Getting a youngin' to spend less time on their phone is always a challenge for parents. One dad decided to accept the challenge and turn it into an adventure.
Bradley Herbst, who is from Jacksonville, Florida, created a rule to keep his 14-year-old daughter Sydney from being on her cell phone so much while he drove her to and from school. On Fridays, he's her ride, and if she breaks the rule, he gets to embarrass her by walking into her school in one of the wacky costumes he wears just for the occasion.
It looks like his method is working. "Sydney follows the rules!" Herbst told Refinery29. "Both she and Andrew are too scared that I'll actually walk them into school, that they don't even have their phones out. They're packed away in their backpacks."
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Herbst said that he often bases the costumes on whatever his kids — Sydney has a younger brother, Andrew — are learning in school or current events. He posts them on Facebook every Friday, and friends and family have started to look forward to them.
Something tells us that while Sydney does her best unimpressed McKayla Maroney face in these photos, she secretly loves her dad dressing up in all the creative costumes. (Or that she'll appreciate it when she's older, anyway.) He's worn everything from an Elvis costume to nurses' scrubs.
His favorite costume so far? "Grandma." He told us: "It sticks out to me, because I literally thought of it at the last minute (night before), and I had to borrow the walker from my podiatry practice!"
His wife Sharon's favorite is his Dr. Seuss costume. "She made the green eggs and ham!" he told us.
"My daughter’s friends and classmates absolutely love it," Herbst told HuffPost. "I think it’s taken Sydney until this year to actually enjoy it herself. Once she started enjoying it, she started posting a pic of me in my costume, every Friday morning, to her Snapchat." (But no Snapchat in the car, obviously.)
"I hope other parents get my message of how important it is to find a way to communicate with your kids while they’re 'unplugged,'" he told HuffPost. "It’s so hard to get that phone out of their hand, you might need to come up with a creative way to do it. And if it turns into a fun thing, even better!"
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Side note: Who is he in the pic below? Debbie Harry? Hello Kitty at a rave?
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