At this stage of parenting, we had to make decision on the fly when it comes to the use of one of the most powerful tools in the world…The World Wide Web. Do we let our eight year old daughter search on Internet Explorer? Do we let her watch videos on YouTube? Do we let her play on TikTok? Oh, the joys of big parental decisions.
My wife grew up as an only child in a home with parents that had no secrets, had no filters, and no limits as to what she could watch or not watch when it came to movies or shows. Horror movies with romance scenes and some nudity were regularly watched with my wife and her dad. So many movies were watched that together from the local Block Buster Video store that they just started in the horror section and started in the A’s and worked their ways to the Z’s, one at a time.
I, on the other hand, had to walk on egg shells and keep secrets from my younger sister. Had an older brother who introduced me to porn at a super early age and showed my how to secretly clear the history to not get caught. Sex was a taboo thing in our house that was hardly ever talked about. We couldn’t watch the Simpsons, Rosanne, or anything with cuss words in it. That pretty much left us with Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and Solute Your Shorts to watch. No TV’s in our rooms. No dating until 16.
So being married and having a child now, we have to compromise and discuss these kinds of things. I’m not so sure that we are moving ahead by blocking the internet and YouTube from our children. Recently, my daughter came to me and said that she lost her hamster. She was distraught and crying like crazy. After calming her down and getting her to breathe, I reassured her that we would look for him when I got home from work in a few hours.
Before I got home that afternoon, she has jumped on the iPad and googled “What to do if I lose my hamster?” and she had three specific projects to help find the pet. My favorite was to take a piece of aluminum foil and put peanut butter in the middle of it. If she went to get the peanut butter, you can hear him from the foil and grab him. Genius idea! She was so happy for looking it up and having an action plan in place.
Yesterday, she calls me and says “Dad, I was going to give Nugget (the hamster) some of your almonds that have salt on them, but decided I should look it up to see if he can eat them.”…”hamsters cannot eat salty almonds, but the internet recommended that I feed them apples, broccoli, blueberrys and so I cut them up and put them in a bowl for nugget.”
She was so proud and I was elated at what she had just done. She had a problem, a serious question on her mind. She took the time to stop, look it up. READ UP on it and then make a better decision after having quality information. This is exactly what internet and YouTube videos are for. How can you limit a child from learning and tell them internet and YouTube videos are bad, but then expect them to look things up and research projects on their own? I don’t understand how the conversation will go with you kid. “Hey don’t look at porn, don’t google sex, don’t ask the Siri any thing about the human body.” I mean, wouldn’t that just cause them to do it because you brought it up? Kind of like, “don’t put your hand in the cookie jar.” Don’t you know that all that kid is thinking about is how am I going to get my hand in the cookie jar.
If and when my daughter finds something inappropriate, like porn, on the web, we will have an open conversation about what she saw and answer any questions about it. I’m not going to let this be a Taboo subject. I want her to be open to discuss it with me and not have to run lock herself in her room to sneak it in.
I’m not going to lock it down and then have to decide what to filter, how much to filter and what is allowed and not allowed. We will handle this on a case by case bases and adapt as she grows older. I’m confident that this is much better than the kid that grows up knowing his parent’s locked everything down and keeps secrets.
