From Game of Thrones to hard-core addictions
“It’s hilarious. Just search for it on Google Images.”
That’s how it started.
“Chris” was only twelve years old when his friend told him about the funny meme, those popular Internet pictures with humorous captions. But what started as an innocent search quickly led down a rabbit trail to hard-core porn.
Chris had actually never stumbled on any pornographic images before, probably because his parents had tried to be really careful. They didn’t have porn filters on the family computer, but it was at a desk in the great room, right next to the TV and the kitchen, and Mom or Dad were always right there when Chris browsed the web. Chris’s parents didn’t allow his phone or the family iPad in the bedroom. Plus, they set some parental restrictions on those mobile devices to prevent access to most sexual content.
But this particular afternoon, Chris’s dad was still at work and his mom was running errands. Chris didn’t think anything about booting up the computer alone in the house. He had done it before. And today he was simply curious about the funny picture his friend had described.
A quick click of the mouse, a few taps of his fingers on the keyboard, and he was browsing through Google images looking for the funny meme.
In the third row of pictures, second from the right, a girl wearing a bikini appeared. The caption was enticing.
Chris’s heart rate accelerated and he shifted in the squeaky computer chair. He looked over his shoulder. No one was there. He knew that, but couldn’t help but double-check.
He slowly scrolled the cursor over to the right, landing on the picture of the girl. A quick click and he was looking at the image full size. A button invited him to visit the page the picture originated from.
He stared at the picture for a moment, taking it all in. He had seen pictures of girls in bikinis before, but they had only really started to interest him in the last year. Plus, this girl was truly mesmerizing. Her bikini top barely covered all she had—and she had plenty. Her smile was enticing, especially the way she was licking her lips ever so slightly.
Chris didn’t wait another second. He clicked VISIT PAGE.
One click led to another, and less than five minutes later Chris was watching a video of two Ukrainian girls doing things he had never even dreamed about. It was his first exposure to hard-core pornography; actually, his first time exposed to porn of any kind.
Could Chris’s parents have done more? Maybe.
Did they do anything wrong? It’s hard to cast stones. We live in a world where porn is literally seeping through every digital and analog signal crawling through our homes. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up.
What can caring parents do?
First Exposure
I’ll never forget my first exposure to porn. My family was visiting another family from our church. They had two boys close to the same age as my brother and me. The adults assembled in the living room, drinking coffee and discussing boring grown-up matters, while the kids quickly retreated to the backyard to climb trees, dig holes, and hit each other with sticks.
It was only a matter of minutes before the older brother—I can’t remember his name—looked over his shoulder and then whispered to us, “Do you want to see something?”
We followed him to an alley behind his house. He moved a few bricks in the back of a junk pile, revealing a magazine. I can’t remember the title, but I remember the pictures well. The first picture I saw was of a completely naked woman spreading her legs, revealing something I had only seen as sketch drawings in an illustrated picture book about the human body. But what I was seeing in this magazine was so vivid, so captivating . . . I couldn’t look away as he flipped from page to page.
I honestly can’t tell you if I was turned on or just fascinated. But I know I liked what I saw.
I was nine years old.
I saw a handful of other magazines in the next few years, at school, at a friend’s house, a sneak peek in a neighborhood convenience store . . . I wasn’t addicted, but I never turned down a free glimpse. At twelve years old my neighborhood friend showed me his dad’s Penthouse magazine. I looked at it for literally hours, reading some of the stories and digesting each picture again and again. I had never seen pictures like these for more than a few seconds. My friend’s parents weren’t going to be home for a while. I had plenty of time to take it all in.
I can still recall many of those images from that magazine. In fact, later that night the images haunted me so greatly, I was plagued with guilt and ended up confessing everything to my dad.
My friend found out the next day and called me a wimp. (He actually used another word.)
A year later I was at the same friend’s house and he pulled a VHS tape off the shelf with the label Tora! Tora! Tora! With a smirk on his face he asked, “Do you want to see something?” I had a feeling we weren’t going to watch Tora! Tora! Tora!
Moments later we were watching hard-core porn. This was thirty years ago, and I can still tell you explicit details of this film. I remember the title, and I remember the name of the female porn star. I got to know her well in the next few months, because every chance I had, I was at my friend’s house watching the tape labeled “Tora! Tora! Tora!” over and over again.
I learned a lot about human anatomy from that ninety-minute film, and even more about the lure of sexual temptation.
That was 1984, before the Internet.
I can’t imagine the temptation young people endure today.
As I reflect back on this experience, I remember being magnetically drawn to the visuals of this film. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was the most arousing feeling I had ever experienced. That’s probably why I always disappeared to the bathroom immediately after the film to do what most young boys do when they crave sexual release.
Then the guilt would kick in.
Then one day my friend’s dad randomly decided he wanted to watch Tora! Tora! Tora! . . . and that was the end of that.
Today Porn Is Everywhere
In my world, it wasn’t easy to find porn. I had to search for it and then sneak behind the backs of adults to watch it. With the exception of my Tora! Tora! Tora! binge, it probably only happened a couple times a year. If I had been offered an avenue to see more, I’m embarrassed to admit, I might have traveled that road every day, perhaps multiple times.
Today porn bombards us through every cable and signal permeating our homes. Unless we all shut off the power grid and move to a shack in the mountains, porn is readily accessible.
If you have the Internet, the most explicit and depraved forms of porn are just a click away. If you ever stay in a hotel, hard-core porn is always one of the TV’s main menu choices. If you’re like the 91 percent of Americans who pay for TV reception at home, adult channels and pay-per-view porn are available at the click of your remote, not to mention the soft-core porn that they often show for free on Cinemax, Showtime, and HBO.
Maybe that’s why 87 percent of men admitted to using porn in the past year. If that weren’t enough, 69 percent of men and 10 percent of women report viewing pornography more than once a month.1
The U.S. has pandemic porn problems:
Sadly, when you look at the porn habits of teenagers, the numbers aren’t any prettier:
If your kids are eleven or older, chances are they have already stumbled upon it at least once.
Numbers can be scary . . . and frankly, you’ll see a lot of numbers thrown around in today’s parenting articles and blogs, varying in results. Sometimes it’s hard to determine which numbers are correct.
But I’m sure no one would argue with this: Porn is way too convenient and available to our kids today.
The important question is, how should we respond?
Inside the World of Porn
Parents know porn exists, and as much as we would like to deny it, we know it’s a viable threat to our kids. That’s probably why I hear the same question, almost verbatim, at almost every one of my parent workshops:
“What can we do to keep our kids from accessing inappropriate material?”
That’s what I asked my friend Craig Gross. Craig is the founder of XXXchurch.com, a ministry assisting people who are struggling with pornography addiction. Craig and his ministry have spent the last decade developing tools to help people young and old, both male and female, escape the bondage of pornography.
Craig is a dad traversing the same real-life issues the rest of us are navigating daily.
After catching up a little bit, I dove right into the subject at hand, asking Craig about the first age of porn exposure. “I’ve heard tons of different statistics thrown around,” I disclosed. “Which ones should we believe?”
“Eleven years old,” Craig answered. “That seems to be when most kids first stumble upon porn. But many discover it before then. I think it’s good to start talking with your kids about sex when they are about seven or eight.”
I pushed back just a little. “But what about that parent who thinks, Not my kid. My kid isn’t interested in that stuff ?”
Craig chuckled. “Many parents think, Not my kid. Those are frequently the parents who end up contacting our ministry a year later and begging us to solve their problems, because now their kid is addicted to porn.”
“So what’s the best advice you can give to parents about keeping their kids safe from the lure of pornography?” I asked.
Craig didn’t hesitate for even a second. “Be proactive. Most parents are reactive instead of proactive. They wait until porn has infiltrated their house, then they go around trying to put out the fires.”
“So how can parents be proactive?”
“First, talk with your kids about it,” Craig responded matter-of-factly. “Don’t be afraid to tell them the truth.”
“What can parents say?” I inquired.
“So if your son wants to spend time talking with strangers on the social media site Omegle, dialogue with him about the kind of content he’ll encounter?”
“Exactly. Don’t leave them with, ‘Because I said so.’”
“What if our kids sneak and go to racy sites when we’re not there?” I proposed.
“That is why it’s also important for families to put up some safeguards in the home.”
“What kind of safeguards do you use?”
“I just bought this Skydog router, and I use X3watch.”
A router is the little box that acts as the distribution center for the home’s Internet, both Wi-Fi and what is plugged into your computer. Any home with Wi-Fi has one.
“Tell me more about those safeguards,” I said.
“The router allows me to block out some sites at the router level. This makes me feel a little better about my kids’ friends using our Wi-Fi. The X3 software is something we at XXXchurch.com offer. It helps parents know where their kids are navigating on the web.”
(Craig’s ministry is great at providing software solutions to help parents battle the lure of pornography in the home. Jump on XXXchurch.com to see their most current software.)
“Is this just a problem with young men, Craig?”
“Sadly, no. Forty percent of porn visitors are female.”
“In all honesty,” I interjected, “do you think girls are as interested in porn as the guys?”
“Well, forty-eight percent of the people attending porn shows are women. Guys bring them. Girls know it’s what their boyfriend wants, so they are complying.”
Three Parenting Practices Preventing the Permeation of Porn
Parents are looking for practical ways to battle the threat of porn in their home. Of all the research and advice available on the subject today, here are the three common truths I see over and over again . . .
1. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Porn
We need to understand the power and pervasiveness of porn. If you’ve forgotten how readily available sexual content is in our world today, I encourage you to reread chapter 1 in this book. I can honestly tell you that you can’t protect your kids from it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all our kids are going to become porn addicts. And more important, I’m not saying to just give up. I’m trying to remind you that unless you literally lock your kids in the basement and never let them go outside or turn on any entertainment media . . . your kids are going to be exposed to some sexual content.
If your kids watch TV, they will hear sexual references, jokes, and innuendos frequently.
As I write this, Family Guy is still one of the most popular shows watched by young people. Have you ever watched an episode of Family Guy? I know families who let their ten-year-olds watch the show. Are you ready to explain what fellatio is when your ten-year-old hears it mentioned on the show?
In 2014, The Voice was in the top ten on the Nielsen charts almost any given week of the season. Shakira’s stardom increased tenfold during her season as a judge, so it wasn’t surprising when her hit song “Can’t Remember to Forget You” was in the top 100 of the music and music-video charts for much of the year. In this video, Shakira sang nearly naked or in lingerie before ending up on a bed with Rihanna as they groped themselves and each other. Even Elle magazine referred to “all the ridiculously hot, nearly naked looks from Shakira and Rihanna’s new video.”6
And this is just what kids are gleaning from the “clean” programming our world offers.
Entertainment media is only becoming more loaded with sexual content and images. Millennial experts Ypulse named Game of Thrones the most popular show watched by college kids. I already talked about the show in chapter 1, but let me just reiterate: This show is ridiculously pornographic. The only difference between Game of Thrones sex scenes and hard-core porn sex scenes are extreme closeup shots.
It doesn’t take an expert to realize that all these sexual messages and images make kids even more curious about something that is already enticing.
So where do they go for answers?
“Google is the new sex ed.” I’m starting to hear that phrase more frequently.
Anne Marie Miller is the first person I heard use this phrase in her article “3 Things You Don’t Know About Your Children and Sex.” After spending a summer speaking to kids about sex and counseling them, she kept hearing the same thing over and over again. Whenever she inquired about a young person’s first exposure to pornography, she heard the same answer—Google Image searching.7
Kids are going to the web, rather than parents, for their answers for two reasons:
The presence of porn is only growing more pervasive.
Just because our boys are more commonly affected by the visuals of porn, it doesn’t mean our daughters are immune from it. I constantly encounter youth workers who are counseling girls addicted to porn, but even more frequently, I hear about girls who are giving in to guys’ expectations driven by porn.
Author Penny Marshall wrote about this trend, interviewing girls in their young teens complaining about their boyfriends pressuring them to dress like porn stars, wear sexy underwear, have bodies like porn stars, and “behave like them when we are alone.”
In her research, she met a sixteen-year-old girl who had been dating a boy for four months, and liked him, but was scared by him whenever they got alone because, she claimed, “He changes.”
Suddenly, when we are being intimate, he’ll say something that he must have heard in a porn film. For example, he’ll call me a “bitch” and use dirty language that he’d never use normally. It’s awful. It’s so obvious he’s copying his actions from watching porn. No boy would call you beautiful. They use words like “hot” and “sexy.” . . . It’s all about performing sexual acts for them, and they assume we’ll love it.9
Parents need to stop deceiving themselves. We live in a sexually charged world, and chances are your kids are stumbling upon sexually charged messages and images frequently. If you want to battle the threat of porn in your home, start by opening your eyes to the reality of the situation. Porn is powerful, pervasive, and permeating.
That’s why we need to open up the doors of communication about it in our homes.
2. Look for Opportunities to Dialogue About Porn
It’s the one solution everybody, and I mean everybody agrees on.
I’ve been researching youth culture, studying parenting practices, and teaching parent workshops for over a decade now. I’ve read countless studies speculating how to be a better parent, how to reduce the risk of pregnancy and STDs, how to steer kids away from drugs and alcohol . . . I’ve read it all. And the one deduction I can wholeheartedly conclude is . . . no one agrees! I’ve read reputable studies that say more boundaries are the answer, where other respectable studies conclude the exact opposite—more freedom is just what kids need. But in all the studies, from all the PhDs in every university and practice imaginable, one common theme emerges. Every single expert agrees: We need to talk with our kids about this all the time.
And sadly . . . it’s the one thing parents don’t do.
So how do we have this conversation?
First, remember a principle that I keep repeating throughout this book. It’s not one conversation—it’s many. Look for opportunities to have these conversations. If a favorite TV character decides to sleep with his girlfriend, hit the Pause button and talk about it. Bring it up at dinner and ask their opinion. Do more listening than lecturing. More dialogue than monologue.
If the only time we dialogue with our kids is when we want to teach them something, we’re missing the point. We should be talking with our kids about everything. If you notice your five-year-old carrying around a particular teddy bear, ask him about it.
Why?
Because as parents we love our kids and want to get to know them better. Even the names of their teddy bears.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s Rufus.”
“Tell me about Rufus.”
The more we listen to our kids in daily life, the more they’ll come to us when they really need someone to listen.
As they grow and become more curious about sex, it won’t be a surprise when we discuss it with them. After all . . . we talk about everything.
Don’t be afraid to use discussion tools. My last book, Get Your Teenager Talking, is full of discussion questions that open doors to meaningful conversations. Crack a book like that open at dinner and ask your kids what they think about real-life issues.
Dads, don’t be afraid to meet with your sons once a week for breakfast and go through a devotional that speaks candidly about these issues. My devotional, The Guy’s Guide to God, Girls, and the Phone in Your Pocket, has been called “refreshingly brutal.” It gives advice like, “If you have to look over your shoulder to check if anyone’s in the room, you probably shouldn’t be typing it into the search engine,” or, “God wants you to enjoy a naked woman . . . one naked woman.” The book has countless entries about sex, temptation, and the way we should treat the opposite sex.
Books can be great resources, but don’t hesitate to use your Bible as well. Share Scripture and ask questions about what you read. Start with 2 Timothy 2:22 and 1 Corinthians 6:18.
Use questions as often as possible. Constantly look for any opportunity to listen to your kids’ hearts about the issues they are struggling with.
But let’s not forget to create an environment where our kids can learn to make these decisions without being bombarded with sexual content at every turn.
3. Place Safeguards
No, we can’t protect our kids from everything. And frankly, I don’t think we should try to remove our kids from every danger. If we swoop down and save our kids from every tough decision they have to make, how can we expect them to learn how to make decisions?
But that doesn’t mean we should raise our kids in the red-light district.
This is a tough balance at times.
I recommend setting some realistic and fair safeguards in the home, especially while the kids are younger. And I don’t mean just porn blocks. Today’s kids need boundaries in numerous areas of entertainment media and technology. I recommend frequent conversations about being wise with media, and boundaries that hold our kids accountable to that wisdom.
Doctor’s orders.
Seriously. Doctors frequently release studies about the effects of entertainment media on young people. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently published a report titled “Children, Adolescents and the Media,” unveiling the effects of media on children zero to seventeen years old. These doctors recommended the following to parents:
Note: This report wasn’t from Focus on the Family or some Christian publication. This is what secular doctors are recommending.
Are you teaching your kids how to make responsible decisions about entertainment media and technology?
Do you know what apps your kids are using? Do you “co-view” TV shows, movies, and YouTube videos with your kids? Have you had conversations about who they are communicating with in social media? Have you set some helpful guidelines and curfews for the entertainment media and technology in your house?
This is what these pediatricians recommend.
Don’t feel pressured to buy your ten-year-old a phone or a tablet just because every one of her friends has one. You’re not doing your kids a favor if you let YouTube, TV, and social media raise your kids.
When my kids were younger, we set some pretty strict guidelines to help them see the truth through the dense fog of entertainment lies. As they turned fifteen and sixteen, we lightened up a little, allowing them to make more decisions, but we kept some helpful guidelines:
These rules didn’t hinder them from learning to make good media decisions themselves. On the contrary, they taught them discipline and restraint. My older daughter, now off at college, says she wishes we could have had more nights of “no entertainment media.”
Entertainment media is full of lies. Guidelines, passwords, and porn blocks keep all our kids from encountering distractions at every click of a button.
I realize that porn filters aren’t foolproof. That’s why I wrote about the importance of having frequent conversations before writing about safeguards. Some people subscribe to some sort of “Net Nanny” and think they’re done raising their kids. Porn blocks aren’t the answer; they just help our kids see through the sexually charged fog that permeates much of the world wide web today.
What porn blocks work best? The second I write about it, it will become outdated, so I recommend going to the place our kids go for answers: Google. Do a quick Google search for “porn blocks” or “porn filters.” You’ll see advertisements for hardware and software, and you’ll also see articles with advice and reviews about which blocks work best. Do a little research. Ask fellow parents what they use. Jump on XXXchurch.com and see the articles and software they offer.
Just realize, porn filters aren’t going to block out Shakira nearly naked on YouTube, and you’ll find that some porn can slip through—hence the need for continual conversations. But these kinds of safeguards can help your kids browse the web without being bombarded at every turn.
In addition to porn filters, investigate how to use parental controls on your kids’ phones and other mobile devices. When they’re young, use a high amount of control, blocking out anything questionable. You have the password and only you download new apps. As they get older, give them more control as they prove themselves trustworthy, but continue to hold them accountable. In other words, maybe give your kids the ability to download apps themselves, but ask them about the apps frequently and have them show you what they do. Ask them what their experience has been. Teach them to make good media decisions—after all, when they turn eighteen and are on their own . . . they can download whatever they want.
Are you equipping them for that day?
If you’d like to know more about this, I write about parenting, youth culture, entertainment media, and technology constantly in my articles and blog on TheSource4Parents.com.
What If I Discover My Kid Viewing Porn?
Sadly, many of our kids will discover porn. Sometimes they’ll tell us, but many times they won’t.
If you discover your kids looking at porn, consider these three steps:
1. Sleep on Your Response
As parents, our first reaction can often be overreaction.
Suppress the temptation to handle it right then. Very few parents handle these situations well on the fly. Buy yourself some time and say something like this:
We just discovered what you have been looking at on your computer/phone/mobile device. I’m not exactly sure what is best to do at the moment, so we want to wait, pray, and sleep on the decision. In the meantime, I want you to go unplug/power-down your computer/phone/mobile device and keep it off for the next twenty-four hours until we talk tomorrow. We love you so much, this is too important for us to overreact and do something hasty and brash.
This accomplishes two tasks: (1) It truly buys you time to think, pray, and sleep on your decision. I find that wisdom sometimes comes in a slow trickle, where ignorance expels like a fire hose; and (2) the wait will give them time to think about what they did. Sometimes that is a punishment in itself.
Many kids might even say, “No, I want to deal with this now!” The wait will be torturous. If this is the case, and if you have the self-control to restrain your reaction, then tell them:
You can feel free to talk with us. We’re always here to listen to you. We just want to withhold making any decisions tonight. So feel free to share anything you like with us. We welcome it. Just please don’t expect us to resolve something tonight. We need time.
After buying some time . . .
2. Seek to Understand
Start by trying to understand the situation. Ask them questions because you care, not because you’re trying to dig up incriminating evidence.
Here are some questions you might use:
In some cases, boys might be more comfortable talking with just Dad about this, and girls with Mom . . . but not always. In some situations it might not be bad to have both parents giving assurance of their love. Consider what would make it easiest for your kids to open up.
Let your kids see your love and grace throughout this process. As you listen and seek to understand them, you might even be able to share some stories from your own life of overcoming struggles and temptations. Remember to listen more than you lecture, though. Focus on helping them feel heard and understood.
3. Propose a Plan of Purity
Jesus had an amazing way with sinners.
As a sinner, I can’t help but be attracted to it. In fact, the more sinful a person was in the Gospel accounts, the more they seemed to want to be near Jesus. It’s almost as if people wanted freedom from the bondage of their sin, and cherished the opportunity to encounter someone who would not only respond in love and grace, but offer deliverance.
Think about it: Zacchaeus (Luke 19), the woman at the well (John 4), the woman caught in adultery (John 8), the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7) . . . Jesus didn’t dwell on their sinful pasts; instead, he provided grace and a fresh start for their future.
How can we help give our kids a fresh start for the future?
Many might instinctively think punishment.
I think we should consider deliverance.
If you catch your kids looking at naked pictures, confront them, sleep on it for twenty-four hours, then trudge through the whole scenario with them. . . . That whole experience is almost a punishment itself. The shame of being caught by Mom and/or Dad was no doubt one of the most embarrassing and humbling moments ever experienced. My guess is . . . Johnny doesn’t need a spanking too.
Instead, come up with a plan for deliverance and healing.
A. MAKE SURE THEY UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH ABOUT SEX
We’ve been talking about God’s gift of sex throughout this whole book, but specifically in chapter 4, “The Most Enjoyable Sex.” Help them understand that lusting after pornographic pictures is wrong and God can deliver them from that bondage.
Share some of the truth I’ve been highlighting in this book. If I caught my son looking at porn, I might say:
Son, I totally understand the temptation you’re experiencing. In fact, it’s a common temptation all men have; you’re not alone. The reason why you want to look at a naked woman is because God created you to enjoy looking at a naked woman . . . one naked woman. Take a look at Proverbs 5:18–23 with me.
Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
May you always be captivated by her love.
Then I might ask:
But then keep reading:
Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman,
or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman?
For the Lord sees clearly what a man does,
examining every path he takes.
An evil man is held captive by his own sins;
they are ropes that catch and hold him.
He will die for lack of self-control;
he will be lost because of his great foolishness.
Then I’d ask:
Help your kids understand that God wants them to enjoy sex with their spouses someday, but the gift of sex was created to be shared between one man and one woman. Just like sleeping with someone before you’re married lingers into marriage, porn brings others into the marriage bed. Porn becomes a rope or snare that catches us and holds us captive from the freedom God provides in our lives.
Talk about lust. Help your kids understand the pitfalls of lusting and how to escape it. (We go over this in detail in the next chapter, about masturbation.)
The world is full of messages that say, “Just lose control” or “Do what feels right at the moment.” The Bible tells us to give God control.
B. HELP THEM RECOGNIZE NATURAL CONSEQUENCES
If your son is the one caught viewing porn, let him know some of the natural consequences, like impotence. This isn’t a scare tactic; it’s just the truth. The fact is, impotence is increasing, and many men are not satisfied with their sexual partner (I’d love to say “wife” here, but unfortunately, for many it’s just “sexual partner”) because they’re truly becoming addicted to the never-ending stream of dopamine spikes they get from watching different women do different things at the click of a button.11
The more porn guys watch, the more difficult it is to become turned on. This is becoming a huge problem with young men, Psychology Today explains:
Desperate young men from various cultures, with different levels of education, religiosity, attitudes, values, diets, marijuana use and personalities are seeking help. They have only two things in common: heavy use of today’s Internet porn and increasing need for more extreme material.12
But porn was available when we were kids, right? Wouldn’t too much Playboy hurt sexual performance in the same way?
Not even close. The static images of Playboy can’t compete with the readily available high-speed connection to the biggest database of porn in the world—the world wide web. Men are literally “numbing their brain’s normal response to pleasure,” and they can’t “get it up” for their sexual partner anymore.13
That’s scary! I don’t want to fail in the bedroom because of an “affair” with virtual women on the screens in my house. Impotence is a natural consequence that I’d rather avoid. I think most teenagers would agree.
Porn has other natural consequences, like convincing our girls they are sex objects. Porn sites communicate two major lies to our young girls: You need to look perfect, and your value is based on sex. If our girls have frequented porn sites, we should engage in conversations about sexualization much as we discussed in chapter 6.
An important part of parenting is helping our kids recognize truth. Porn is a complete twisting of the truth. Real love takes work, patience, self-sacrifice, tenderness, and compassion. Real relationships are so much more than just sex. Porn, however, is just a sex show, where perfect-looking models engage in pure animalistic thrill with no concern for the long-term. Porn sets false expectations all around and eventually leads to disappointment with reality.
C. ESTABLISH SOME HELPFUL SAFEGUARDS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Again, a “Net Nanny” subscription might not be enough. Do you use parental controls on mobile devices? If you block porn on the router level, can your kids access your neighbor’s router? Do you have HBO, Showtime, or Cinemax on your TV? Do you use passwords? Is your password your birthdate?
If you don’t know exactly how to respond or what safeguards to implement, try asking your kid for their thoughts. Ask them, “What do you think would be good safeguards we can put in place to help you flee this temptation?” Read 1 Corinthians chapter 6 together and ask your kids, “Why does the apostle Paul use the word flee here?” And, “What do you think you could do to flee this type of temptation in the future?”
Remember, when your child turns eighteen, he or she is an adult and can do pretty much whatever they want. Try your best to help them build good habits and give them the tools to succeed on their own. Teach them to make good choices.
Porn can become a severe addiction. In some cases, children might need some professional help. Don’t assume this right away, though. Don’t make them feel like perverts. Don’t overreact and start threatening to send them to a counselor. But if you think the problem is severe, don’t hesitate to get a second opinion from a professional. Family counseling can be a very healthy thing.
Porn is a powerful enemy that seeks to destroy anyone it can get in its clutches. Young people and teenagers are particularly vulnerable to this monster. If your teenagers are among the unfortunate users of pornography, prepare yourself to be willing to make some big changes in your family’s life for the sake of your kids.
Yes . . . this might mean canceling that HBO subscription.
Let’s be honest. How well does the “Do what I say, not what I do” approach to parenting work? If we are watching inappropriate material ourselves, (1) our kids will most likely crack our codes and find it, (2) we are now opening the doors to material that objectifies women, and (3) we’re being hypocritical bringing other people into our marital beds (yes, that’s what lusting does).
Maybe we need to ask ourselves if we are fleeing sexual immorality.
Sexual immorality was a real struggle for many of the heroes in the Bible (Abraham, Judah, David, Solomon . . . ) and it’s a struggle for godly men and women today. Our kids aren’t immune from it . . . and neither are we.
Are you being proactive or reactive about porn in your house?