“Given that sexual messaging is everywhere, how can we open our children’s eyes to these issues and contribute to raising righteous sexual citizens who are informed, who question the messages they are getting, who would be comfortable approaching you when they click on a button inadvertently on the Internet and porn comes up?”
Start with the everyday stuff. When you’re watching a ridiculous movie together, you can question how the female lead is perpetually half-dressed, but the male lead is always clothed. While listening to a song on the radio, ask if they know what the lyrics mean. Direct them to a parody of Miley Cyrus that smartly sends up her Wrecking Ball video (which, whether you like it or not, they’ve probably seen). Talk about what “sexy” means to you — (smart, confident, engaged, funny). Get them while they are captives in the car. It’s a skill. The aim is to simultaneously acknowledge what they are experiencing and exposed to, without shaming them, all while equipping them to not internalize and blindly accept what it represents. Phew.
Gone are the days of whispering excitedly about taboo subliminal messages in advertising. Nothing is subliminal anymore.
Goldenberg encourages parents to think about their values, and how they want to impart those values to their children.
When personal values collide with something in the broader culture, it’s our job as parents not to deny what’s out there, but to manage it.
“We live in a progressively liberalized culture where sex and sexuality is concerned,” says Goldenberg.
“For kids who are questioning their sexuality, there are more role models, more acceptance. With all of that growing more liberal, there are positive parts, but there is also the not-so-positive part like the proliferation of Internet porn. The world I want to live in has the first and seeks to manage the other.”
Since the advent of free Wi-Fi and the proliferation of smart phones, parental controls are next to impossible. Goldenberg’s message is simple: “Parents need to get in front of the information their kids are being exposed to through pop culture and online.”
The salons are about giving tools to manage the messages. Goldenberg says: “I want people to walk away seeing the world through their kids’ eyes, to be able to put on that sex lens where their kids are concerned. Your kids are seeing stuff, they are hearing stuff. How do you think they are interpreting it?”
Back to the elephant in the room: Internet porn. Goldenberg startles us by suggesting we openly talk about it with our teens. “Kids will be curious. I want my kids to know that it’s there, and to know, really explicitly from me what they might see, and that it is a fiction. It’s not real.”
Recent studies show that boys, as well as girls, can be negatively affected by unrealistic representations in porn: gigantic penises and inflated breast implants. “Tell your kids those actors are hired because they have very unusual bodies. Not all men are that big, and not all women are that shape, and it’s all about camera angles and lighting and not really about sex at all. It’s acting.”
As they get older, you can mention websites that “culture jam” porn myths, like makelovenotporn.tv.
But isn’t all this focus on sex going to harm them?
Wouldn’t it be better to keep them in the dark?
“For kids, the lights are on all the time,” says Goldenberg. If anyone is in the dark, it’s us.
In a recent TEDx talk, Goldenberg reveals how she struggled when her alert nine-year-old son asked about two teen boys convicted of the rape of a drunk and unconscious teenage girl. He heard about it on the radio. Suddenly, she was grappling with a nest of difficult issues. She considered brushing it aside. Keeping him “innocent.” But he piped up with another question. Had they murdered her?
“I realized that my kids are learning all the time with or without me.” She had to address it.
“It’s heartbreaking that my baby knows about rape and murder. But it’s less heartbreaking when I’m the messenger. And it’s certainly a lot better than someone that has little connection and even less commitment to my child to fill his mind on such important issues.”
Most important, and often forgotten in all of this, says Goldenberg, is to reinforce positive messages. “Sex is wonderful.” Sex is also complicated and requires care, but kids need to know it’s a powerful life force that is natural, good for us, feels good, teaches us about ourselves and bonds us with other people.
Seize the moment
Flash forward a week and I am in a car, taking my son and two of his 12-year-old friends to a hockey game. His friends both have iPhones, and are giggling in the back seat. One of them says he is going to download Snapchat.
“It’s an app where you can take pictures and send them and they disappear after 10 seconds.”
I grip the steering wheel hard. This is a teachable moment.
“Actually,” I say, lightly, “someone can still take a screen grab of a Snapchat photo and send it to someone else.”
“Really?” the boy asks.
“Well you better not send anything inappropriate,” another boy says.
“That’s right,” I chime in. “You wouldn’t want a photo of you with a giant booger hanging out of your nose to be on some website when you’re trying to get elected prime minister.”
They giggle some more. I feel like I’ve done my job. Emboldened, a few days later when my son comes back from a school dance, I joke: “So, were all the girls twerking?”He looks at me, horrified.
“Of course not.”
Then, as he sweeps out of the room on his Razor scooter, “I was the only one twerking.”
Maybe I was naive. |
發表於 2014-1-5 06:12
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