You heard them make a porn joke to their friends.
You walked in on them looking.
✔︎ Porn gets more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined.
✔︎ Age 11 - The average age a kid first sees porn.
✔︎ 1 in 6 women struggle with a porn addiction.
✔︎ Watching porn shapes men’s view towards women.
✔︎ Porn pop ads are legal in the US.
✔︎ It's estimated that up to 70 percent of online pornography is viewed on iPhones in the hands of kids.
This is not an article about how many kids and teens are looking at porn.
This is an article to give you parenting tools.
Tools for when you find porn, or before you find porn.
“Can we talk about something serious? May I ask you a personal question?”
"Sure, I guess.” They reply.
You gently say, “Have you ever seen pornography?”
Why ask them directly?
If you don’t talk to your kids about porn…who will?
If you don’t talk to your kids about porn…no one will.
If you do react…this conversation may be over before it ever begins.
(Before you freak out here, hear me out.) For some tweens/teens, porn is very shameful…and very, very embarrassing. Your tween/teen may feel like they are a “sicko” or a “pervert” if they watch porn.
Furthermore, studies have shown that watching porn can be very traumatic for people. You want to help then understand that this is a very common human issue/temptation/struggle.
“You aren’t a sicko, weirdo or pervert if you watch porn.”
This normalizing will help them feel comfortable, accepted, unjudged…which will then help your tween/teen feel more comfortable speaking to you.
If they say, “No! Ewww! Gross! No! Stop!"
Your reply should be, “Ok. We don’t need to talk about this right now. I'll respect your boundary. But we do need to talk about this soon. It’s important to me. So please get yourself emotionally prepared because we will be talking about this within the next 7 days."
And then listen…gently…without reacting….without judging…and learn. Listen and learn.
And now that you have listened first, it’s your time to be the speaker.
Beware: Teenagers don’t respond well to statistics or lectures. If you want to reach your teen's heart – tell a personal story. Your story.
Help your tween/teen understand how your personal story has shaped you and has helped you come to your conclusions and beliefs about porn.
As much as you may try to shield them, protect them or control their online life- in this day and age with screens everywhere - this will need to be their personal decision.
Founder of ParentingModernTeens.com
Click HERE to go deeper with Sean.
Click HERE to read “7 Things EVERY Teen Guy Needs to Hear From his Parents.”
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