. Now you can start doing it at the bottom of the wheel. For me, like there was a point where I was like, you know what? I wanna start flossing my teeth every day. That was about 15, 20 years ago. I've probably missed five days over the past 15 or 20 years. That's a discipline I wanted to start. maybe you could do compliment time. That's something that we used to do. Or go to bed at a certain time or walk for 10 to 15 minutes a day. Maybe you want to commit to reading at least 10 minutes before watching a show. If you start building discipline in your life, it will be become easier for you to help your teen build discipline in their life. Distraction is a trap, and for some people what's your distraction isn't even gonna phase them and what's their distraction won't even phase you. Like. You might not even care about Ryan Rehan, but man, when we spent hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon as like, dang, we cannot let ourselves do that again. It was a distraction that we were able to re harness and be like, man, the kids love this. It's some time that we could spend together. Let's be disciplined around this form of entertainment. Discipline is the way out of the distraction trap. So once you've done this, once you've implemented those three steps in your life, that's when you can start helping your teen implement. These three simple steps, and you'll definitely want to celebrate even small wins in your life. Celebrate small wins in your teen's life, and just really work to model consistency. So to recap, distraction, we'll disconnect you from your teen. And discipline is what will get you out of the distraction trap, which will help you reconnect with your teen, and you don't need to overhaul your whole entire life. Just start small, stay consistent. Do simple little things. if you just cut out, let's say you cut out 10 minutes of screen time a day. Over seven days, that's 70 minutes. That's over an hour and 10 minutes really isn't that hard. And the nice thing, I love how my iPhone tells me, Ben, you've been on your iPhone for this many hours this week. It's a powerful reminder. And a lot of times I'm like, dang, I could cut that by an hour. It an hour and 10 minutes if I just got on my phone 10 minutes later each day. You have the power to create change by making small and simple changes, and as parents really commit to being the example that you wanna see in your teen, when you live with more awareness and more intention, your teen will notice and they will follow you. So. I want to invite you do those three simple steps. Step one, notice and name your distractions. Step two, subtract from the noise. And step three, choose one small, simple discipline that will help break you free from the distraction trap. And if you've enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general, please share it with another parent of a teenager. You can help me, help all the parents. I really want to, like I see parents that are struggling with their teens. I know I'm not the only one I know. The parents that I'm working with aren't the only ones. I know that you are not the only one. Together we can help improve the parent teen relationship. And it's just a simple like go share this with a friend, or leave a five star review and some nice written words that really helps people find the podcast so that they can get the help that they're looking for. And if you're the type of person that likes to help people, that's one pretty easy way to help someone. All right. That's all I've got for you today. Thank you again for being here, and please be sure, start catching yourself in the discipline trap, I mean in the distraction trap, and then start building discipline to get out. I'll talk to you next time.