Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [80]
Sure enough, he did—within minutes, as he plopped down to watch TV. He nearly choked on his Coke. Then he turned bright red. “What are these doing there?” he finally managed to say.
“Oh,” the mom said glibly, “I found these magazines with beautiful women in them under your mattress. I thought I’d just place them out here, where your sister and your dad can enjoy the pretty pictures too.”
At that point, the son looked like he was going to puke. He’d been caught red-handed.
“Or maybe there’s a better place for this stuff,” the mom continued matter-of-factly. “Like tearing it up and putting it in the trash. But I felt like that’s something you should do, rather than me doing it for you. After all, you’re the one who brought it into the house.”
The mom sat down with the son, talked with him about what the magazine was all about and how it depicted women, and asked, “Is this really what you want to spend your time looking at? Pornography is highly addictive.”
And that’s true. Addictive long-term behaviors start with brief encounters with such material.
Is it natural for an adolescent or teenage boy (11 to 14 is the age at which 9 out of 10 boys view pornography) to want to see what a woman’s body looks like? Yes. But there are healthy and unhealthy ways of viewing a woman’s body. And pornography is definitely unhealthy because of its lewd poses, raw view of sexuality, and degrading perspective of women.
Every boy since the beginning of time has been interested in and fascinated by a woman’s body. But today’s culture ups the ante of parental watchfulness because of the types of objectionable material that are so readily available. When I was a kid, porn wasn’t easily available like it is today. My buddy Moonhead and I got our sex ed from his father’s subscription to National Geographic.
With the Internet, pornography steps right into your living room . . . if you let it. Did you know that Internet pornography is a $12 billion industry?6 Wise parents set up blockers for objectionable material and periodically check the history button on their computer. You would never let your child wander through an adultbookstore, right? Well, I’ve got news for you. Your child can see a lot worse than that on the Internet with just one click of the mouse. Wise parents need to become savvy about everything their children are viewing—whether in magazines or on the Internet. Stats say that 9 out of 10 children will view pornography on the Internet. Will your child be one of them?
There’s also an additional danger—adults whose mission and business is preying on unsuspecting children and teens. According to Donna Rice Hughesof Enough Is Enough, an organization that has been working hard to make the Internet safer for children and families, “Child pornography has become a multi-billion-dollar commercial enterprise and is one of the fastest growing industries on the Internet. And 90% of youth receiving sexual solicitations are teenagers ages 13–17.”7
You can’t always protect your child from every danger, but setting up safeguards in this area is extremely important. Once pornographic images have been viewed, they are hard to erase from your child’s brain. And you certainly don’t want to give a sexual predator an easy way to get to your child.
Potty Training
There are three basic things that your child will do, no matter what—eating, sleeping, and going potty—and parents make a bigger deal out of them than they should.
Have you ever seen a second grader who isn’t potty-trained? A fifth grader? An eighth grader? Potty training will happen. Some kids are merely on a faster timetable than others.
Numerous people have written books about potty training, but the basic gist is this: look for signs of “I’m ready” in your child before you begin the toilet-training process. Otherwise you’re fighting an uphill battle (and a trail of pee down