How Talking about the News Can Protect Kids from Pornography

Is the news getting you down lately? Here’s clever a trick! Use today’s bad news to bring about positive results in your family relationships.

At your next sit down meal mention something that’s causing you concern from current news/events and ask your kids if they know anything about it. Let them respond in their own words, then see where the discussion leads. You may be surprised how many topics you will cover with one news story.

Building strong bonds

The fact is, any time you can have an honest and frank discussion with your kids, regardless of the topic, you are building bonds and strengthening your relationship with them. These are the bonds that will make tackling any tough subject down the road easier to manage, including sexual intimacy and pornography.

Note: Not all news is bad. Scroll to the end of this post for a couple of victories in the fight against pornography.

Good intentions, wrong approach

Interestingly, when I became a parent, my first instinct was to shelter our young children from every bit of bad news that spreads through the media. I was vigilant about changing radio stations to avoid uncomfortable headlines. I could never quite decide how much information was too much for the young ears in the back seat, so I chose instead to err on the side of caution.

In reality children, along with adults, live in a world that includes war, racism, terrorism, murder, abuse, pornography and more. Wow! Heavy stuff!  How do you help your kids understand the world they live in without spoiling their innocence? And should you even try?

I am not suggesting we live 24/7 as if we are on the 6 pm news. There’s a lot of garbage and a lot of tragedy that could overwhelm young minds. My intentions, as a young mom, to protect my children were good, yet my approach was misguided.

In an attempt to spare my children from the graphic details of the news, I shunned the tough subjects altogether. Inadvertently, I was teaching my kids that there were things we weren’t to talk about in our family.

Can you imagine? Wait! This was not the message I intended to send!

Preparing children to handle upsetting situations

Probably the first indication I was missing the mark was when I picked up my oldest son one day from school and his 2nd-grade teacher informed me he had burst into tears during a classroom discussion.

Perhaps they were talking about a major earthquake in India or that year’s version of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Whatever the subject, it involved casualty and death and my 7-year-old had an emotional meltdown. His young teacher was caught off guard and was very apologetic when I picked him up at the end of the day.

While I was pleased to know that my son was fully sensitive to the value of human life, the experience helped me understand that I was also responsible to prepare my children to be faced with hard things, and I couldn’t always control when, where or what traumatic event might happen.

This time the experience was quite harmless—even cute. It occurred in a safe environment with a trusted adult on alert to tell me how my son had responded. What if another time the trauma occurs at a friend’s house and the content they stumble upon is porn, with no one there to shut it down, and no one to let me know?

Understanding how to respond to upsetting and disturbing information can be taught. Just as understanding how to recognize and reject pornography can be taught. In part, it’s about creating a safe place to talk about uncomfortable subjects.

Seeking understanding when tragedy strikes

Fast forward in time. Our youngest has now completed Grade 2. During dinner, we asked all our children to tell us what they knew about the police shootings in Dallas —a tragic story with many complicated layers. Together we discussed fear, racism, history, and the need for change. We discussed how those changes could possibly come about. It was an experience that drew us closer together as a family.

I now understand it is better for children to learn about sensitive subjects at home than to risk their being blindsided with traumatic information away from mom or dad. I still want to protect my kids, but now instead of putting my energies into creating a protective bubble, I try to work at a relationship level. I try to create a place where my kids feel they could come to me about any subject or problem.

Power in sharing

The other day I came across this great video conversation with Jill C. Manning, Ph.D. and Jason S. Carroll, Ph.D.

In the first minute, Manning confirms that there is power in sharing with young people how you personally feel about something you saw or heard in the media and then asking their opinion of it. She says that by introducing relevant topics in the home, even when they may seem uncomfortable, you are showing your children that your family and home is a safe place where anyone can talk about things that may be confusing or troubling. She says you want kids to know that it’s okay to lay the hard subjects out on the table and discuss them as a group.

So, if you are like me and you break into a nervous sweat every time your children are confronted with sensitive topics over the radio, on a magazine rack or in live video footage, remember that you can turn the negative into a positive experience by facing it head-on. If we want our children to know they can talk to us about anything, a good place to start may just be the daily news.

Some good news moments

USA: MacDonald and Starbucks to block porn on free Wi-Fi http://www.angelusnews.com/articles/why-starbucks-and-mcdonald-s-are-blocking-porn-from-their-wifi

Global: Google searches for Pokémon Go exceed that of porn http://fightthenewdrug.org/pokemon-go-is-more-popular-than-internet-porn/

Parents Aware now does speaking engagements

One thing you might not know is that Parents Aware will come to you.

If you are looking for a presentation that is geared to the specific needs of families then we are a perfect fit. Currently, we offer three unique presentations that can be tailored to your event.

• Prevention: Learning to become your kid’s best ally against pornography (For parents of young children and teens)
• Help: Finding answers when kids are struggling with porn (For parents and youth counselors)
• Understanding: Growing up in a porn saturated culture and learning to choose your own path (For teens and young adults)

For more information on presentations or to subscribe to our weekly newsletter please fill out the contact form below:

• About
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Marilyn

Marilyn has an educational background in family processes and believes that even the most difficult conversations with our kids can be made easy. She loves to share her own experience of parenting in the digital age through writing, live speaking presentations and everyday conversations.

Latest posts by Marilyn (see all)

• Radio Station Promotes Pornography: 3 Easy Ways to Take Action - September 24, 2019
• Teens Screens Connection & Happiness - September 3, 2019
• How to Get Your Kids Talking (About Stuff that Matters) - July 26, 2019