Brain on Porn (Social #2), DeYtH Banger [good books to read for 12 year olds .txt] 📗

see pornography.

For all children and teens, there must be media limits in the home. Don’t even make secrecy an option. Cell phones should be monitored and filtered and should stay out of bedrooms at night. (And if your teen says that he uses his phone as an alarm clock, remember that stores still sell alarm clocks and go buy one.) Again, if these rules are established early, they will not be seen as disciplinary but as wise principles by which your family operates.

 

 

 

Preparing Their Character

Protective measures are important, but they are not the most important. In the end, we are raising future adults, not just kids. We are raising young men and women who will eventually leave home.


and enter a world without filters. It is vital that we prepare them by fortifying their character.
Sex Education

Teaching kids about sex might sound toe curling to some parents, but if we neglect to be involved in our children’s sexual maturation, we will be leaving a massive void that promoters of pornography will be only too eager to fill.
Sex education, whether we like it or not, begins early. From a young age, children discover and explore their sexual identity and notice the basic physical differences in the opposite sex. Even when your children are young, you can communicate with them about the dignity and the value of their bodies. Teach your children the names of body parts and the importance of honoring their bodies and the bodies of others through modesty and privacy.

Age six in many countries marks a significant shift in a child’s life as he begins to spend more time in school around peers, and it is in this setting that children are often exposed to misinformation about sex. Additionally, around the age of six or seven, children enter a new stage of cognitive development, when they begin to reason with logic and imagination. They become more aware of the world around them, and their intellectual curiosity begins to grow. Also around this age, a child’s adrenal glands begin to mature, which leads to the production of natural sexual steroids in the body. Because of these factors, this is a perfect age for parents to begin having more formal conversations with their children about specific sexual topics, such as how life begins. It is also a time to give warnings about sexual predators.
During the middle childhood years, parents should teach children about the nature and the purpose of sex—most of all, its power and beauty. For some parents this might seem absurd. What young child can really understand these adult topics? The point of this education is not to overwhelm children with titillating information but to impress upon them the goodness of sex when it is expressed with mutual love and affection in marriage.
During this time, make sure to draw a contrast between the goodness of marital love and the wrongness of exploiting another’s body. You don’t have to look far for examples. The checkout aisle at the grocery store will suffice—every magazine cover explodes with vibrant displays of scantily clad men and women. Simply tell your children, “Do you see the woman in this photo? Someone has paid her to show off her body to the world to attract people to buy this magazine, but we know that the human body is not meant to be turned into an object like this.”
As kids get older, it is vital for parents to have conversations about body image and specific sexual behaviors. Parents must become unflinching realists and prepare themselves for candid conversations.
Once I gave a talk to a group of parents about sex education. While the overwhelming response to the talk was positive, some parents said they felt very uncomfortable with my using words such as “penis” and “vagina” in a public setting. I wanted to say, “No wonder you don’t talk to your kids about sex. You can’t even listen to anatomical words in room full of adults who have gathered to talk about sex.” If this is you, I tell you with the utmost compassion: please overcome this inhibition. Children and teens need to see that their parents are reliable sources of knowledge about sex, which means that conversations about these matters should be considered normal in the home.
Please don’t mistake my brevity on this subject for ignorance about the fear parents feel over this issue. I know parents often are afraid of saying too much too soon. Sadly, this often means that they end up saying too little too late.
Modeling Love

The sad reality is, children are sexualized because of adults. Adults are the ones who own multimillion-dollar advertising companies. Adults are the ones who buy and sell the bodies of others. Adults are the ones who produce and consume porn. Adults are the ones who expose children to porn, and sometimes these adults are the children’s own parents.
If we are going to form the character of our children, we need to model the kind of person we wish them to become. This starts with the media we consume ourselves, but it extends beyond this to the way we relate to one another. We need to take an honest look at ourselves and ask: Do I show respect for myself and others by the way I dress, speak, and act? Do I honor and cherish my spouse?

Am I careful to govern the things I look at and think about? Do I set boundaries to protect my children?
Choose to be a family that upholds the dignity of every person. If you are a father, be the dad who noticeably turns his head or changes the channel when a racy image comes on TV. Show affection to your daughters and take an active role in protecting them by setting curfews, meeting their friends, and restricting their social life and social media when necessary. Talk frankly to your sons about sexual self-control. If you are a mother, be the mom who affirms her own inner beauty and doesn’t obsess over her looks. Set the example of modesty for your daughters. If you are married, be the couple who goes on dates, communicates, and gives each other compliments. If you are a husband or a wife, be the spouse who steals kisses in the hallway: show your children what marital love and tenderness look like so

that the allure of abusive porn sex can’t hold a candle to what they’ve seen at home.
Setting Boundaries

A child who never suffers the consequences of his bad choices will soon learn that he can get away with anything. A child who never learns to respect authority will soon come to believe that all rules and guidelines are nothing but arbitrary standards that can be discarded for any momentary pleasure. Such a child is ripe for porn when he stumbles upon it. This is why children should grow up in homes where there are clear rules and expectations.
On this point we must be very careful. Too many parents have discarded the notion of rigid household rules because they associate this with authoritarianism. They know that kids living in authoritarian homes are quick to rebel because of power struggles, and they are correct.
Clinical psychologist Diana Baurmind’s traditional classifications of parenting styles can be helpful as we consider how to lay ground rules in the home. There is a major difference between authoritative and authoritarian parenting.

• Authoritative parents use discipline to instill character in their children. Authoritarian parents use harsh chastisement to coerce and to control their children and, when that fails, to inflict pain on their children to get revenge.
• Authoritative parents accompany their discipline and instruction with high levels of warmth and grace. Authoritative parents are often cold and distant.
• Authoritative parents allow children to question the rules because they know

that dialogue is part of the learning process. Authoritarian parents are unresponsive to a child’s needs and questions.
Because porn has no rules and feels like a no-risk venture, the child who believes there are no norms and expectations, or a child who believes he can easily ignore those expectations, will undoubtedly become ensnared in sexual media.
Parents should make expectations and standards clear in the home—not just about matters of sexuality and media choices, but about all matters that pertain to living wisely. Yes, children will push the limits, but an authoritative parent knows how to push back in a manner that communicates authority without sparking a huge power struggle. Authoritative parents invest time and attention in setting rules with their children, not just for their children, allowing them to see the wisdom of the rules that are set.

 

 

Nurture and Love

For many reasons, porn can become a refuge for people. In the world of fantasy, we get a quick fix of erotic pleasure, and in that fantasy world nothing is expected of us. Amid the pressures of life, a little porn can feel like well-deserved relief.
This is why, as parents, we need to do everything in our power to make sure that our homes are not places our kids seek refuge from. If anything, our homes should be places of refuge, but this cannot happen if our kids are growing up in an environment of constant criticism, impatience, self-centeredness, and frustration.
We must remember: there are two kinds of parental authority: institutional and personal. Institutional authority is the authority that parents have simply by virtue of being parents: children should honor their elders because they are their elders. Personal authority is the kind of authority that parents have by taking visible responsibility for their children,
showing love, devotion, and affection, and giving children a sense of power in the choices they make. As parents do this, children yield to the wisdom their parents impart. Both kinds of authority are important for parents to use.
Institutional authority is like having your name on the checkbook; personal authority is like having money in the bank. Some parents make the mistake of thinking that if they deposit a lot of money in the account, they’ll never have to write a check. They never put up any boundaries or make any rules. They have a “just love ’em” attitude, which means they end up being pushovers. Other parents make the opposite mistake of believing that they can’t possibly be out of money because they still have checks in the checkbook. In other words, they demand obedience from their children “because I said so”, but their children are exasperated because their homes are devoid of the kind of encouragement that would help them to flourish.

There are no guarantees when it comes to parenting because no parent can control every aspect of a child’s world. But so far as it depends on us as parents, we must step up to the plate and raise the kind of children who are ready to respond to a sexualized world. We must guard their eyes and fortify their hearts. We must teach them the goodness and the purpose of sex, show them the beauty of sexual integrity and marital love, give them firm boundaries, and nurture them with affection and attention.
This isn’t just porn-proof parenting. It is wise parenting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Only religious people oppose porn.

As I wrote in the introduction, this book isn’t a religious offensive against pornography. Still, you’re reading a book produced by a large Catholic publishing house; and if you’ve googled my name, you know that I am Catholic, unashamedly so. I run in circles with many people who dislike pornography, many of whom are religious to at least some degree.
The fact is, many people who oppose porn are religious, leading some to believe that only religious people oppose it.
For instance, psychologist Dr. David Ley says that all the talk about porn addiction and sex addiction is coming from religious people advocating their religion’s sexual morality:

They are typically unable to put forth a healthy model of sexuality, and when they do, it is so transparently conservative and religiously driven that it’s frightening. Most of the leaders of the sex-addiction movement are themselves recovering supposed sex addicts and religious folks. That’s fine, it’s fine for