Let me tell you a little story, and I think you'll immediately understand why my kids don't check the mail.
“Would you like to get the mail for me?” I asked my young son. Taking out the trash was one of his first “big boy” responsibilities, and now it was time to broaden his horizons even more.
He answered with an excited, “Yes!”
Although our once-busy road has now been made much safer due to the redirecting of traffic other than us and a couple neighbors, I still watched him from the window as he went down the driveway. I wanted to make sure he got back to the house safely, but even more so I wanted to see that he didn't get distracted and set the mail down to start riding his bike or digging in the dirt. 🙂
When he walked back in the door and handed me the stack of mail, I was horrified to find that one of the pieces of mail was a catalog for women's underwear! The front cover had a full-length picture of a woman in her bra and underwear. I've tried to stop these catalogs from coming before, but to no avail. It had been a while since I'd received one, though, so that was the last thing on my radar when I sent him out to check the mail.
I said to my son, “I'm very sorry, but you won't be able to check the mail anymore from here on out. Do you know why?”
“Because there was a bad magazine in there,” he answered.
“What did you do when you saw it?” I asked, trying not to sound accusatory. I wanted to reinforce the things we'd been teaching him without making him feel like he was in trouble for seeing the catalog.
“I flipped it over.”
“Okay. You did the right thing. But I still don't want you to check the mail anymore. Even though you flipped it right over, you can never un-see what you accidentally saw. I don't want to put you in the position for that to happen again.”
Although he was disappointed, he understood and agreed.
I was talking to a friend of mine, and she noted that a similar scenario had played out at her house too.
I've checked mail for friends and relatives who have been on vacation and seen that the same type of mail shows up in their mailboxes sometimes too.
Fast-forward a few months later to this afternoon, when I wanted to check the mail, but it was chilly and rainy.
“I could just send one of the kids out to get it,” I thought. “Those things only show up every once in a great while, and surely there won't be something this time….No. I need to stick with what we've decided. What if there was something this time?”
When I opened up the mailbox, guess what was staring me in the face? You guessed it. Another picture of a nearly-nude woman.
I was ever-so-glad I hadn't sent my son out there.
I'm not going to pretend that my children will never see inappropriate pictures. They will. They'll see magazine covers in the grocery checkout line. They'll see scantily clad people out in public. They'll see billboards. They'll hear filthy words like my son and I heard coming from the rap music someone had cranked up in the Walmart parking lot the other day.
Sheltering isn't the only answer. They need to be taught how to respond when they are assaulted by the wickedness of the world.
But I'm also not ashamed to say that I shelter my children as much as possible too.
The devil is a roaring lion who wants to devour them.
See also: Protecting Your Child from the Devil
He wants to pervert their minds through any means he can. He wants to taint their innocence and leave images that can never be erased. He wants to tempt them to entertain wrong thoughts.
And as long as the devil is around, which will be until we leave this earth, I'll be telling my kids they can't check the mail. I'll be turning magazines backward in the checkout line and diverting their attention away from filthy billboards. I'll be restricting any unsupervised access to the internet. I'll be leaving the store when the music on the loudspeaker has words that are perverted and ungodly.
My children are too precious for me to let them wander into the lion's trap.
More resources:
As I mentioned in the post, we must not be so naive as to assume our children will never be exposed to the wrong type of images. Preparing them ahead of time to respond correctly when those unexpected incidents happen is an important part of the strategy for a parent who wants to protect their child.
Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today's Young Kids
I have not yet read this, and I don't believe that it's from a Christian author, but I have heard really good things about it.
From the description: Good Pictures Bad Pictures is a comfortable, read-aloud story about a mom and dad who teach their child what pornography is, why it's dangerous, and how to reject it. Using easy-to-understand science and simple analogies, this ground-breaking book engages young kids to porn-proof their own brains.
The Talk: 7 Lessons to Introduce Your Child to Biblical Sexuality gives parents an action plan for discussing sexuality with their children in a Biblical way.
Covenant Eyes provides Internet accountability and filtering for the whole family. One great way to use it for kids is simply to create a whitelist. For example, my children do some of their schoolwork online, but I don't want them to have access to the internet. I can whitelist the websites they use for their schooling so they can access them without any further internet access. Check out all of Covenant Eyes' features here.
