Ben and Erin Napier have made it their mission to keep their two young daughters off smartphones. So far it’s working — maybe a little too well.
“The thing that’s happened now is they’re probably a little too judgmental of [other] kids using phones,” Erin tells Yahoo of the couple’s daughters, Helen, almost 8, and Mae, 4.
“If they’re [somewhere with other] kids who are on phones, they get really frustrated,” Ben chimes in. “Because it’s distracting for those kids, and [our kids] get upset.”
He pauses. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
Like most parents, the stars of HGTV’s Home Town — which kicks off its 10th season on Jan. 4 — are figuring out how to best set boundaries around screens. The Laurel, Miss., residents have been vocal about their tech-light approach to raising their daughters, even cofounding the nonprofit Osprey (Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth) to help other families adopt the same approach of a “social media-free childhood from grade school to graduation.”
“It’s easy when they’re little,” Erin says. “Since they were infants, they’ve known that [a smartphone] is not a toy. This is a tool for grown-ups. They’ve never held one. They know that there’s a very dark place here that can be found. But we don’t use it for that.”
The DIY stars — college sweethearts who married in 2008 — also avoid using phones in front of their kids. When they must use a smartphone in their presence, they explain why.
“I don’t want my girls to think I’m on here playing, so I’ll say, ‘Right now I’m texting Aunt Pal,’” referring to business partner Mallorie Rasberry and Home Town regular, ‘to see what we need to do for our friend whose grandmother passed away.’ I try to include them and narrate anytime I’m using my phone, but I try to just not use my phone around them, if at all possible.”
What the future holds is an open question, they say.
“I don’t know how the rubber is going to meet the road in a few years, if they start asking for one,” Erin says. “But, like, right now, Helen says, ‘I think that when I become a teenager, I should get a flip phone. I think that’s appropriate.’ And I was like, ‘I think it’s appropriate too. That’s a good plan.’”
It’s not like the girls are cut off from the outside world. The Napiers installed a landline at home, and the girls have a Rolodex of contacts.
“Honestly, it feels like it has scratched that itch,” says Ben, who smiled when he walked in on the girls calling his 91-year-old grandmother.
Erin says she’s already seeing the benefits.
“They’re building great communication skills,” she says. “I’ll hear them say, ‘Hello, Grandmother, this is Helen and Mae.’ [At first], they would just smile when they were asked a question, and I’m like, ‘You have to say something. They can’t see you.’”
The Napiers also follow the “want, need, wear, read” strategy for gift-giving, focusing on meaningful items over excess. The girls were given toy catalogs to peruse ahead of Christmas, which has been a work in progress.
“I’m torn over it because I loved looking through catalogs [as a child],” says Ben, who remembers the Sears Wish Book days. “I thought that was over once the internet had been established and everybody was shopping there. So when these catalogs started coming again, I got excited, but [the girls] started going through them, and it’s toys they’ve never heard of [and suddenly want].”
Erin adds that Helen created a color-coded highlighting system to let her parents know what she wanted — and the list quickly grew long.
“I was like, ‘Listen, Sis — circle three things, and we can look at them and think about it,’” Erin says. “It’s been challenging.”
Of course, that wasn’t their only challenge. Just when the couple felt they had struck a good work-life balance, they added homeschooling to the mix.
Ben teaches the girls history, math and Bible studies, while Erin’s in charge of language arts, art and the rest.
“It’s a lot, but everybody has to figure out work-life balance,” Ben says. “I think that the way that we do it is probably unique for the TV world. We say no to a lot of things just because it’s too much. It pulls away from home life too much.”
Perhaps the best perk of their TV stardom has been being able to work in Laurel, where Erin grew up and where they’re raising their family. On the show, they renovate local classic homes, but they’ve also invested in the larger community, running several small businesses, including Laurel Mercantile, Scotsman Co. and Scent Library.
The college sweethearts say that getting to work together is “a blessing” and is one reason why their “marriage is so strong.” (Courtesy of HGTV)
This season, the couple undertakes a massive project: renovating a historic home that presents extra challenges along the way. That’s the focus of the first episodes.
“For a typical Home Town project, 10 weeks is really long,” says Ben. “That one [stretched to] seven months. It was the first time we had to get permission to make it two episodes.”
Unlike some reality shows that thrive on drama — we’re looking at you, Bravo — the Napiers maintain a remarkable ease with each other, even when expensive obstacles pop up. Inspired by Travis Kelce saying he and Taylor Swift never fight, we had to ask: Do Ben and Erin argue while working and parenting together?
“We do disagree, but we don’t fight,” Ben says.
“We get along very, very well,” Erin says. “We communicate really clearly all the time. I know everything he’s worried about. … We have no secrets.”
Ben says they look at getting to work together all day, every day “as a blessing” and credit it as one reason “why our marriage is so strong.”
“And as far as Taylor and Travis go,” he adds, “they’re probably still pretty new. They probably don’t fight. It’ll come. There’ll be disagreements, [but] they’ll work through them. It’s all about being a team.”
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