I wish tweens and teens came with parental controls. I was thinking about that the other day when I was setting time limits on our computer. Recently our family did some renovating and moving around of bedrooms. What used to be the bedroom for my husband and I became my youngest son’s bedroom. We had to temporarily leave the computer in that room until we are able to purchase a new computer desk and move it into the living room. Well one night I woke up at 2 a.m. to use the bathroom and discovered my tween son was on the computer playing a game. I was not very happy.
The next day I started to put parental controls on the computer. At first I was just going to block usage for a particular period of time but then I other features I had never looked into before. There were very specific ways that I could put limits on the computer. Now that we had it temporarily in a child’s bedroom I knew it was the perfect opportunity.
I remember doing the same thing with our satellite boxes. We blocked out certain ratings for programs, certain content and password protected those programs. It’s a comforting feeling to know that you have the control on television limits. I felt that same sense of comfort knowing I now had more controls on the computer. But as I checked off boxes that would disable them, such as sexual content or anything with drugs and alcohol, I thought to myself, “How nice it would be to have parental controls like these over my children’s lives.” Wouldn’t it be nice to just point a remote at your child and click “disable” to certain things? Why can’t I block my children from sexual content? Why can’t I block them from vulgar language? It would be nice but it simply isn’t possible.
When it comes to parental control over our children’s lives we are very limited. There are some controls we can enforce but when they are out of our sight we no longer have the ability to disable or stop something. We have to trust that they will make the right decisions and choices. Unfortunately they won’t always do that. Tweens and teens are facing a lot of “content” that we would like them to avoid. But there is no password protection there.
Since we can’t control the content they are exposed to then we have to be willing to talk about those issues. We can’t control our children with a remote but we can have open and honest conversations that will guide them. Talking to your teen is the best thing you can do. You will be surprised at how much they really take in what you say and how influenced they are by your words. You may not have the power of a remote but you do have the power of influence. Use that influence to help guide your children so that when they do face negative content they will know how to turn it off.
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