‘Home Town’ star says her kids have never held a phone or tablet

Screen time? Not in this home (town). Erin and Ben Napier, stars of the HGTV series Home Town recently opened up to Us Weekly about life at home raising their two daughters — including how they feel about technology and screen time — and revealed they’re taking an old-fashioned approach with their girls, 5-year-old Helen and 2-year-old Mae.

“My kids have never held a phone or a tablet or anything,” Erin said in the new interview when asked if she and her husband are proponents of screen time — though she was clearly exaggerating just a bit, since she later clarified that the girls have “FaceTimed grandparents” and “sometimes” watch TV. They’re just “having a lot” of fun without electronics, she said.

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“They’re getting filthy. They go outside, they play, they dig [and] they climb trees,” Erin explained. “That’s where we are.”

That’s not to say there’s a ban on TV in these TV stars’ home. Erin isn’t a mom who is immune to screens’ calming effect.

“[Before dinner] actually helps them,” she said. “Sometimes the only time the TV comes on is when [I say], ‘We need to settle down. We need to sit down,’ and I’ll turn it on for a few minutes while they start eating.”

She continued, “Then we turn it off so we can have family dinner and talk. I dunno, [there’s] something about the TV [that] gets them in one location where I want them to be and quiet. I don’t like for it to be on, but sometimes it’s, like, that bug light that draws them in.”

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Hey, what mom hasn’t used the TV to get the kids to sit still and calm down?

And it should come as no surprise that one show Erin lets the girls watch is Home Town.
“Helen loves drawing houses [and] that is something that, I guess, she picked up from Home Town,” she said. “When we’re like, ‘Do you want to watch Home Town tonight?’ She’ll say, ‘Yes,’ only because she wants to stay up late.”