If our primary role as parents is to be disciple-makers, then we must consider how this is being prioritized in our homes. 

The days are busy. We must be so intentional with our time and our conversations in order to be sure we are pointing our kids to Jesus along the way. Sometimes this might be a more formal time of family worship; it might be chats in the car on the way to school; it might be bedtime prayers. But no matter the formality of it, if we aren’t prayerfully pursuing our children’s hearts, this season of soft soil will pass us by. 

We must take into account our own walk with Jesus—and our own attention—as we consider how we disciple our children in their walks.

Linda Stone, former Microsoft researcher and founder of The Attention Project, coined the term “continuous partial attention.” She defines it as this: “to pay partial attention—CONTINUOUSLY”. It’s a state of being that is “always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention” (LindaStone.com).

But have you noticed? 

When we split our attention, as Stone describes, our brains are impacted. She says that, “in large doses, [continuous partial attention] contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively…it contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled.” 

Can I get an Amen?

The frazzled, frenetic pace at which your mind is operating is not how it was designed to operate. And the lie that we must check in, be connected, be engaged ALL the time contributes to this never-ending state of frenzy. Our tech is designed to keep us coming back for more, and in doing so, contributes to this state of chaos we might be feeling.

Discipling Distraction

I want to consider today how this state of being might impact our ability to make disciples. The temptation here is to compartmentalize—to think that our tech time is ours, that really, our time is ours, and that our ability to focus or concentrate doesn’t impact our parenting. 

But friends:

• Reading an ancient text takes an ability focus and study well.

• Sitting quietly before God means I must learn to be okay with silence.

• Meditating on and memorizing scripture requires routine and regular practice of recitation. 

None of this is accidental; it’s not particularly easy; and it doesn’t align well with the current state of split digital attention.

If we ourselves aren’t following Jesus well, we will not be able to model or instruct others to do the same. When we give way to continuous partial attention, we condition our brains to be half way engaged—in all things. As every coach I ever had liked to say,“How you do anything is how you do everything”. 

Research backs this up: to paraphrase the Hebbian Theory of Learning, neurons that fire together wire together. Basically the stuff we do repeatedly gets easier to do—and not just the good stuff. Every time I put my AirPods in because I “just need a minute” means the next time I feel stressed, the temptation to escape with partial attention will be that much easier to do. In fact, if I do it enough it can become more like a reflex—an unconscious mechanism I’ve trained to cope with stress. Each time we partially engage with God or people or the task at hand, we make it easier to choose that option next time. We must make conscious efforts to engage fully with whatever work has been set before us.

Raising Children Takes Intentional Presence

As parents, we have been called to disciple our children. Deuteronomy 11:19 instructs us to disciple our children as we go about our day to day lives: “You shall teach [these words] to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” We don’t know when these big parenting moments will come. We can’t anticipate when a kid will be ready to chat, and if we’re constantly otherwise occupied (especially with our tech), we will miss these moments. 

So far in our parenting journey, our “big moment” talks have taken place:

• In the car

• While we’re actively trying to get out the door

• When we’re making dinner 

• When the baby is crying

These have not been moments we’ve planned for. We don’t know when the conversations or confessions or questions will rise out of their little hearts. Likely it won’t be when we plan for it or after our prepared time of family worship. We can and should plan for discipleship; but we also need to expect that these conversations will take place in the very folds and rhythms of life.

The big conversations and questions about Jesus and hell and what happened to the dinosaurs usually come up in the in-between moments. A child shouts out from the back seat, “Mom, how does Jesus get in my heart??” 

But here’s the rub: if I’m always only half way engaged, if my attention is constantly split among a million things because I’m trying to squeeze in a podcast or show or a few texts, then we will miss these moments. My attention will be split, my mind in state of overwhelm (as Stone describes), all in the name of what? A few minutes of escape?

We must be vigilant to put first things first, and to guard against the lie that what’s “out there” is better than what’s in here—for the sake of our own relationship with God, and for our ability to disciple the ones he’s given to us.

So How Can We Choose Something Different?

One way to combat the desire to be always connected is to batch our tech time. There are great things happening on the Internet. We just want to make sure we’re controlling our tech, and our tech isn’t controlling us.

 Batching tech time might look something like this:

• Removing email from your phone, and instead, checking it on the computer at pre-appointed times. 
• Turning off text notifications, and establishing a time (or times) of day to check and respond to messages.
• If you must check social media, set up times for doing so and do it on the computer. The draw to mindlessly scroll diminishes greatly.
• Set a timer for your tech time so that when you hit your limit, you receive an auditory reminder to put the phone down. 

Setting aside intentional time for our tech time can help us go deeper in our work, whether that’s doing the work of meeting with Jesus or sorting out what’s for dinner. This is work that requires—and is worthy of—our full attention; let’s give it.