A year ago, Tony Krieg, 43, witnessed a scene in a restaurant that changed his retirement plans.

He watched as parents brought their young son to a Texas Roadhouse restaurant for a birthday party. The parents steered the boy, who looked to be about 9 years old, by guiding him from the back of his head while he stared down at his iPad.

"Not once did that little boy look up" through the entire party, he said. After that encounter, Krieg sold the St. Louis-area electronics-recycling business he had run for 18 years and purchased his dream property: a 167-acre farm in Dittmer, Missouri.

He's decided to use that farm to invite families to spend a day away from their devices and learn a little bit about life away from constant connectivity.

"The goal is to get kids off electronics and show them there is a life outside of that, especially in the outdoors," he said. There will be fishing, hiking, arrowhead hunting and creek exploring, along with short presentations on topics like recycling, composting and gardening.

Calling the effort Missouri Kids Unplugged, Krieg has filed it as a nonprofit, set up a website (missourikidsunplugged.zone) and planned a fundraiser for March to cover some expenses. Last year, he estimates spending between $12,000 to $15,000 out of pocket so that 400 people could visit and take part in activities at the farm. He also provided food and some entertainment. He and his family want to try to offer the visits for free to thousands of children, including inner-city kids who may never have been to a farm before.

He and his wife have four children, ages 16 to 23, and they have always enforced some rules around technology use.

"We're not talking about living off the grid," he said. "We're talking about common sense boundaries. Let's have families again."

Ronald Dahl, professor of community health and human development at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke recently about adolescent brain development at a seminar for education writers. I asked him about the long-term impact of screen-saturated childhoods on teenage brains.

The jury is still out on what those impacts will be, he said. But there are two areas in which experts agree that a high-volume tech habit has negative effects: sleep and attention span. Adolescents get less quality sleep and have shorter attention spans when they spend a lot of time on digital devices. Recent studies suggest adults suffer the same consequences.

Some adults will recognize signs of their own dependence and take social media vacations; I've seen people announce such breaks on Facebook and Twitter. I've even tried this myself.

I wrote about a Facebook fast in 2010. After officially announcing my big breakup, our separation lasted less than a week.

Lately, I've been craving a few days in a cabin deep in the woods, cut off from Wi-Fi, cellphone towers and television. We are social creatures built for connection, but we also need a periodic disconnect. We need a pause to honestly evaluate how much time we spend truly disconnected from a device.

Perhaps a better approach to a short-term detox is to integrate regular downtime and make it part of a family's routine. Think beyond just taking a break from technology during meal times. Is it possible to do screen-free Sundays, where a block of time -- anywhere from four to eight hours -- is set aside? It would take some coordination to find hours that work for everyone. That's also key.

Too many family tech-detox plans start as a group effort, only to see the parents break down first, using "work" as an ever-present hall pass. Change has to be modeled from the top down.

My own family will be trying a digital detox soon. Rather than making this a punitive exercise, I want my kids to identify what benefits they each stand to gain: better sleep, more focused attention, more face-to-face activities.

The larger goal is about becoming more mindful of our tech use and media consumption, and building in regular breaks.

I agree with Krieg's observation that something valuable is lost unless we make an active effort to disengage with things and engage with one another.

He talked about the students who visited his property last year who had never in their lives walked on gravel in a creek. Some had never cooked a hot dog over an open fire or made a s'more.

"It's ironic that I owned an electronics recycling business," he said.

Proving that what goes around, comes around.

The two 10-year-old girls must have been freezing outside the grocery store in suburban St. Louis, but it wasn't obvious to passers-by.

It was 34 degrees and windy. They were wearing big, puffy jackets and bright, fuzzy scarves, with Santa hats layered on top of woolen hats.

The girls were nearing the end of a two-hour shift that had started at 8 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning. With their mothers standing behind them and the red Salvation Army bucket front and center, the foursome were ringing bells rather zealously. The girls were singing "Jingle Bells."

At one point, Anna Fairchild said, "It's so cold out here, Mommy."

Her mother, Christine Fairchild, responded gently: "We're out here for two hours. There are people out here all the time."

The girls kept ringing and singing and smiling.

Christine, a 38-year-old oncology nurse, had been out here the night before with her teenager. Volunteering for the shifts through their church has become a family tradition. There are moments when she's reminded why they do it.

This cold morning, a middle-aged woman stopped in front of the bucket with a handful of change. "I don't have a job right now," the woman said. "This is all I can give, but I want to give something."

Christine wants her daughters to witness these moments of generosity.

Laura McDurmont, 42, of Ballwin, Missouri, decided she and her daughter, Emma, would join the Fairchilds on this outing. Earlier in the month, the McDurmonts had visited a special-needs school to help children pick out toys. They also brought donations to a local food pantry and made gifts for another child through church.

"Right now, you're pretty lucky," Laura has told her children. "But you don't know when your luck is going to run out."

Babies and toddlers are self-centered by nature, and our job as parents requires that we meet their needs. But even very young children can begin to understand how their actions impact others. And this awareness becomes even more important as they get older.

The antidote to entitlement is gratitude. Research shows that gratitude helps to develop a child's sense of empathy and increases her own odds for a happier life. But just like imparting any value or life skill, teaching gratitude takes time, repetition and reinforcement.

It also requires some restraint and discipline on our part. Parents don't have to buy every single item on a child's wish list. Sometimes it's just as important to not get what you want.

Reflecting the cultural and economic mood, some parents have told me that their kids' requests to Santa were simpler this year. Many families are paring back. There is a recognition that with too much stuff, things get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes, the more you give, the less it is appreciated.

Although the McDurmonts' financial situation is stable, they also decided to cut back on purchases.

"The things we do buy are more meaningful," Laura said. "We're going to church more and doing more service projects."

They drew names with their extended family, rather than buy gifts for everyone. And she's taken to heart her friend's philosophy on raising grateful children.

Christine's cheery and chilly daughter may be the best testimonial to a parent's effort paying off. Anna said she's glad she got to ring the bell in the freezing temps: "I've been having fun doing it."

"For me, it's not about telling them," said Christine, on teaching her kids about gratitude. "It's about doing things with them."

Between the books, articles and blogs, the parenting-advice industry churns out millions of words each year telling us how to raise successful, happy children.

A lot of this material crosses my desk, and I try to share the most helpful parts. But when I need real-life advice, I turn to a friend who has battled in the same trenches recently, and managed to raise wonderful adult children. That living proof of a kind, thriving adult is a convincing testimonial that something worked on the parenting side.

Recently, I surveyed dozens of parents I've admired over the years, who have enviable relationships with amazing adult children. I wanted to know how they navigated the tumultuous teenage years.

Looking back, when were they glad they'd said "no" to their teens?

It's difficult to set and consistently enforce boundaries with adolescents. Children at this age have better skills of persuasion than toddlers, but similar boundary-testing, over-reactive temperaments. They are also skilled at guilt-provoking mind games.

Themes emerged in the responses from the parents I interviewed. These were the top 10 situations in which parents were glad they stuck to their guns:

-- No to parties when they did not know the parent hosting it. Even when it mortified their children, parents called to ask if an adult would be at home during the party. Unsupervised high school parties were not allowed.

-- No to having friends over when there were no adults at home. Even when children are old enough to stay away from physical dangers, their brains are still developing. Having an adult nearby can prevent risky experimentation.

-- No to allowing extra riders in the car when a teen first got his or her license. It's too easy for inexperienced, young drivers to get distracted with a bunch of friends in the car.

-- No to a co-ed sleepover after prom. Some parents even banned single-sex sleepovers as a general rule, or limited sleepovers to homes of friends the parents knew well.

-- No to staying out too late. These parents set a curfew, and their children may have complained that it was earlier than when some of their friends had to be home. The parents said they encouraged making their home the "hang-out house," where their kids' friends could stay as late as they were allowed.

-- No to doing things for the kids that they could do themselves. It may have been easier and avoided tears and fights for parents to do certain tasks for their teens, but these parents said they knew teaching independence would serve their children far better in the long run.

-- No to getting every material thing they wanted. Teens were required to do chores around the house. Some parents expected their children to earn their own spending money by getting jobs.

-- No computers or televisions in the bedroom. The computers were kept in common areas. Now, of course, children can access powerful computers in their pockets, but the idea of setting limits on technology is still relevant.

-- No to TP-ing houses.

-- No to attending parties with alcohol. Not only is underage drinking illegal, these situations can lead to life-threatening consequences.

Of course, there will be times when a child will disregard a rule no matter how often or clearly it's been explained.

"Sometimes they push us because they want to see how much we really care," one parent said.

Just as important as what their children were prohibited from doing is what these parents made a point to do: They were present, active and available in their teen's lives. They kept a watchful eye without smothering them. They shared their expectations that their kids would put in the effort to do their best work in school. They talked to their teens, even when they realized that they were not going to be their friend.

The friendship can develop later, once the child matures into adulthood.

"Trust your instincts," one mother said. "And pray a lot."