Be a parent; not a friend

This is the part where you become a parent and not a buddy.

You simply say to them that seeing they are the ones who put a roof over their head, food on the table, and gave you the gift of life you—being the person responsible for how they will turn out in life—have every right to know if what they are doing with their friends and online is okay or not. They may balk but your involvement shows how much you love them as a parent. The alternative is much worse than not engaging in their lives.

Communicate. Educate. Establish ground rules

I’m no Dr. Phil, but I think that giving children some boundaries is not a bad thing at all.

Here are a few more tips for monitored “freedoms”.

1. Talk to your kids about sexuality. This world is much more sexually charged than the one you may have grown in. Sexual terms are at anybody’s disposal in an instant; radio programs talk about it openly; magazines—male and female—are constantly pushing tips on how to be more “available”. Parents need to head them off at the pass.
2. Parents, YOU are the sex ed teachers! Teachers need to learn the material out there and all the technology available to kids, engaging in their life. Find out what is out there and what they are doing so you can be a few steps ahead of your teen.
3. Teens need rules. In fact, if most teens were honest, they want rules so they know where they stand and know what is expected of them. If you just hand them a phone or an account without any supervision they can walk all over you as parents and go as far as they want without any restraint or idea of how much this can hurt them. This is wrong. If you put a curfew on how late your teens can stay out or how late they can stay up then it’s time to put a limit on how long to let them on the computer or on their cell phones.
4. Before buying a cell phone, find out what parental tools are available to block or place limits on them. If its an on line account, than why not have a primary account, in which a parental block can be put on a child’s account. Most servers like Yahoo or MSN will have this function available.

If communicating about sexuality on a regular basis is not enough, or if putting every safe guard on such 21st century technology is not enough, then you may have to do something “so like last century”.

Don’t give them anything.

Their world won’t crumble if they don’t have these technological devices with them twenty-four hours a day,except for an emergency of some sort where you can hand them your phone. They may be better off not having those tools at all.

This may seem like too much censoring and restricting freedoms. But until parents feel comfortable their children are safe, responsible, and knowledgeable about sexuality and relationships (not to mention the technology available to make social life fun) censoring may not always a bad thing.

** Lisa, leave this in here, I’ll create the poll before publishing **

Note to Editors: Poll question: How many electric devices does your teenager(s) own?

To learn more about Christ Pro Erotic, visit christprorotic.blogspot.com.

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