By Caron C. Andrews
Pornography has saturated our culture, from clothing to speech to racy TV shows to hard-core porn videos. We can talk about porn with our children in open and honest ways in order to curb its harmful effects, but did you realize there are ways you can fight porn beyond talking about it? Here are some things you can do.
- Create An Open Environment
Trust and communication are key. Begin early, while your child is still young, to establish yourself and your home as a place for open communication with your children about everything—emotions, expectations, sex, values, and each family member’s interests.
- Use Internet Filters and Parental Controls
These can be your best friends. Any device or computer your kids can access should have them so that you can protect your kids from inadvertently (or deliberately) finding pornography online. Cell phones, tablets, iPods, and home computers can each be outfitted to your specifications.
- Help Them Develop Self-Worth and Respect for Others
A healthy sense of self-worth is a powerful deterrent to pornography—if your child feels good about himself and views others as valuable and deserving of respect, they are much less likely to be caught in the pornography trap. They won’t want to see people, especially women, being objectified and degraded.
- Nurture Your Children
Go beyond the basics—be actively involved in your kids’ lives, show them affection, set rules and boundaries, and encourage their individuality. Help them know they are special and unique by spending time doing things that are meaningful to each of you and by listening to them as they share themselves with you.
- Don’t Let Your Kids Turn Into Loners
All the ways to “connect” with others through social media, texting, and email can actually isolate your child, removing opportunities for face-to-face, real-life interactions. When the main interaction with others occurs in posts controlled from safe distances, it can cultivate a sense of others people being two-dimensional and emotionally removed. This disconnect can lead desensitize kids to others as people—a perfect segue into involvement with porn.
- Model Self Love and Self Respect
Children naturally look to their parents for direction and to learn how the world works. Teach them by your own example from a young age how to take care of themselves physically and emotionally and how to have healthy boundaries in relationships.
- Teach Them About Bodily Integrity
We are much more than a collection of individual body parts. Our bodies are the storehouse of our humanity: they are our vehicle for experiencing life, and they should be honored as such. Treating your own and your children’s bodies with integrity will help them see others the same way, reducing the attractiveness of porn.
- Emotional Intimacy
Many people turn to porn for the same reasons they turn to drugs or alcohol or overeating—they want to feel whole, satisfied, and close to something greater than themselves. They may be looking for true emotional intimacy in these substitutes rather than where it can really be found—in connected, close relationships. Creating emotional intimacy with your children, close friends, and spouse teaches your children how they, too, can build satisfying relationships.
You can make a powerful difference in your child’s life and in fighting the damage of a porn-saturated culture. Our goal is to help you do just that.
For more information on this subject, check out our book How to Talk to Your Kids About Pornography, which is also available in .
