As I'm sure every person reading this has as well, I have been absolutely floored by the evil crap that has gone viral on YouTube. I refuse to post the picture of the person doing that and won't even say the name, but it scared the hell out of me as a grown woman, and has cost me sleep the last two nights. I felt like I needed to share it with my husband, so I texted him a screenshot of an article with the image and then immediately deleted the picture out of the message thread as well as my phone. He was pretty disturbed and didn't even want to have a conversation about it.
I've felt the burden of protecting and teaching and sheltering my kids become heavier than it ever has been.
These little people are the most tender, most impressionable, most vulnerable, most precious resource on earth. The amount of utterly vile crap they are assaulted with these days sometimes feels beyond comprehension. When I was growing up, we had videos. Like, a video cassette. There were no assholes popping up with no other purpose than to literally destroy our minds and spirits. When we listened to the radio, there were still stations that weren't playing music about sex and alcohol. When we were little, commercials were tamer. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain my parents took great lengths and worked incredibly hard to keep us safe from things like that - but I feel like right now, 27 years later, the number of ways horrible things can enter our homes and our kids' minds has grown exponentially.
Let me tell you something. I used YouTube (thanks to Blippy and 20 Trucks). I definitely tried to make sure that the things I allowed my son to watch were a) educational and b) age appropriate. BUT. There have been times I'd turn on a longer compilation video and leave for 20 minutes to go put the baby to bed, or to do some work on my computer. In doing this, I left my son vulnerable to seeing something like this and not knowing or being there to stop it. I can't even begin to explain the fear when I first saw a story about the YouTube issue. I dropped to my knees out of my computer chair and begged that Cade hadn't seen it and that if he had, those images and messages would be wiped from his mind. I begged for forgiveness for my complacency.
And then I doubled down. Last week, we started super limiting TV. He doesn't get to watch it in the morning, he can watch maybe a half hour after waking up from a nap in the late afternoon, but otherwise, he doesn't get to see much. I felt really strongly about that needing to happen the week before - maybe this is why. He will never watch YouTube again.
You guys. We only get one shot. If we let our guard down even for a second, this is the kind of junk our kids have to contend with. We don't have the blessing of counting on them being "sheltered" until school starts anymore. There are all KINDS of things that can enter our homes and their minds if we aren't diligent.
I've recently read some sad stories about young kids becoming suicidal after being goaded and urged by players on Fortnight.
Kids being bombarded by subliminal messaging on what appear to be benign television shows.
Kids addicted to smaller screen devices before even entering kindergarten.
And how many times is the phone/tablet used as a babysitter while mom is taking a nice, long stroll through Target?
As one story said, the screen may be the easy, sanity-saving choice. But the harder road, when it comes to things like this, is much more worth it in the long run.
I'm not trying to be judgmental. You do you. I'm just sharing this pretty sobering reminder that we have an incredibly heavy responsibility to protect these kids. We don't get a do-over. And we don't get to wait til they're in school to worry about them battling things like that. It literally starts as babies. Toddlers.
But you know what? We're up for it. I firmly believe we are all here, in this age, because we ARE up for it. We are capable of it. The world needs good kids. The world needs vigilant parents to raise those kids.
Comments
Post a Comment