In an ideal world, our kids would learn about sex in age-appropriate, incremental stages based on our family’s standards regarding sexual purity as well as what educators and physicians know about healthy child development. We would help our kids develop a healthy perspective on relationships, sex, intimacy, love and marriage, and we would be able to protect them from harmful, explicit and violent sexual content.
Unfortunately, many of us are clueless, overwhelmed, or intimidated when it comes to talking about sexuality, much less pornography, with our kids. I know so many parents who simply turn away as their kids idolize nearly naked pop-princesses, watch “family channel” shows filled with insinuated and simulated premarital sex, and have unrestricted access to pornography through gaming devices, mobile phones and laptops. As a result, the powerful, misleading messages portrayed in the media and through Internet pornography are taking the lead in educating our kids about sex.
Manuel Zizumbo, Mount Pleasant Academy’s Program Director decided that this year he needed to take a stand. “It’s killing us,” Zizumbo said. “When a young man or woman gets a hold of this stuff and they start chasing this dopamine high, they stop going to school, their relationships are sabotaged, their intimacy levels drop—everything just becomes skewed.” As a result, the school has started a program to help students kick their porn habit, which couples therapy with healthy activities (like camping, sports, horse back riding) to help them get their minds away from the computer screen and engaged with their offline life.
While I commend Zizumbo’s efforts, I think we also need, as parents, to be doing the hard work of educating ourselves and engaging with our children about healthy sexuality. We can’t leave it to our schools or even our youth groups to do all of the work. If parents worked alongside and reinforced the positive work that leaders like Zizumbo is doing, I think that would be a powerful force to combat the sexualization of our kids and the mis-education that comes from pornography. To help you get started, I would strongly encourage you to check out our parent resources on pornography. We have a short video (below) along with a to-the-point guide about the harms of pornography and what you can do to protect your own kids. In addition, one of the groups I’ve worked with developed a great curriculum called Internet Safety 101 that parents can go through together to help teach you in more detail how to protect your kids from pornography and other dangers online that would also be a great resource for you to check out.
It’s time for you to realize that pornography is not just harmless fun—it’s having a deep impact on the health of our culture and the health of your own kids.