The year was 1998. There was no Facebook. No MySpace. No social media other than AOL or Yahoo chat rooms. No cell phones with texting capabilities. Laptops were not yet introduced into my family. We had that annoying dial-up that took ten minutes and sometimes failed on an ancient, bulky desktop.
My family is a devout Christian Family. We attended church every Sunday growing up. My sister and I were home-schooled. We were part of co-ops, Awana on Wednesday nights, Sunday school, listened to Christian music, family devotions every morning and evening, Bible memorization etc.
All this innocence did not save me.
I was eleven years old.
My eleven-year-old neighbor invited me to her house―a daily event. In full knowledge of both our parents, we would log into the desktop computer, write silly stories, play old computer games like Oregon Trail, and use Paint Program to create our own fashion line. But one day, she introduced me to the world of chat rooms…and cybersex. At eleven years old, I knew nothing of sex. Or puberty, for that matter. All I knew was kissing because it was all I was taught and all I’d ever seen.
With no understanding of the danger, I fell headfirst into the gutter of the traumatic world of cyber-sex. I learned sex looked like older men soliciting girls they believed were teenagers or knew we were younger. Older men who believed fun sex involved aggressive and yes, violent cybering. Cyber sex led me into a deeper world of erotica where all the stories centered around a domineering and controlling male taking advantage of a helpless damsel; this world existed long before Fifty Shades of Grey (See my “Why I Quit Fifty Shades of Grey” post)
Now, I work as a representative for Women At Risk, International as a Prevention Speaker. How well-intentioned are mothers in wanting to protect their children, but little do so many realize how innocence is harmful rather than helpful. Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go…is a famed verse quoted by conservative Christian parents. Unfortunately, when it comes to application, I’ve often witnessed clothing children in innocence with solely Biblical teaching and opposition to any practical and honest conversations about the battles children will face in the culture: sex, sexting, selfie crowd, peer pressure, grooming, potential abusive authority figures, pornographic content whether online, on TV, in magazines etc.
All the Bible lessons I was taught did not help me.
In an age of this social media boom where children can access negative content through their peers, school, library, friends, neighbors, relatives and on countless devices from phones, tablets, laptops, television, mall ads, magazines, and the entire World Wide Web, we cannot hide the truth of our world’s dangers from our children. This attempt to try and preserve their innocence at all costs is in vain. In most cases, it does just the opposite. It leaves them I’ll-equipped and overwhelmed in handling this culture. The consequence of waiting too late can be even more disastrous.
With so much of trafficking recruitment beginning as online solicitation, we must have open and honest conversations with our children. With child-on-child sexual assault as the most common type of child assault now (Heidi Olson RN), we must prepare them to know how to respond. So much of the world wants to infiltrate their minds from an early age. The culture wants to groom girls to become sexual objects and boys to become sexual predators. And all our Bible verses, home-school education, co-ops, and Sunday school classes won’t help them combat the culture if our children are not taught about the culture.
Training involves talking. Training involves teaching our children to be shrewd as serpents and yes, innocent as doves can still follow. As a mother of two little girls, I want to give my daughters the very best armor I can provide for them so they can withstand the fiery darts the devil will launch at them. While this can seem daunting for mothers of little children, it is vital to begin when they are young and will soak up the lessons like sponges. Lessons that pair shrewdness with innocence. My daughter will be five soon. She loves princess dresses, Disney shows, playing pretend, rainbows, butterflies, unicorns, and all manner of make-belief girlishness. Her innocence is palpable. And yet, I have and will continue to equip her with the tools to be safe and smart in this culture. She will grow up knowing that she is a Conqueror NOT a Commodity.
See Six Practical Tips for Raising Kids to be Safe and Smart post for some of these applications.