Good Pictures, Bad Pictures
Porn-Proofing Today's Kids
Two years ago when my then six and nine year old boys were
inadvertently exposed to pornography by a neighbor boy I dove into educating
myself on this topic. Despite my best
efforts to protect them from this exact type of thing, I had failed. My heart was broken, yet I was determined to do
what I needed to in order to help them through this.
According to Internetsaftey101.com seven out of ten youth
have accidentally come across pornography online and American children begin
consuming hardcore pornography at an average age of 11. On top of that four out of five 16 year olds
view pornography on a regular basis. Fight
the New Drug claims they often get emails from six year olds sharing about
their addictions to porn. These are frightening statistics. Part of me wants to discount them as being
overly aggressive for shock value, but then I realize even if these stats are
cut in half I still don’t like the odds. Is there any hope for my boys? The only answer I came up with was
education. Educating our children,
appropriately, at an early age is the first and most important weapon we can
give them in this battle against tech-aged pornography.
But how does one start educating a six year old on
pornography? Seems like a slippery slope. A door that once opened can’t be shut. This a unfounded fear and one door I don’t want my kids going through alone or with strangers. If you are like me and want to arm your young
kids with good and proper knowledge, but don’t know where to start, I’d
recommend “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures; Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids” by
Kristen A. Jenson, MA and Gail Poyner, PhD.
“Good Pictures, Bad Pictures” is an incredible recourse for
children ages 6 to 11. What I love about this book is that it is a model “Healing
Story”. It gently and appropriately introduces kids to
the concept of Pornography without infringing on their innocence by using the
story of a mother and son. It describes
the science behind pornography and how it is a legitimate addiction. It helps kids understand the difference
between their Thinking Brain and their Feeling Brain and how these two brains
work together to protect them. Finally,
it gives children a plan of action to keep their brains safe when they do come
across pornography.
The content in this book is fairly concentrated and for this
reason you may need to go through this book with younger children slowly,
chapter by chapter, giving them plenty of time to digest the information. Each chapter gives a summery and space for
notes. The book’s story line tends to be
a bit young but I found that reading it silently together with my 11 year old
son and then discussing it and rereading the summery out loud helped. We also watched a video by Fight the New Drug
on the three ways pornography affects a person.
This day and age pornography education is a must for our children. It's as important as teaching them to cross the road safely or practicing stranger danger. Luckily there are lots of great resources out there once you start digging. Here are my recommendations for good places to start.
Now go fight for your kids' innocence!
~Kristen
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