The other day my niece and nephew came to visit. They walked into the house and were drawn, almost magnetically, to the table where all of my gadgets were laid out. They caressed my phone. Fondled my digital camera. Gazed curiously at my noise-cancelling headphones. Petted my back-up battery. Admired my ThinkPad.

Like the Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey, anything that had a microchip hiding inside beckoned these two teenagers. At first it was a little creepy. Then I reconsidered. While some adults worry that smartphones, tablets, and too much screen time is destroying the next generation, I remain optimistic. I see a lot of valuable life-world lessons that children can learn from playing video games, watching Netflix, and learning to code.

Parents and adults, however, need to be mentors and guides. Teach children how the lessons of digital life can be translated into real-world, everyday, tangible experiences. If we let them figure it out all by themselves, it is our fault if it doesn’t look the way we want.

Here are three ideas for how to make the most of your children’s obsessive relationship to 21stCentury Technology.

1. Chat Etiquette

Anyone with a nine year old can probably guess how much time my son spends playing Minecraft: as much as he can. I am not a big fan of restricting screen time, but he’d play all day if I didn’t stop him. My compromise is usually to require other things rather than take away screen time. I like to frame other things as a positive, not turn something he loves into a negative. I say, “You need to read for a while, you haven’t done that today.” Or, “we’re going for a hike.” Yes, he still resists, and I then I exercise my authority. But the key thing is that I haven’t driven a wedge between his world and mine.

I wouldn’t want to do that. There’s a lot of good lessons kids can learn from Minecraft. I’m sure you have read lots of articles about the positive benefits of Minecraft. I have written many myself. One about how Minecraft is shaping the thought paradigms of Generation Blockhead. One about the differences between passive and active screen time. And quite a few about the ways Minecraft is being used in the classroom.

These days, however, one of my favorite things about Minecraft is that playing and chatting on servers has taught my nine year old son quite a bit about communication and conflict resolution. I noticed that when he’s scared of getting kicked off his favorite servers, he excels at controlling his emotional reactions. All the stern lectures in the world will never be as effective as the kind of intrinsic motivation that one experiences when he wants to fit into his own social milieu.

Teaching kids about money is complicated. We want our kids to be responsible savers, but not greedy hoarders. We want them to be generous and philanthropic, but not naïve and idealistic. We want them to be successful, but thanks to 2,000 plus years of meek-shall-inherit-the-earth messaging from a religious culture derived from the Israelites’ slave-uprising, we’re afraid of also becoming the Pharaoh.

In Republic, Plato is already confused about how to understand the fact that financial success can be the product of unjust actions. In dialogues that read like early behavioral economics, Plato challenges democratic incentive structures, wondering whether the desire for wealth motivates individuals toward justice or injustice. “All men believe that injustice is far more profitable than justice,” says Glaucon in one dialogue from Republic. We all aim, he believes, to profit from bad behavior while appearing to be good.

In the modern world, we still haven’t figured it out. Especially when it comes to our kids, we struggle because our desires are inherently conflicted. We want to raise them in such a way that they become strong successful individuals that prioritize their own needs, and we also want them to give and share in a way that puts others first.

Plato may have been one of the first to ask these questions, but we’re still trying to answer them.  Ron Lieber writes the “Your Money” column for the New York Times. His new book, The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money, is new this week. An unconventional parenting book, The Opposite of Spoiled focuses on teaching us ways to instill good values around money.

I reached out to Ron to ask him a few tough questions about kids and money. He helped me to understand 5 things successful parents know about kids and money.

1. Money is emotional, not rational.

Jordan: One key theme of The Opposite of Spoiledhas to do with talking to your kids about money. Most parents struggle with talking to their children about what they earn and what they can afford to spend. Many parents try to teach money lessons, but sharing anything about their personal finances remains taboo. It makes me think of Sigmund Freud: when he established the practice of psychoanalysis in the Victorian era, he recognized our discomfort and repression around sex. Nowadays, practicing analysts say that clients are comfortable with sex but don’t know how to talk about money. Money is the new Sex. Just like with birds and the bees, many parents feel awkward, confused, and embarrassed about their own relationship to money. How do we, as parents, make sure we don’t transmit that sense of shame to our children?