The Tammy Peterson Podcast

Kids and smartphones may be the most important conversation parents can have right now. Clinical psychologist Dr. Johann D'Souza has spent 16 years mentoring young men and thousands of hours in the therapy room, and his message to parents is simple: never give your child a smartphone. We talk about why a phone can be more dangerous than anything we worried about as kids, how video games are keeping young men from growing up, what social media is doing to girls, and why he believes the real problem is not the child but the parents. I also share how the phone ringing at our dinner table took my own dad away from me, and how Jordan and I are learning to choose calm over constant stimulation. Dr. D'Souza is the author of Saving Teens from Toxic Screens and hosts the Virtuous Leaders podcast. Visit neversmartphone.com for his free guide for parents, and tell me in the comments: when did your child get their first phone?
Dr. Johann D'Souza is a clinical psychologist and national speaker on protecting children from digital destruction. He holds a PhD from the University of Houston and has published over 20 peer reviewed articles. After years of one on one therapy and mentoring with adolescents, he realized he could help far more families by speaking directly to parents, because they are the gatekeepers who can keep a smartphone out of a child's hands in the first place.
We talk about why addiction is so hard to break when part of us believes the habit is good, and why a phone within arm's reach at night undoes so much effort. Dr. D'Souza explains why many flip phones are smartphones in disguise, why he suggests five minutes a day of texting is all a child needs, and why he encourages parents to find even one like minded friend so their children have peers without phones too. He also shares his own conversion while studying in Rome, and why he came to see pornography as the biggest challenge young people face today.
Smartphone addiction in teens can look different for boys and girls. For boys, video games offer a feeling of progress without the effort real life requires, and that can keep young men from launching into adulthood. For girls, social media can become a full time job of curating their image, feeding loneliness rather than easing it. Underneath it all, Dr. D'Souza believes the hardest problem is not a lack of information, but our own struggle as adults to do what we already know is good.
I share my own story too: how the phone on our kitchen wall took my dad's attention at dinner, what we are doing to keep Jordan's nervous system calm, and how I am trying to fill my own phone with prayer instead of distraction. If you are thinking about children and screen time in your own home, I hope this conversation gives you courage and a practical place to begin protecting children from digital destruction. You can find Dr. D'Souza's free resources for parents at neversmartphone.com.
Find more from Johann:
Free Guide for Parents: https://neversmartphone.com/
Speaking: https://johanndsouza.com/speaking
Substack: https://drjohanndsouza.substack.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjohanndsouza
Connect with me:
My Website: http://tammympeterson.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammy.m.peterson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammyPetersonPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tammypetersonpodcast
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Healing through Scripture sounds simple, but my guest Sonja Corbitt learned it the hard way. She came out of childhood with a deep father wound and a rage she was terrified of passing on to her own children, so she begged God for help and went looking for it in His Word. Sonja is the Catholic Evangelista and creator of the LOVE the Word Bible study and prayer method, and in this conversation she shares how one verse, Mark 12:30, became her template for healing the whole person: heart, soul, mind, and body. She tells the story of her conversion from Protestant Bible teacher to Catholic, the painful years when her husband could not follow her, and how holding on to Mary carried her through. She also explains how watching the way Mary prayed, by listening first, shaped the method she teaches today.
Sonja began teaching Scripture in a small country church in the South when she was just 21. Two church splits, a three hour Easter Vigil she found strange and compelling all at once, and a catechism she picked up in a used bookstore set her on a year of reading her way into the Catholic Church through the early Church Fathers. Her husband was not ready to follow, and for a time they could not even speak about it. She chose not to defend herself, and the way God brought him home five years later moved me deeply.
We spend much of our time on what healing through Scripture actually looks like day to day. Sonja shares the STOP tool she drew from Psalm 4, which taught her that anger is not the enemy and that underneath her rage was fear, and underneath the fear was pain. She describes the hard moments in our relationships as pop quizzes, places where God is already working, and walks through how our emotions, memories, judgments, unforgiveness, and even physical symptoms can become a path to inner healing rather than something to run from. We talk about anxiety and depression, emotional unavailability as a core wound, praying for the generations before us, and how chronic illness can carry a message we need to hear.
Finally, Sonja tells the story of asking Mary directly what she was missing, and how Mary's Magnificat became the heart of her LOVE the Word prayer method: listen, observe, verbalize, and entrust. Her book Love Heals goes deeper into Mark 12:30, and her study Exalted explores Mary and the Magnificat. I hope this conversation gives you hope that no part of you is beyond God's healing love.
Find more from Sonja:
Love Heals, Ave Maria Press: https://www.avemariapress.com/products/love-heals
Website: https://sonjacorbitt.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sonja_corbitt
Connect with me:
My Website: http://tammympeterson.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammy.m.peterson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammyPetersonPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tammypetersonpodcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tammy1Peterson
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TammyPetersonPodcast

Parental rights in schools are being quietly erased, and most parents have no idea it's happening until it's too late. In this episode I sit down with Kate Anderson, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom and director of its Center for Parental Rights, to talk about the schools that are secretly transitioning kids to a different gender without telling their parents. Kate has spent the last ten years litigating these cases across the country, and she walks me through real stories, a twelve year old girl in Wisconsin, a mother in New York who wasn't told for months, and a family in Michigan who caught it just in time. We talk about the statistic that should alarm every parent, six thousand schools known to have these policies, and what the Supreme Court might do next. If you are raising kids or grandkids and sending them to school, I don't think you can afford to skip this conversation. I would love to hear what you think, so leave a comment, subscribe if you haven't already, and share this with another parent who needs to hear it.
 
Kate is a graduate of Gonzaga University School of Law, where she earned her JD magna cum laude, and she spent her early career litigating civil and criminal cases in Seattle before joining Alliance Defending Freedom about ten years ago. Today she leads a team of six litigators focused entirely on protecting parental rights in schools, and she brings a calm, thoughtful presence to a subject that gets people fired up fast. We spend a lot of time on how school gender transition policies actually work in practice, the gender support plans, the dual naming systems where a child goes by one name with teachers and another at home, and the way some administrators will use one name with the child and deliberately use the child's real name whenever they talk to the parents, just to keep the deception going. Kate walks through the Wisconsin case in real detail, a twelve year old girl whose parents fought to protect her through a difficult season of depression and body image struggles, only to find the school working against them. We talk about the phrase some parents are told, that they could have a live son or a dead daughter, and how that kind of pressure gets used to push families toward decisions they were never given the full picture on. Kate also gets into the medical side of this, how some clinics are providing puberty blockers and hormones to minors without parental involvement, and why the emerging research out of Europe is starting to shift that conversation. We talk about Mahmud v Taylor and the Massachusetts case Kate is hoping the Supreme Court will take up next, and what that could mean for parental rights across the entire country. Underneath all of it is something I keep coming back to, that social transition without parental consent doesn't just cut parents out of a decision, it teaches a child that the adults who love them most can't be trusted, and that breaks something in a family that takes a long time to rebuild. Kate and I also talk about what actually helps, requesting curriculum, showing up at school board meetings, building real community with other parents, and why keeping parents in the dark should never have become normal in the first place.


Find more from Kate:
Website: https://adflegal.org/profile/kate-anderson/
ADF Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliancedefendingfreedom/
Interview 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QmSlCz5seY
Interview 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CNlXe6qrfM
Interview 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BExqLLH80eo&t=3s
Connect with me:
My website: https://tammympeterson.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammy.m.peterson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammyPetersonPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tammypetersonpodcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tammy1Peterson
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TammyPetersonPodcast