Dear Reader,

While recording this episode with Carmen, there was one moment I think we can all relate to.

Carmen is the mother of Vincent, an autistic teenager, and the founder of Optism, a platform supporting families of children with autism in Hong Kong and across Asia.

She was describing the first time Vincent began messaging her on WhatsApp. When he was first diagnosed with autism, he was nonverbal. Carmen remembered wondering whether there would ever be a day when she could write something to her son and know that he understood it.

Then, years later, she sent him a message.

The three little dots appeared on her screen.

He was typing.

“Hey mom.”

Carmen told me she still gets excited whenever Vincent texts her back. What might be an ordinary part of parenting a teenager for someone else is something she never takes for granted.

When she said that, I laughed and told her I feel the same way about my teenagers. There is something reassuring about seeing those three moving dots. Your child is out there, becoming more independent, but still has something to say to you.

Three dots mean: My child is thinking.

Three dots mean: My child has something to say to me.

Three dots mean: Wait. A response is coming.

Technology occupies such a strange place in parenting. We worry about what it takes away: attention, conversation, patience, sleep. Those concerns are real. I have built much of my work around helping families look honestly at them.

But Carmen’s story reminded me how easily we can overlook what technology gives.

When Vincent was younger, family dim sum lunches could be overwhelming. The restaurant was loud. The smells, tastes, movement, and attention of relatives could become too much. An iPad helped him regulate himself enough to remain at the table.

From the outside, someone might have seen a child staring at a screen and a mother taking the easy way out.

From inside their family, the screen made participation possible.

That difference—between what a stranger sees and what a family knows—sits at the heart of this episode.

Carmen remembers people giving her side-eye in restaurants. She remembers strangers seeing Vincent in distress and commenting that he had been poorly raised. She had to develop what she calls a “thick skin,” not because judgment stopped hurting, but because she knew something those observers did not.

The iPad was not replacing parenting. It was part of her parenting.

We often talk about children and screens as though we are choosing between technology and independence. Yet for Vincent, technology became part of the path toward independence.

This is the tension Carmen and I kept returning to: How do we protect our children without making our protection the boundary of their world?

Carmen worries about what could happen if Vincent becomes overstimulated when he is out alone. She knows that someone who does not understand autism could misread his behavior. But she also knows that keeping him beside her at all times is not a life.

“I think it’s important to set him up for success rather than to let him see how he could possibly fail,” she told me.

Setting a child up for success is not the same as clearing every obstacle. It can mean giving them enough structure, preparation, and usable tools to attempt something without us.

Every family will define those tools differently. That is why simple rules about “good” and “bad” screen use so often fall apart in real life. A YouTube video can be mindless downtime. It can also prepare a child for an unfamiliar airport. A phone can interrupt a family meal. It can also allow a teenager to travel across a city and meet his mother at a restaurant.

Context matters.

That will become even more important as technology grows more adaptive and AI becomes embedded in education, communication, and daily life. The questions cannot only be: How many minutes? Which device? Was the screen on?

We also need to ask: What is this technology helping this particular child do? Is it replacing a capacity, or supporting one? Is it narrowing the child’s world, or making more of that world accessible?

Those are harder questions. They require us to observe before we judge.

Carmen founded Optism because Vincent, looking back at how far they had come, told her, “I think we need to help other people.” What began as one family’s difficult and deeply personal journey has become a community of 100,000 users, helping families across Hong Kong and Asia find information, language, and one another.

That, too, is something technology made possible.

Listen to “Roll Out the Dim Sum and the Screen,” my conversation with Carmen about autism, judgment, communication, and the technologies that helped Vincent find his way into the world.

Listen to this episode to hear how one family used everyday technology not as a shortcut, but as a bridge to communication, participation, and independence. Carmen and Vincent’s story may change what you see the next time you notice a child using a screen. ​ Listen Now

If it makes you reconsider what a screen might mean inside another family, share it with one parent, educator, or friend. You can also forward this email to someone who would value the conversation.

If you know a school leader or educator wrestling with these questions, I’d especially love for you to pass this along.

Peace, Love, and Hairgrease,
Arcadia

​
​