I've felt a near sense of urgency lately to teach my children to be able to recognize and avoid the evils in the world. I feel like there is so much more "out there" to be concerned about. While i think many of these things have always been around, the prevalence and ease of access is greater than ever (i.e. pornography).I read somewhere that the average age that boys are first exposed to pornography is eight. Eight years old. I want my kids to be able to talk to me, to feel comfortable asking Doug and me questions if there's something they aren't sure about. I hope we can have open and frank conversations. This was not the case in my own upbringing. While i don't remember it being a problem, necessarily, i do remember that when my mom attempted to talk to my sister about the birds and the bees (and i happened to be in the room, too), that we both basically laughed her out of the room (i was probably 8, my sister 11). We just didn't talk openly about pretty much anything. I think she threw her hands in the air and gave up.
I planned a Family Home Evening to address this and i'm really happy with how things went. We read from Ephesians 6 about putting on the whole armor of God--the analogy of physical armor to spiritual armor. We compared soldiers going out to battle in their armor for protection and how we can put on our spiritual armor to avoid temptations and be protected. We specifically talked about movies, foul language, poor treatment of others, dirty jokes and "pictures of naked people," whether in magazines or on the computer. Bode's eyebrows went up in disbelief when that phrase was said (i suddenly have Beevus and Butthead in my mind--"Heh-u-heh. Dad just said NAKED!"). We talked about what they could say or do in different situations and that they can always come to us with any questions. It was a good little dialogue and both boys participated a lot.
We then made a "shield of faith" and a "sword of the Spirit" for each. They had fun battling each other and seemed to enjoy the FHE and actually listened and learned.
At bedtime, Keegen said to Doug: "So, if we're at Ian and Jed's and they want to watch a bad show, i can just tell them that will destroy our armor of God. That's awesome, right Dad?"I can't wait to get a call from the boys' friends' moms saying they were admonished by my four-year old when they offered to put on the Chipmunks Squeakquel...
POST-EDIT: I tried to find the article i read that said the average age boys are first exposed to porn is eight and i can't find it. i googled it and everything i see says the average age is eleven. So i guess i was off a bit. I did find this statistic from enough.org, "Nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet." Maybe that's what i was thinking. So, whatever the statistics say, it's a rampant problem and i'm glad we've addressed it and hopefully opened up communication lines with the boys.
