Sexuality educator Amy Lang has helped 1000’s of parents around the world become their kid’s go-to birds and bees source. Amy is a Mom’s Choice Award Winner for her book & video and the host of Just Say This! an advice-column style podcast offering parental guidance for the birds and bees talks. Sexuality educator Amy Lang has helped 1000’s of parents around the world become their kid’s go-to birds and bees source. Amy is a Mom’s Choice Award Winner for her book & video and the host of Just Say This! an advice-column style podcast offering parental guidance for the birds and bees talks.
416: How To Keep Kids Safe From Porn
Amy Lang
Don’t shut your eyes and pretend it’s not there—most kids are going to see porn at some time! And it can be scary and have long-lasting negative impacts on kids. So what do we do? Amy Lang comes to the rescue and lays out the steps that responsible parents must take if we want to protect our children from online porn.
How To Keep Kids Safe From Porn – Amy Lang [416]
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Amy Lang: Kids will see it and it's weird and creepy and scary and they'll stop watching and they won't tell us because kid life, right? That was weird. So you sweet parents need to get ahead of it.
[00:00:19] Hunter: You're listening to the Mindful Mama podcast, episode number 416. Today, we're talking about how to keep kids safe from porn with Amy Lang.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children.
I've been practicing mindfulness for over 20 years. I'm the creator of Mindful Parenting, and I'm the author of the bestselling book, Raising Good Humans, a Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids.
Welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast. Glad you are here. If you haven't done so yet, please hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you get some value from this podcast, if you like the podcast. If you really like it, please do me a favor, go over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a rating and review.
It just helps the podcast grow more, and it takes 30 seconds. You can do it actually right from where you're listening, and I hugely appreciate it. In just a moment, I'm going to be sitting down with sexuality educator Amy Lang, who has helped thousands of parents around the world become their kid's go to birds and bees source.
Thanks. Amy is a Mom's Choice Award winner for her book and video and host of the Just Say This, an advice style podcast that offers parental guidance for birds and bees. So listen, dear listener, I promise this is not a scary episode. We actually had a lot of fun in this episode. I was feeling a little less squeamish about them the last time we talked about sexuality on this episode.
Yes. We're going to be talking about porn, but it's not super scary. You can dive in, and honestly, it's really important to not shut your eyes and pretend it's not there, right? Because most kids are actually going to see porn at some time, and it can actually have scary and long lasting negative effects on kids.
So what do we do, right? Amy really comes to the rescue and lays out the steps that responsible parents must take if we want to protect our kids from online porn. This is... Not a super dance party of an episode, but it's so important. It's a really must listen and you're going to get some amazing tools in your toolbox.
Join me at the table as I talk to Amy Lang.
Amy Lang, thank you for coming back on the Mindful Mama podcast. I'm so glad
[00:03:07] Amy Lang: that you're here. I'm always happy to be here. I love working with you and to people.
[00:03:12] Hunter: These are some of the most important conversations we have and I go into them with no small degree of trepidation, my friend. You realize, you
[00:03:21] Amy Lang: know,
[00:03:23] Hunter: it's not easy.
It's not easy. But we, people, we need to talk to our kids about sex and sexuality. It's important. And, Amy, just to update you we talked last time about talking to your teens and tweens about sex and it has been really helpful for people. They're going through the book, they're talking about everything, and their tweens are asking them questions.
So it's getting out there and supporting people. Yay!
[00:03:53] Amy Lang: I'm so happy to hear that. Sometimes I feel like I'm shouting down a well. Yeah. And then I talk to you, and I'm like, I'm not shutting down a well. I'm not shutting down a well.
[00:04:01] Hunter: You're not shutting down a well. Okay. So this is our episode for us to talk about talking to kids and what the heck do we do as parents about all the porn in the world?
And you've heard me tell this story before, but if the listeners knew, I've had my own experience with this, with my kids, where I've been teaching Mindful Parenting for a while, my daughter's 13 now, and when she was 9, she overheard me. through an open window, like I'm in a separate space, talk about like spanking.
And so she went inside on this summer day and googled spanking and whoa, what did she find? My husband, who also works from home and always has, looked over and saw her Like, with the screen open with some, I guess it was spanking porn coming on. And he was like, Whoa. And I think it was in a meeting with people like in another country.
And he was like, hold on, I need to go. So we got thrown into this head first. And that is the reason we are having this conversation so that you, dear listener, don't make my mistake and this doesn't happen to you. Okay. Why is it important for kids to talk to their kids about porn?
[00:05:21] Amy Lang: Because they're going to see it, and it's going to happen exactly like what you innocently did.
You talked about spanking, your kid's spanking? That doesn't happen in our family. What is that? And then Googled. And it's, who could predict that? No one. No one could predict that. It's so important because they're gonna see it, and your daughter was right on target. Nine is the average age kids see it.
That's what we know that's reported, right? That's what's reported. I think it's seven, because kids will see it, and it's weird and creepy and scary, and they'll stop watching. And they won't tell us because kid life, right? That was weird. And yeah, they're done. Most parents aren't using monitoring and parental and filtering and parental controls, so they don't have a record that's happened.
So they just don't know. But nine, nine is when they're skillful enough to Google things. They are curious about sex and sexuality for sure. And so where do we go to learn? About anything? Where do we go? The internet. Yeah. We teach them that. You sweet parent, need to get ahead of it.
Need to get ahead of it. Because if you're saying to your kids, hey, there's scary stuff out there online. If they know about sex, then you can say there are videos of people having sex. It's called pornography. If you see it, it's not okay or safe for kids. You need to tell me. You won't be in trouble.
We'll make sure you're okay. And make sure it doesn't happen again. Because it can mess with them. It can mess with them. If you think about like when you were a kid and where you saw porn, right? It was maybe online. I know some of you are young enough for that. Maybe it was HBO. What was it? I can't remember.
Spice Channel. Somebody said that
[00:07:07] Hunter: last night. It was like behind the cigarettes in the corner
[00:07:13] Amy Lang: stores. Yeah. It was magazines. So that's where most of us saw anything that was pornographic. And seeing a still picture, like I have in my head, Audrey, my friend Audrey's dad had penthouses underneath his mattress.
I was a super snooper, which I don't recommend. I ruined several Christmas presents for myself. But we found these and there was a, whole scenario called the spider and the fly. And I can still see it in my head. I was probably 10. It was not, relatively speaking, is nothing compared. It was absolutely milquetoast compared to what kids see now.
But I have it in my head. It was from a penthouse, right? So that's not what they're seeing. Like I would pay, I'd pay a bazillion dollars for that to be how kids are exposed to pornography. I would, much better. It's much better. Even though I have this indelible. thing in my brain as not traumatic per se, but it was titillating and it was stimulating and it stuck with me.
And so that was just this one thing, right? And If you're showing a video, if they see a video that is stimulating and titillating, it's not going to be the same. Those, that spider and fly were going to be actually doing stuff, right? As opposed to these still photographs. So
[00:08:32] Hunter: it's not good. It's crazy too, though, because it's weird, right?
There's more access to porn than there ever has been, ever in the history of humanity. And I don't know if you've seen that research where it's younger kids are like, or teenagers or whatever they're not having sex as much as kids had when I was a teenager. They're, it's almost like they're four years developmentally behind the way people maybe of our generation were.
So it's I guess there's no way to parse it out, but like, how, let's just dive into this a little bit let's say our seven year old or nine year old starts to see this porn. How can it
[00:09:18] Amy Lang: affect them? It gives them the wrong idea about sexuality. So it is, it's a movie.
It's fake. People's bodies don't look like that. They don't do those things typically. They don't make those sounds normally. And then we'll just set the racism and the misogyny and the sexism aside for just a hot minute. So they're getting more than just the sex. So they see that and they think, Oh, that's what sex looks like.
And mostly they're grossed out and creeped out by it. Cause it's very scary to see naked people doing stuff with their private parts and putting parts in holes and all that. It can be really confusing. So they see that and most kids, like I said, will look at it and be like, all right, I don't want to ever see that again.
Some kids, rabbit hole. So I am going to tell some stories and because you need to understand like these are parents that are just like you, just exactly like you. Oh my, so there was a kiddo who was nine and he, it was during the pandemic. And he he was, it was online school, they moved, and he logged in for school on the Google account, or he was on the Google account, and he's doing school.
They found out that he was not logged in on his account, he was logged in on his mom's account. And so he had, we don't know the trajectory of how this happened, but he started watching porn. So he'd do school and toggle back and forth between porn and school. And this three months before they figured it out.
Oh, gosh. And, I don't know, it was awful and this family was very conservative and I know they didn't do what I told them to do, which was, I don't care if his behavior's fine, he needs therapy and they, I know they didn't do, I know they didn't do it. Because I could just tell, I could tell about the shame and all that.
That's not typical. But it's titillating it's like this, it's I, it's gross, but it's like picking a scab, right? They see, he doesn't want to, he can't stop compulsively looking at it because it's fascinating. And if he was in puberty happening, there's some stimulation, and even without puberty, just the way we're wired, there's some sexual stimulation there, and so it felt good, but it felt gross, and and they had no idea.
They had no idea. And I think this dad was an engineer because he went back, I think he made a spreadsheet of every time he'd done it and it was, I think it ended up, it wasn't hours a day, but it was close because back and forth, right? But that's not necessarily typical.
That's not typical. So some kids look more than once. If they're in puberty, they're going to look more than once. But not every kid, and I don't want you to think that this is how this is going to happen for your kid. Okay. So I'm saying that, and I don't want you to think that your kid is, that's going to happen to your kid.
I also don't want you to sit here and think, Oh, my child would never, my child would never, that family thought the same thing. And the safest thing is to behave as though, which is absolutely true, no kiddo makes it out of childhood without seeing it to assume they're going to see it.
They're going to see it. I promise. They will see it.
[00:12:30] Hunter: Okay. Yeah. I remember, I didn't have exposure to porn, but I remember having exposure to Fritz the cat. Comics. My dad had Fritz the Cat comics at his shop, and I remember finding these Fritz the Cat's comics, because I was into comics, and then being like, whoa, what are these comic book characters doing?
And then being titillated by it, to use your term, Amy. Yeah, and yeah, I think this is safe, though. We have to as Assume, assume that they're gonna see it and that's, that, that has to be this dance, because we're in denial, we're wrong headed, we're, and let's tell, let's go down that road, like what happens if we're like, what happens if we just ignore the whole issue, then they're just, then they're just learning.
From porn, they're learning that this is the way sex is and it's this performative, fake kind of thing and et cetera.
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:13:41] Amy Lang: So what happens is, and we know this from surveys and studies and stuff like that, teenagers, like they use it as sex ed. So they think that's what sex is. Like it starts in the middle. Imagine if your first sexual experience with someone was based on porn and the kind of porn you'd been seeing was, just parts and wholes immediately.
No tenderness, no consent conversation, no like hand holding leading up to making out, leading up to under the shirt, all the bases, right? No bases. Just wait straight to a home run. So they think that's normal. They're and not, again, Not all of them, but it's in their heads that this is part of how you're a sexual person.
And so it normalizes a whole bunch of stuff that Just typically speaking isn't like normal, especially for early adolescent sex and sexuality, right? If you're fully established as a sexual being and everybody's consenting, you go. Dan Savage says no what does he say? Children, animals, or dead people, which is terrible.
Okay, like consenting adults, you do you. I don't care how many of you are there doing your thing, right? It's, yeah, it's like jumping into a swimming pool without knowing how to swim. It's like your car analogy. It's here are the keys. Good luck. If we're not sex educating our kids, they're not getting our healthy values, they're not getting factual information we're not in there helping them and supporting them.
If you let them loose with the porn and you pretend like it's not going to happen or it's not going to impact them, right? It's not going to impact them. It's going to impact them in some way. And it just gives them this whole wrong idea, full on wrong idea, and about lots of things in life.
[00:15:29] Hunter: Okay, so earlier you said, when you were talking about how to respond to a kid about porn, briefly you said, it's like, it's not okay or safe for you to see it.
Now that seems right, but also it seems wrong in some ways to me and I'm just going to explain to you why. Yeah. Because A, it's right I don't want my nine year old, seven year old, and eleven year old, whatever, to be absorbing these, the ideas from porn that are out there. But also I don't want them, on the other hand I don't want her to get the idea that sex is not okay, and sex is not safe, and sexuality itself.
is not safe for her and it's not a safe, wonderful part of life. I want her to have a steady, wholehearted relationship with her sexuality, whole bodied relationship with her sexuality. Talk us through this a little bit. Help me understand this. What's the best response? Yep.
[00:16:29] Amy Lang: I love that question because porn is a thing.
Porn is an object. Porn is a thing. Porn is a product. Yeah, so it's a thing. It's a product. It's not real. Our sexuality, sex, being sexual with someone, relationships, that is a real thing. It's a process, right? It's a, I don't even quite have the word. You probably have a really good word for that. It's like part of us.
It's part of who we are. It's part of our culture. It's part of our psychology, our physiology. It's actually real. It's real. And The way you address the realness of being a sexual person and their sexuality, and I love what you just said about being a whole person and wholeheartedly ready for this.
That is what's important. And so if you're saying that porn is not okay or safe for kids, that's like saying, Hey, sorry, sister, you can't have a margarita, right? Like my friend Joe says, it's like porn is a grown up stuff like marijuana and alcohol and coffee, right? So it's in that category of an unhealthy product.
For me, for just about everyone, for other folks, there are lots of folks who have, or are okay with, anyway, whatever, we're not going to go down the grown up path.
[00:17:42] Hunter: Like I like that analogy of like coffee or alcohol. Like it's something that we know is not, it's not exactly healthy for us, but it's enjoyable for people when they use it in moderation kind of thing.
Right?
[00:17:54] Amy Lang: Like that kind of thing. Yeah. That kind of thing. That kind of thing. But the porn industry is a nightmare. It's awful. Yeah, that's a perfect analogy for a child. So when you get with your 11 year old, you can say, Hey, just more to this porn thing. So you can look at Fight the New Drug and other websites that talk about the impact of pornography in other, like in a broader, bigger sense.
And we'll make sure in the show notes, there's some resources for people to go and learn more about that. But yeah, that categorizing it as grownup stuff, moderation. There is ethically produced porn feminist porn, that is more storyline and consent based. Instead of, hey plumber, blah, blah, blah, blah, here's my boobs and my business.
But you have to pay for it. And that's not, they're not going to go, oh, I need ethically produced porn, right? They're not going to do that. They're going to Google spanking, they're going to Google boobs, and they're going to get a whole lot of spanking and boobs simultaneously. That frame of, this is not for kids, it's for adults, it's not safe is helpful to them.
And, but I think the biggest thing with all of this, and this happens frequently, is that you discover, like a parent will discover that their kid has seen some porn or they catch them in the moment and they freak out. What the hell are you looking at? How did you find that? This isn't okay. How the hell?
What the F? Maybe not what the F, but that's just me. What is this? And they shame and yell at the child. The child's in trouble for their natural curiosity. And they're they put the blame on the kid. And that's because we're embarrassed, we're worried that whole knee jerk, it's just a knee jerk reaction.
Yeah. And it's scary to see what they've seen but the thing is if your child has accessed pornography on a device that you have given them, and you A, not talked about sex or pornography with them, and you B, are not using monitoring and filtering, then it's your fault. We can't punish our kids for their natural curiosity.
[00:19:59] Hunter: No, I agree. I agree with that. No, I think so too. And that goes to the question let's walk back and check in with, I want to check in with you. What is the ideal scenario for a kid? Like from birth to teen years, the way that we're dealing with this.
What are our responsibilities as parents? What does, what is a parent who wants to be responsible and take a, be a step ahead of this do? What do
[00:20:28] Amy Lang: we do? All right. So the first thing is, as we all know, get that sex talk party started ASAP. So they should know that when people have sex, it's something they do for pleasure.
99. 99% of the time, right? People can get pregnant. We really are actively trying not to get pregnant when we're doing that. So it's for pleasure, it's for when you're older, it's for later in life. I don't say for adults because that's not true. That's not true. It's for later in life. People like to have sex.
It's an important part of being a person. Just you don't ever have to have sex. So I'm really establishing these sort of values and philosophy around it. So that's the first thing. So they need to know people have sex for pleasure. So babymaking that's where we like to start, so the penis goes in the vagina, people agree to do this, it feels really good to their grown up bodies and then you can say, most of the time when people have Penis and Vagina Sex or They Make Love.
They're trying not to make babies. Like their bodies, they feel good together. They want to do this together. It's something they agree to do. So it's called making love or having sex. So that just is a little bit is enough, right? So we just get that out of our mouths. So
[00:21:33] Hunter: that's I have a five year old and they say, how are babies made?
And we, we
[00:21:39] Amy Lang: can answer that. Yeah, because we want them to know we did not know we knew that sex was for procreation, and then people were doing it because it felt good, but were we supposed to do that? And we weren't, and there's all this shame and embarrassment, so if they know early on like being a sexual person is healthy, normal, natural so that's gonna plant a little seed and so that's just the tone of your conversations with them.
[00:22:01] Hunter: Sometimes I, at least me, like I won't speak for everyone, but I'll speak for me, like I get caught up on yeah, it's a healthy, normal, natural thing for us to as humans to do, but you're saying like, no it's like a healthy, normal, natural for things to do for people who have grown up bodies, like to make this distinction between you, child, and people who have grown up bodies.
And I think that's. Just such a, I I need that, I need those strong, clear distinctions in my head going into that to, to be able to say I'm having a conversation with somebody who does not have a grown up body, who's asking about this thing, and I'm telling them about what happens with grown up bodies.
And that framing for me, that, that, the way you explain that makes all the difference in the
[00:22:45] Amy Lang: world. Oh, thank you. Happy to help. Happy to help. Yeah, and that reframe too is and also I don't, like I said, I don't say adults because 14 year olds can have grown up bodies, but we don't want 14 year olds having sex, right?
But if you say it's for when you're later, I say later in life too sometimes, but this distinction between I love that you just said It's not for kids. It's for later. It makes it easier to talk about, I think, because it's compartmentalized a little bit, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So back to Perfect World.
It is Perfect World. So lots of conversations. So they know about sex and sexuality. They know people do it for funsies. Then you can say, and just FYI people, there are videos of people, naked people having sex, doing sexual things online that you can see, and it's not safe for kids. Because it's grown up stuff.
It's for later in life. Like these people, this is the sex is not for kids. And then talk about how it can be confusing, right? It can be upsetting and that they need to tell you if they see it, won't be in trouble. I cannot stress enough that won't be in trouble. So you have this little conversation you do need to say you ever seen it?
You ever seen anything like this? So you ever seen anything like this? My usual advice, like acting like you don't like what kind of ice cream do you like? Have you ever seen anything like this? You won't be in trouble. You can tell me anybody's shown you, right? So you need to find out if they've seen it, if they've, and they'll probably say no because they know maybe the person, if they, someone showed it to them, they said, you can get in a lot of trouble.
There might, you don't know what happened in that scenario. But just establishing you can talk to me about this. So then, You need to have regular check ins about it. What are kids talking about? There's an epidemic right now of kids moaning and making moaning noises in elementary school.
And it is sexual moaning. Oh, wow. You might ask your, you might ask your 11 year old have you heard people doing this? And it is an epidemic. It is creepy and it's a trickle down from porn. That's weird. It's very weird. And adults don't know what to do with it. Sorry, side note. We can talk about that in a minute.
So then, as our kids are getting older, you're talking a lot about it. You can talk about the industry. You can talk about how racist and sexist it is. You can talk about how it starts in the middle. It's not real sex. You can say that to a seven year old. You can say this is not real sex. These people are actors.
These people are actors. And then of course they're going to be like why is it made and why do people want to look at it? And you can talk about it gives them sexual feelings and people like to have sexual feelings. And so if your kid's 10, 9, 10, 11, you can say, and people will masturbate to it.
And sometimes people get ideas for having sex from it, but they're not where it's just not typical kind of ideas. So just really being painting a picture of it. Now, this is not one conversation with a seven year old, right? Then, as they get into middle school having conversations more about what's the plan if somebody shows you, which is, hey, dude, and they show them on the phone.
Here you go. My, one of my really good friends, she, her girls are four years apart. First week of middle school, her daughter Arden on the bus. How was your day? Ah, this kid showed me porn on his phone. Four years later, first week of middle school, Alex, how was your day? Kid showed me porn on their phone.
So yeah, super common and those girls already knew what was what, they already knew what to say, how to manage it. So so having, so by the time, like by 8, 9, 10, 11, they should have a strategy for a refuse, I call it a refusal strategy. And it's refusal on two parts. So with young kids, it's stop watching, tell me.
If anyone shows you, let me know. We'll make sure everybody's okay. So that's more of a refusal strategy with younger kids. With older kids, when they're having this incident where someone sends them a link or on the bus and they're like, hey, look at this. My favorite comeback is it's usually a guy that's doing this, it's dude, I think looking at porn as a solo activity, what the heck is wrong with you?
So a little shamey thing in there is totally fine. Another comeback I think for younger kids would be to say, if my mom, any idea. that I saw this or looked at this and she has got crazy radar. She can take one look at me and know that something's gone, like I've done something. So no, thanks. I can't.
I'd walk away. So throw you under the bus she's a lunatic. She would spank me. Just kidding. So anything to throw them, throw you under the bus. And then definitely by the time they're in middle and high school, the rule, like all bets are off. You talk about everything.
So talk openly about it, say, people get ideas about porn I'm sorry, like in your beginning sex life, it's not going to be. Two men and a goat, right? That's not happening. Like this is just not real. So you can talk more explicitly about what sex should look like. And consent and that kind of thing.
It's, I hate it, but it leads to these really good conversations about healthy sexuality and values and bodies, right? So imagine if you're a, you're a 14 year old person. And your body's behind developmentally, like you've got, supposedly going to have boobs and stuff.
And you're smaller, not behind developmentally, just whatever. Couple years behind your peers. And then you see porn and you're like why? I don't have any boobs. Or you have little boobs, right? So they're, and you're like, oh my god, I should look like that. It's this awful standard of beauty.
It's anyway. Do you want me to talk about pubic hair? So in porn, nobody has pubic hair. I know. It's so
[00:28:54] Hunter: weird. I don't like pubes. Why must women look like they're prepubescent?
[00:29:00] Amy Lang: So that becomes the standard so I believe, and maybe there's studies to show this, that remember when we used to have pubic hair back in the 90s?
Yeah. Remember there was before people were shaving up, like women were shaving off all their business and men were removing their chest and back hair. So remember that? People had pubic hair, right? In the past, like you'd clean up your bikini line and that was all. So my belief is that this has been a trickle down from pornography into our culture, that's the standard of hoo ha beauty.
There we go, right? Hairlessness is better. Right? And so you and I clearly are on the same page
[00:29:41] Hunter: about this. But that's changing. That's interesting. Like my daughters don't, None of their, them and none of their friends shave their legs or their armpits, and I'm fine with that. I don't care what they want to do either way, but I remember shaving my legs at 11 and they're 13 and 16.
My 16 year old tried it. She told me she tried it the other day and she was like, Oh, it came back all
[00:30:02] Amy Lang: itchy. I'm just, ugh. It's starting to change, and you'll notice now that when you watch shirtless people, men, they have hair, again, it's coming back. It's coming back. Here we are, you should be hairless, that's the cultural message, and you're in puberty, and you're getting hair down there, and then our culture and it's teenager y more hey, what are you doing?
You should be shaving your business up to nothing. It's not healthy, the pubic hair's there for a reason. It keeps us clean down there, it catches stuff. And it's just, and it's, it's really on the female body, it's like a target.
[00:30:36] Hunter: And also if you shave, wouldn't you get at least on the bikini line for me, I get like bumps sometimes, and it would be itchy when it comes back, and you, and the whole thing oh my God, my Lord, like the whole idea of it makes me feel so ill to my
[00:30:52] Amy Lang: stomach.
So here's the other thing about that. It's A vulva without hair is a child's vulva. Yeah. Who doesn't have pubic hair? Children. This is just Amy's opinion. So if you're an adult person and you have been shaving off your pubic hair that's your adult choice to do that, but I just want to note that just grosses me out.
I did it one time and Carrie's we're never doing this again. It was, he was just like eh. So that for me is okay, why would you, who would be attracted to that? And I know it's not exactly the same, but my final thing about the pubic hair is if you are shaving your pubic hair, your daughter, your kids, if you're naked in front of your kids, they need to see what's natural, normal, typical, healthy, because as they get their own pubic hair, if you've been shaving yours off, that sends a message that it.
Please let some grow back so they can see that because imagine if when you were growing up, your standard of nudity of a woman's body was your mom's and there was no pubic hair. I'm talking about the cooch. I'm talking about the cooch. The rest of it, I don't care. Imagine that. How would you feel?
Especially if you were hairy, right? It would be hard, I think. It would be hard, I think. Anyway, that's my pubic hair rant. I
[00:32:17] Hunter: want to talk about responsibilities, like how we, what are the things we, you mentioned monitoring and controls. So when, where, any recommendations, like what should we do with this?
And you said most friends don't have it and we didn't have it until our sad incident. What should all parent, parents have generally as basic controls? And we should also think about kids phones, too. So for the listener, you may know that I was all, I didn't know what to do about my then 12 year old getting, what to do about getting her phone, because the older sister phone at 13.
So we did end up getting her phone at 13, but we got her a Bark phone. They are not sponsoring this podcast at all, although I would be psyched if they did. I'd please Bark sponsor the podcast because your product is amazing. And anyway, it turns like an Android phone into a talk to talk and text phone if you want, with like really strong, awesome parental controls.
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
Let's talk about parental controls. What should we be doing to be responsible parents at what ages?
[00:33:36] Amy Lang: First of all, I, you just need to understand that they're going to see it. I can't say that enough. And it's other stuff too, right? You can search how to shoot up fentanyl, suicide, awful things, not just the parts.
See people
[00:33:47] Hunter: cutting on TikTok, all kinds of like crazy stuff. Yeah. Bad. It's bad. Of all the social media things that I would never I, at this point I've learned enough I would not let my kids do, TikTok is the one I would say is the most mind scrambling as far as like attention destroying. Anyway, so there, there's my two cents on that one.
Do you want to listen? So first
[00:34:12] Amy Lang: of all, it's the sex talk is the one thing and the monitoring and filtering is the other thing to, and the porn talk. So sex talk, porn talk, monitoring and filtering. This is your package of fun. With the monitoring and filtering, if you ever hand your child any device in any way, shape, or form if you have littles that are watching an iPad, you need to make sure that all the parental controls are in place, that you supervise it, that they can only watch one thing, no kids, YouTube.
It's not safe. I had a mom, she's Amy, I just wanted to check, you need to talk to me. We had a little quickie because her five year old was really into birth. And Pregnancy, and so they had still photographs of pregnant people and birth, and they might have even watched some videos of birth, which is fine they were on vacation, and so they were all taking a rest, she left the kid with the laptop, and she, or not the laptop, with the iPad, and like half an hour later, she popped back in the bedroom where he was alone with the device, and he goes like this, and pulls it right up to his chest, and she's great, what's going on?
So he'd found his way to porn. He'd found his way to parent. So if you give your child a device of any kind, it has to have monitoring and filtering installed. I don't care how old they are. I don't care how careful you are. I don't care. Because a kid could come over and they could be on the iPad and they could go down a rabbit hole.
So you can't trust your children. You can't trust other children. So you have to put the parameters in place. So that's the general rule for every single device. So every single device your child can access the internet on, it needs to have parental controls and monitoring. And so let me talk about the monitoring and the, they call filtering or parental controls.
So it's the same thing. Guess what product I recommend? Bark. Oh, so the way Bark works or any, there's a Circle, Custodio, there are other ones and they work in different ways. I cannot tell you how they, how you set them up because my child's 22 and that ship has sailed. But I do know that there's an app that you can control from the app, which is awesome.
So let me talk about the difference between monitoring and filtering. So monitoring is watching, so you're watching where they're going. You need to watch where they're going from birth until you decide, okay? You decide. I can't tell you the answer to that end of high school if your child, and you have to figure that out.
Filtering is blocking search terms. The analogy I like to use is being in the car. Monitoring is equivalent to seatbelts. Would you ever get in the car without a seatbelt? No, so monitoring is a seatbelt, and then car seats are the filtering. So when they're baby babies, they're in a bucket reverse, right?
So we got more bigger seats for the bucket there's, you're not going anywhere. The bigger seat turned around, you're going to go a little place, a little bit, the filtering, so it's going to get a little bit, a little looser. Then you get a turn around the car seat, a little more, less filtering.
Booster, a little more access, then no booster, still got your seatbelt on, still got your seatbelt on, so no booster, and you're just in the seat, and then eventually your kid's in the front seat, and eventually they're driving. So when they get to be in the seat with no booster, probably like 10, 11, right?
I can't remember. Depends on the size of your kid and that kind of stuff. So long about middle school. So long about sixth grade, you can take all the filtering off, you can have the seatbelt because you're not going to stop monitoring and you're watching. And so the way the products work is that you get pings when they go to suspected sites.
So in my family, we did use a product called Custodio and we were just monitoring Milo and he was having an adolescent fit about how everything was horrible. And then he said to me, And I hate Custodio. He would have been proud of me because I was fully like, oh, look at him having an adolescent fit.
And I said, yeah, why? And he said, because I can only go to five or six websites because I know you're watching. And I said, ah ha. But it's oh, that must be your top. I said, that must be really tough. And he's it kills. And he went storming off. So I went running downstairs cause Gary was down here.
And I was like, Gary, custodial is working. That's what you want, right? Yeah. Anywhere he wanted, but he was flexing that muscle of self control. So in that space where they're, in the front seat with their seatbelt on you get a ping and you talk about it. I also got super excited because I got a notification that he'd been someplace naughty and I was all excited and then I went and looked at it and it was just one of those rando things that can happen.
I was like, damn it. So he comes home from school and I'm like, Milo, I got a ping from Custodio that you went somewhere, and he's but I've been nowhere, and I'm like, I know, I'm just messing with you. I know, welcome to evil parenting. The subtotal of this conversation is that you have to talk about sex, you have to talk about porn, and it is required that you use monitoring and filtering.
This is not optional. And if you think my child would never think again, yeah,
[00:39:22] Hunter: In full transparency, last time Sora and I went into three or four weeks of okay, babe, we're going to be talking about a lot of things about sex. And she was like, okay, whatever, but then she asked me questions and yeah, like it worked out really well.
And by the time we were like a couple conversations into that, I was like, this is what. Blowjobs are, and I was fine, and she was fine. We got home. I was like, we all survived. But I love this. Have the talks. Know your kids are going, assume they are seeing the thing, so talk about what it is and use monitoring and controls.
And
[00:40:10] Amy Lang: yeah. One more thing. Yes. That's protecting your kid at your house. What do you do when they go to somebody else's house? Ooh. I'm just going to give you a couple tips for that. So first of all, you need to walk your talk. So get our custodial circle, get something, have the conversations. And then when your child goes to somebody else's house, you need to say to them, what not are you, what monitoring and filtering products are, product are you using?
And you want them to say clearly, we have all the parental controls that are internal to the devices installed. We use Bark, we use Custodio, we use Circle. You want a clear answer. And if they're like, Oh, we only let them go to kids YouTube and blardy, blar. Then that's a no, no online, no devices while that father or child is at that house.
And so you can just, and you're being an example, right? So you can tell your friend group, hey, listen to this, Amy was loony toony and great but we need, we're doing this now. We're talking about porn. We're doing this now. And you're going to be ahead of your pack. And so it is an uncomfortable place to be when you have.
Especially with sexuality education when you're ahead of everybody, but if you think about it this way, like I'm like into this thing called parent led sex ed, you're going to be leading the pack. You're going to be teaching your friends how to do this and do it well. So do not assume your friends, your people, the people are doing what I'm telling you to do.
Assume there's no monitoring. Assume there's no filtering. And then, your kid may come home and say, they showed me porn, I'm freaking. Then you have to call the parent and said, and tell them your kid, this happened. And I would, oh, that I would want to know if this happened, right? And you need to be kind and they may say, no way, your kid showed my kid and you're just going to have to roll with it.
Yeah. Those things are super important on the other end, protect your family and then you got to help your kid out in the world. And trust your gut, if you get a kind of a wishy washy answer, then say, you know what? We're weird about this, but I'm just going to ask the kids or not,
[00:42:15] Hunter: online. Yeah, that's a totally reasonable request.
So interesting because this is so much these things are like the most important things like this, and it's so much like the gun safety conversation. If you have a firearm in your car or your house, I learned this from Dr. Joanna Thomas and how are you keeping it safe, right? Like it's the same thing, like we don't want to bring mentally emotional visual firearms to our children's brains before they're ready.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. I love it. I love it. Okay. Amy, this was way less painful. Yay! I just love
[00:42:54] Amy Lang: talking to you because sometimes you're like, oh my god, I'm having big eyes and you're trying not to have big eyes. But that's what I love about you is that you're so real and you talk about your own story, right?
And I think it's just so relatable. And I just so appreciate you trusting me with your people. Really means a ton to me. I thank
[00:43:12] Hunter: you. I think you do great work. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being the person who is totally upfront and open about all these things and encouraging us to do that.
Brave, hard things and we can do it. We can do those hard things and and it's super important and I think you, you let us know that and I, I really appreciate it. Thank you again. Amy has amazing things. Love her Sex Talks for Tweens and Teens book and there are other great things she's offering.
Amy, where can they find out about you and what you're doing?
[00:43:47] Amy Lang: If you're a podcast listener, I also have a podcast called Just Say This, I, it's a advice column style, so people call in and ask me questions. I am unfiltered, we'll just put it that way. And then birdsandbeesandkids. com is my website with really tons and tons of stuff there.
Podcast, website, probably the easiest places to start and, socials and stuff are in the show notes.
[00:44:10] Hunter: Thank you again, so much for coming back on the Mindful Mama podcast. As I'm sure I will talk to you again sometime.
Thank you so much for all of the ratings and reviews you leave. I want to give a shout out to Wes18267 who gave a five star review and called it my go to. This podcast always helps me on a hard day. Thank you. For all your episodes, thank you, Wes. I really appreciate your review. I hope this episode is helpful.
I hope it's given you some tools in your toolbox. If so, let me know. Let me know through the review. Let me know by tagging me on Instagram at mindfulmamamentor, and I would love to know if it has helped you. And then, otherwise, I'm just wishing you a lovely week. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad to spend this time with you, and I'm glad you're here.
Glad you're listening all the way through to this episode. Good for you. Rock on. Double high fives from me, because it's not easy to psych myself up to listen to something that is really helpful sometimes, I think in a world where we're all just distracted and entertained so much of the time yeah, we have to be, celebrate the times when we're stepping up to do the things that might be a little uncomfortable, but I hope it wasn't too uncomfortable.
Anyway, I'm wishing you a great week. I can't wait to connect with you again. I hope you're enjoying. If you've gotten your copy of Raising Good Humans Every Day, I hope you're enjoying it, and I will come back and talk to you again next week. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:46:06] Amy Lang: I'd say definitely do it. It's really helpful.
[00:46:09] Hunter: It will change your relationship with your kids for the better. It will
[00:46:12] Amy Lang: help you communicate better. And just, I'd say communicate better as a person, as a wife, as a spouse. It's been really a positive influence in our lives. Definitely do it. I'd say definitely do it.
It's so worth it. The money really is inconsequential when you get so much benefit from being a better parent to your children and feeling like you're connecting. Not feeling like you're yelling all the time or you're like, why isn't this working? I would say definitely do it. It's so worth it. It'll change you.
No matter what age someone's child is, it's a great opportunity for personal growth and it's a great investment in someone's family. I'm very thankful I have this. You can continue in your old habits that aren't working, or you can learn some new tools and gain some perspective to shift. Everything in your parenting.
[00:47:10] Hunter: Are you frustrated by parenting? Do you listen to the experts and try all the tips and strategies, but you're just not seeing the results that you want? Or are you lost as to where to start? Does it all seem So overwhelming with too much to learn. Are you yearning for community people who get it, who also don't want to threaten and punish to create cooperation?
Hi, I'm Hunter Clark Fields. And if you answered yes to any of these questions, I want you to seriously consider the Mindful Parenting membership. You will be joining hundreds of members who have discovered the path of mindful parenting and now have confidence and clarity in their parenting. This isn't just another parenting class.
This is an Opportunity to really discover your unique lasting relationship, not only with your children, but with yourself. It will translate into lasting connected relationships, not only with your children, but your partner too. Let me change your life. Go to mindful parenting course.com to add your name to the wait list, so you will be the first to be notified when I open the membership for enrollment.
I look forward to seeing you on the inside. Mindful. ParentingCourse. com
Resources
- Bark: Monitoring and filtering software for just about every device (for US parents).
- Qustodio: Monitoring and filtering software for just about every device (for outside the US).
- Porn Handout for Parents
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