Erin and Ben Napier’s daughters trick-or-treat together in a sweet snap from Halloween.Photo:Sara Kauss/FilmMagic; Erin Napier/Instagram
Sara Kauss/FilmMagic; Erin Napier/Instagram
Erin and Ben Napier’s daughters are growing up right in front of their eyes.
Big sister Helen was a wolf with a tail hanging behind her while Mae was a fuzzy blue unicorn with a multi-colored tail and mane and a white horn on the hood of her outfit.
“Big sis showed her the ropes and held her hand every step of the way,” Erin wrote in the post’s caption. “My heart busted, y’all.”
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Erin Napier shared a sweet photo of her daughters Mae and Helen holding hands as they trick-or-treat on Halloween.Erin Napier/Instagram
Erin Napier/Instagram
Erin recalled an early incident of posting Helen on social media that inspired her to make this decision inan essay for TODAY.compublished earlier this year.
“When my daughter Helen, who’s now 5, was very young, I posted a picture of her, and someone criticized the way she looked,” she wrote. “It made me see red. It made my blood boil.”
“And it seems like the criticism always comes from other women. It feels like betrayal when a fellow mother has the gall to criticize your child or your parenting,” she noted.
Erin said of her and her husband’s “informal agreement” to keep their daughters off of social media and away from smartphones: “We don’t want our kids to be disconnected. We always have said, ‘We’ll get landlines so they can call each other, and then when they’re old enough to drive, we’ll get them flip phones, and they can call and text each other.’ ”
Helen and Mae Napier.Erin Napier/Instagram
The experience inspired them to launchOsprey, a nonprofit that assists families with finding a community that also prohibits cell phones and/or social media — to normalize the choice — all while allowing their kids to meet other kids.
“A lot of people are like, ‘You’re so naive,’ for thinking we can keep our kids off of social media and away from cell phones. But it’s not a forbidden fruit thing,” Erin wrote.
“We don’t intend to ever treat it that way for our girls. What we intend to teach them is that you can live the most incredible life, and you can do and see and be anything in the world, if you are not tethered to something fake.”
She concluded, “This is us teaching our children: You deserve more. And you are capable of a whole lot more if you can skip social media and cell phones until you’re older. Until you’re ready, you’ll have your growing group of Osprey friends who are having the same low-tech adolescence.”
source: people.com
