You Better Have ‘The Talk’ With Your Kid Before the Internet Does!
https://www.auntydebbysblog.com/2016/01/you-better-have-talk-with-your-kid.html
Parents of teens have known to hide their stash of naughty mags and DVDs, vibrators and lube to keep their adult playtime safe from innocent, prying eyes. But more and more evidence indicates that parents of young kids should be worried, as well!
“Parental safety controls” aren’t controlling much.
According to a national study,
7 out of 10 kids came across pornography accidentally online. In other
words, kids who search for images on Google for school projects stumble
upon uncensored, explicit sex pictures about 70 percent of the time.
In
fact, 40 percent of porn was downloaded as a result of an innocent
keyword search (the word “sex” ranks fourth out of the 10 most popular
word searches).
There
are even sites that deliberately set up precisely to trick folks into
visiting them, which are easy traps for kids. For example,
whitehouse.com is not really an informational site about the president.
It launches into a virtual black hole of sex pop-ups that are next to
impossible to escape.
The
“easy fix” (or so we’re told) is blocking these adult sites by
installing parental controls. Well, what I discovered after surveying
approximately 3,000 parents is what the national study found — kids are
exposed to pornography more often through accidental (and albeit,
unfortunate) circumstances.
Many parents even confessed that their kids accidentally intercepted a sexy text, video or picture intended for a significant other.
Basically,
the old “block it and monitor” tactics are not even close to being
effective enough, nor does it address how to deal with the inevitable
when it does (and it will) happen.
Your kids WILL see it. Here’s how to respond when they do …
With the average 10-year-old having access to five different screens at home, chances are good that your child has seen some kind of sexually explicit message.
So
with that being said, at what age do we start talking to our kids about
what they are seeing? And more importantly, have we set the stage for
our kids to even step up and tell us when they do see it?
As parents, be calm and listen to them even if they hold a picture on oral sex before you and asking you questions that can almost choke you because you cannot imagine them behold such site!
Take a deep breath within yourself and speak to them.Never act unreasonably by keeping such inquisitive child silent.
What our kids need in conversations about porn is clarity and (if necessary) consequences.
Lying
to our children or making them feel shamed for seeing something sexual
is a dangerous road to go down. It can lead to our kids having unsafe
sex at a premature age. One peer-reviewed study found
that boys, between 12 and 17 years old, who were exposed to pornography
had sex earlier and initiated oral sex earlier in an imitation of what
they had seen.
If
children are being exposed to sex as young as 6 … (and let’s face it,
if you’re sexually active, your kids have either caught you or overheard
you talk about it already) … then, we as parents need to start having
conversations about anatomy around that same age.
I’m
not saying to teach your first-grader about oral sex or orgasms, but do
teach your child that boys have penises and girls have vaginas (and
that babies come out of that vagina). Also that their bodies belong to
them and no one should touch it without their consent.
Children need close monitoring
ReplyDelete