Thirty Days to Get Your Family Back. Ninety to Keep It.
FULLY REVISED EDITION · 2026
Your son is on the game again. Dinner is cold. You have called three times, and the third time you were shouting.
You have taken the console, hidden the tablet, and set the limits. Every conversation about screens ends the same way, and somehow you are the one who walks away feeling like you did something wrong.
This book does not start with the lock. It starts with the conversations nobody in your house has had yet: what the game is actually giving your child, what they are afraid of, and what makes six hours of a screen look better than the rest of their day. The limits come later — and they hold because of what came first.
★ 4.2 out of 5 · 23 reader reviews · 258 pages · Paperback & Kindle
About The Book
How much time does your child spend on a screen each day? Not the number they would give you — the real one. Their devices already know. Before Day 1, you will turn on the tracking on every phone, tablet, and console, and within the first week you will sit down and read what it says.
Someone has probably told you the answer is simple: take the phone away and just talk to your kid. You have talked. The problem is that every one of those conversations was about screens — how long, how late, why not, put it down. Your child has heard that conversation two hundred times and has learned to wait it out.
I know both sides of this. I spent six years of my life inside an online game, ten to twelve hours a day, through most of college. I still get urges. I have also specialized in treating internet and gaming addiction for more than sixteen years. When your child says you have no idea what this feels like, they may be right. They are not right about me.
This is a thirty-day program, and you are the one doing most of the work. Three short chapters come first: what is happening in your child's brain, why this is genuinely harder than it was when you were their age, and how to tell ordinary heavy use from something that needs help. Then the counting starts.
The first third is Insight: your family, yourself, your child giving you the tour of their world, what the screens are doing for them, and what might be underneath. The middle is Action: sleep, a written agreement with a column for you, guardrails on accounts and devices, the feed, the game economy, your own screen use, and the staged removal of the apps that pull hardest. The last stretch is Maintenance: taking stock of what changed and cutting your routine back to what you can actually keep.
Then the book keeps going. After Day 30 comes The Next 90 Days — the part nobody writes about. It covers what backsliding looks like before it becomes a collapse, what to do the week it goes backward, when to loosen a limit, and how to keep the agreement alive once the novelty is gone.
Be warned: your child may not thank you. Around week three, you will have done everything right and still be met with a kid who is furious with you. That is not the plan failing. That is what it looks like while it is working, and the book tells you every time it is coming.
What's New in the Revised Edition
The first edition came out in 2017. Your child's phone is not the phone from 2017, and this is not that book.
Three New Opening Chapters
Before Day 1, you get the why: what is happening in your child's brain, why every reasonable argument you have made has bounced off, and how to tell ordinary heavy use from something that needs a professional.
When the Screen Is Hiding Something
Sometimes heavy use is where a child goes to get away from something else — anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, a problem at school they have not told you about. When limits alone would make things worse, and when to get an assessment.
The Feed and AI Chatbots
Short-form video did not exist when the first edition was written; now it is the main hook. And the newest one: about half of parents think their teen uses AI chatbots, while 64% of teens say they do. Why a chatbot that never gets bored of your child is so hard to put down.
The Game Economy
Loot boxes, battle passes, Robux, V-Bucks, and gift cards. How a two-hundred-dollar credit card statement happens, why your child may honestly not have realized, and how to make sure it never happens in your house.
Awareness Without Spying
What to keep visible at every age, what to hand back as your child gets older, and what this book will never ask you to do: collect their passwords or read their messages behind their back. Plus what to do in the first ten minutes after you find something. No click-by-click menus that go stale by next year — the book tells you exactly what "done" looks like on each device.
The Next 90 Days
An entirely new closing section for the months after Day 30, when your child tests every boundary you just built and most programs have already ended.
What Thirty Days Can and Cannot Do
Thirty days will not cure your child.
I am more than twenty years out from the game that nearly cost me everything, and I still get urges. If thirty days were enough, I would have been done a long time ago. Any book that promises you a fixed kid in a month is selling you something, and some part of you already knows it — which is probably why you have started a plan like this before and quietly let it go.
Here is what thirty days can do.
By Day 30, your child will have a sleep schedule they can maintain and a screen-free bedroom. Your household will have a written contract that everyone, including you, has signed. The worst two or three apps will be off the devices your child carries, with real limits around what remains. Your family will spend more time with each other, and you will understand — not guess- what your child’s screen use is doing for them and what it has been costing.
That is not a finish line. It is a floor to stand on, and most families fighting this never get one.
I will also tell you the part that is harder to hear. Your child may not thank you. Somewhere around week three, you will have done the work, held the line, and be met with a kid who is furious with you and says so. That is not the plan failing. That is what it looks like while it is working, and I will tell you every time it is coming.
That is why the last section of this book is not the last day. After Day 30 you will find The Next 90 Days — the part nobody writes about. What backsliding actually looks like, what to do the week it happens, when to loosen a limit, and how to keep the contract alive once the novelty is gone.
Thirty Days to Get Your Family Back. Ninety to Keep It.
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FROM THE INTRODUCTION
It is six o’clock, and dinner is on the table. You have called your son three times. The first time, he did not answer. The second time, he shouted that he was in the middle of a match and couldn’t stop. By the third time, you were yelling too, and the food had gone cold while you sat there getting angrier.
This is not new. It happens most nights. He does homework only when you stand over him. He is on a game, a video, or a group chat every hour he is awake and not at school, and when you say anything about it, he tells you you don’t understand, that all his friends are on, and that none of them have a parent like you.
You have tried. You grounded him from the console, and he found where you hid it. You took the tablet, and he used your phone instead. Then last week the credit card statement came, and it showed $200.00 in charges you never made for in-game items. When you confronted him, he turned it around on you within about nine seconds, and somehow you ended the conversation feeling like the one who had done something wrong.
If some version of that is why you bought this book, you are in the right place. And I want to tell you three things before we go any further.
You Are Not a Lazy Parent
Somewhere in the past year, someone has probably told you that the answer here is simple. Remove the consoles, take away the phone, and just talk to your kid.
They are partially correct; talking to your child is vital. That is where this book begins.
The first third of this program is almost entirely conversation. You are going to sit down with your family and actually hear what each of them has been carrying. You are going to learn what your child’s games and apps are, from your child, in their own words. You’ll find out what those screens are giving them that the rest of their life currently isn’t. None of that is a technique for controlling a teenager. It is the part most parents skip, and it is the part that makes everything afterward possible.
So why hasn’t talking worked already? Because you have been talking about the wrong thing. Nearly every conversation you have had about screens has been a conversation about screens — how long, how late, why not, put it down. Your child has heard that conversation two hundred times and has learned to wait it out. Meanwhile, the actual questions have never come up. What does the game do for him? What is he afraid of? What happens in his day that makes six hours of screens look better than being present in it?
This book is not about controlling your child. Some things will come off some devices, and I will not pretend otherwise. But the limits are the last third of the work, not the first, and they do not hold unless the rest is already in place. If what you want is a system for locking your kid out of the internet, there are books for that, and this is not one of them.
Excerpt from the Introduction, Revised Edition. Read the full opening free with Amazon's Look Inside.
What You Will Learn
What Is Happening in Your Child's Brain
Why the teenage brain is more vulnerable to this than yours is, and why none of it means something is wrong with your kid.
Why Now Is Different
Feeds, autoplay, streaks, group chats, and AI chatbots — and why a ban lands as exile when your child's social life genuinely lives in there.
Heavy Use or Something More?
How to tell an ordinary heavy user from a pattern that needs a professional, and what may be sitting underneath it.
Their World, in Their Words
Your child gives you the tour of their games and apps, and you find out what the screens are actually giving them.
Sleep
The single highest-yield change in the book, and the first thing the Action phase builds.
An Agreement That Binds Everyone
A written family agreement with two columns. One of them is yours, and that is why kids sign it.
The Twenty Seconds Before You Say It
Two simple tools for the moment your child is screaming and the whole month rides on you not matching their volume.
Limits That Hold
Which apps come off first and why it is never the worst one, how to handle the hour after the last one goes, and what to do when your child pushes back.
Testimonials
★ 4.2 out of 5 · 23 reader reviews on Amazon
As a child therapist, parents voice their frustrations over their children’s digital addictions and the overall interactions and use of family time within the family unit. I struggle with balancing confronting parents on their own examples of digital addiction and assisting kids in developing other parts of their body and brain. Nathan’s guide gives a concise plan of action that addresses all of these aspects in a family. I will use this plan and recommend this guide to families in my practice.
This book provides solid strategies broken down into useful bites. I walked away feeling even more aware of current trends in electronic addiction, which is an ever changing challenge. I will recommend to parents, teens, and young adults who are dealing with this modern day process addiction.
This book provides a ready-to-implement 30-day plan for families to take steps to address electronic addiction. As the author notes, it is not a substitute for therapy. However it has practical advice that could benefit families who are struggling with healthy, balanced electronics use. The 30-day plan is presented in 3 parts- gathering insight into the family's electronic use (including children and parents), taking action to work toward desired changes, and maintenance of those changes. Only critical note is that the research and statistics on electronic use and addiction is not discussed much, which could be a powerful eye-opener and motivation for change.
It is a great right to the point book if you have children who can't even eat without watching something on the phone or messaging to friends. Without lots of words about nothing, this book dives right into the problem and solution. I loved the actually to - do steps I could implement and saw the results right away. Of course, it takes time and effort, looks like a lot to do every day, but it is doable! I recommend this book for fast solutions and actual ideas what to do instead of electronics. It is a great book for the family to get together again and bond.
Very informative and timely resource to support children and youths struggling to focus on effortful tasks due to constant distraction from electronics
Nathan tackles the problem with compassion and firsthand experience.! A starting place for great knowledge.
In our new technology saturated world, this book is a good read to help your child with technology related issues.
About The Author
Nathan Driskell is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas (LPC #66397) who practices privately and works with clients statewide via teletherapy. He has spent more than sixteen years in the field and specializes in two areas that overlap more often than people expect: internet and screen addiction, and high-functioning autism.
Much of his screen-addiction work is with families — parents watching their child disappear into a room and a screen, and the teenagers and young adults on the other side of that door. He has been writing and publishing on the subject since 2016.
He also knows it from the inside. Before he became a counselor, Nathan spent six years in an online game, ten to twelve hours a day, through most of college. That is why this book takes your child's side seriously, and why it doesn't lecture either of you.
Nathan sees teens and adults across Texas by teletherapy. If you are in Texas and want help with this, contact him here. If you are outside Texas, write anyway — he will do his best to point you toward someone in your area.
End The Excuses! It Is Time To Commit!
You can keep having the same conversation about screens every night, or you can start a different one. The book costs less than one family dinner out. The fight it is meant to end has already cost your family a good deal more than that.
Thirty Days to Get Your Family Back. Ninety to Keep It. Start Tonight.
