Protecting Your Home from the Roaring Lion

This week I’m doing a 3 part series on something we wish didn’t exist, but does.

• The Lion That Wants to Devour Your Family (Part 1)
• Protecting Your Home From the Lion (Part 2)
• How to Cope and Respond When the Lion Has Been Let In (Part 3)

What a horrible series to write.

You hate it. I hate it. You don’t want to read it, but you can’t turn away. I don’t want to write it, but I can’t not write it any longer. We are going to do this, moms. We are going to build strong protective walls around our home. Breach the existing cracks. Prepare our kids for what they’ll encounter and help them to develop a healthy sexuality.

How to Protect Your Home From the Roaring Lion

We’re going to Fight the New Drug. Even though we don’t want to and we’d rather live in denial and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Talking to Our Kids

“We need to get tech-savvy, and as toe-curling as it seems, we are the first generation that will have to talk to our children about porn. We have to tell our kids that pornographic sex is fake and real sex is about love, not lust. By talking to them, they stand a chance. If we stick our head in the sand, we are fooling only ourselves.” – Martin Daubney (former editor of adult magazine)

The best way to open the conversation up with our children is to start at a young age. Teaching them age appropriate information will help the subject to not become taboo, then you’re able to go further into discussions on purity, self-respect, and the like. A fellow blogger has written a book on how to talk about this issue with your kids. It’s called The Talk: 7 Lessons to Introduce Your Child to Biblical Sexuality.

If your children are already older, you may find the book below, Relationships, more suitable to your needs.

Location, Location, Location

First, let go of the idea that your children “deserve privacy.” This is actually projecting levels of self-control on children who are still developmentally unable to make mature decisions. Your child does not need a tablet, mobile, or computer with them in private places where others are not around. They don’t.

Consider having your family computer in a communal living space. Keep phone and tablet chargers in the kitchen or your bedroom so they do not have internet access at all times of the night. Remember, you don’t need to prove you trust our children by placing them in harm’s way.

Passwords, Codes, and Shut Off Times

Again, it is foolishness to think you should grant your children trust in an area they are simply not prepared to fight yet. This is not an, “Oh you were looking at something naughty, don’t do it again. I trust you.” Pornography is something that must be heavily guarded against for the sake of your children. Don’t make them easy prey.

Instructions for Password Controls:

• How to set up parental controls on Netflix
• How to set up parental controls on Xbox One
• How to set up parental controls on Chromebook
• How to set up Google Safe Search
• How to set up YouTube strict search
• How to set up parental controls on the router level (meaning the content cannot be accessed – even from visitors – at your home)
• How to set up parental controls on Apple iOS
• How to set up parental controls on Android

Personally, I think it’s best for the wife to do this. Though some women do have a problem with pornography, men are far more likely to struggle with temptation in this area and if the wife is in charge of these controls and passwords, she’s helping to protect not only her children but her marriage as well.

Some of the above programs, as well as internet filtering software such as Covenant Eyes, allow you to select a time to shut off internet privileges. In our home, the internet goes out at 11:00 p.m. My husband’s a student and is often studying late on the computer, but together we figured by 11 he should sleep anyway so that’s where we landed.

Wise Choices Before the Battle

I firmly believe that, in this area, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more precautions a family has through discussion, connection, awareness, and proper safety programs the less likely anyone is to fall into the trap of viewing pornography regularly. (If you still don’t think pornography is a problem just visit Fight the New Drug. You’ll change your mind in about 5 Mississippis.)

Here are some examples of precautions personal friends of mine (and my own family) have set out. I’m not mentioning names so I’m just using generic Husband, Wife, and Child.

• Husband does not use a smartphone. There’s one tablet at home that only Wife has the code to and Husband goes on it to play games, but only beside the Wife.
• Neither Husband nor Wife use the internet alone in the home past 9 p.m. If something needs to be done after that, they must both be present.
• All capabilities for private viewing or incognitio searches are disabled and Husband’s phone has Covenant Eyes on it which is set to block all downloads from PlayStore and all apps that are not approved by Wife. The ability to download can only be done with a code that only Wife has.
• All internet in the home has 2 to 3 levels of filters. At the router level, on the computer level, and on individual phones. Children don’t have Safari enabled on phone.
• Neither Husband, Wife, nor Children have passwords the other family do not know. This is not to invade privacy but to promote transparency.
• The Instagram app (the easiest place to access pornography for kids) is blocked on devices and at router levels.

Every family is different. You may view some of the above suggestions as overkill, while others may have much more strict rules about internet usage in their homes. It’s up to your own family to decide.

However, the one thing I want to stress to you again is that your family is not immune to this temptation. 

Remember what we said in Part One of this series? Let’s remind ourselves of this if we are temped to just ignore the dangers here.

“I am an adult. I will not be naive. I will be grown up about this for the sake of my family. I will not pretend members of my family are above the things that tempt the rest of the free world.”

Stay tuned for the last post this week:

• The Lion That Wants to Devour Your Family (Part 1)
• Protecting Your Home From the Lion (Part 2)
• How to Cope and Respond When the Lion Has Been Let In (Part 3)