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nextTalk contains content of a mature nature. Parental guidance is advised.
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Are you ready for the nextTalk?
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Today we’re talking about the importance of understanding our kid’s culture.
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It’s different. When we grew up, we didn’t have social media. I think let’s dive into this a couple of points, because this is this gets me fired up.
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It’s a big fire. I’m on the edge of my seat here.
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Let’s talk about how it’s different, and then let’s talk about some shifts that have happened, because there there are things that have not changed. I mean, it’s always been around, sure, but there’s been changes to those because of technology. Yes, but let’s first dive into the new things we’re dealing with. Yeah, social media, totally new. Yeah, first generation of kids growing up on social media.
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Well, we’re the first generation of parents parenting social media.
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I can’t call my mom and say, hey, what do you think about Snapchat and how did you handle that? Like we can’t. There’s no advice on that, Right? So we are guinea pigs in this error of social media apps. You know they change daily. It happens so fast. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t have the time to set with my kid on every app they’re playing and make sure it’s safe, right. And so you know I do a run through Sometimes, I’ll Google it, whatever, but things always slip through. I got a story on this. Absolutely you ready for this? I think I am. We had the mature rating at the beginning of our show for a reason, and I’m gary and share a story that’s mature. Yes, so you’ve been warned yes, you’ve been warned.
So a couple of years ago my son was playing a bunny app. It was this cute little bunny game. It pooped, you got tokens, you fed the bunny. There was no connection to strangers, there was no online chat, it was a safe. It was rated four plus and I had vetted it out. It was fine.
He was playing it at the kitchen island one day. He was nine years old when this happened and I was doing the laundry and I just heard these shriells of us screaming Screams. I didn’t even know what was happening. I thought the buddy had died. I didn’t know what was going on and ran in there and he just had the iPad turned over completely so he couldn’t see it. He was like you need to look at that, like you need to look at what just popped up. So most parents don’t realize this and I did not realize this.
Two years ago he was playing an app for plus, but for ads. They can be 17 plus. The ads don’t have to match the age of the app they’re playing. So we all know how this goes. You have to watch the ad and the marketing feature, whoever’s paid to be on there, so that you can earn more coins to feed your bunny and they all want to watch him because they want to get more coins, so then the bunny can poop more because that’s so funny. Yeah, it’s all about the bunny.
So this ad had popped up and what I saw really shocked me and I took screenshots and I literally it’s saved on MandyMajorscom. Like, if you don’t believe me, these are the screenshots that are on there. They it was two men in bed together, naked, and they had sheets over their waist Okay, but they were in bed naked, it was implied and there was a lady standing over them. And then there was a talk, you know, like a talk bubble, like a conversation bubble, and it said oh, my goodness, you’re cheating on me. What should I do? One runaway crying to join in my kid at nine years old, playing a safe bunny app was literally just introduced to a threesome. Yes, I died, yeah.
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We all did.
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I almost went crazy, mom. I actually did. I went crazy, mom, but not on him, not on him. And what was so great is that we were talking enough that he told me yes, praise the Lord, he told me. And even that night I said can I share this on my social media Because I want to put those screenshots out there so that people are just aware? And I did that and people were like this happened to me same game, same ad. They knew it. And then what was really great is people were responding and saying will you please thank your son for me, because I’m going to have a conversation with my kid now. So I got to let my son read those. Yeah, and it was like you are helping other kids not see this, because you spoke up and like it’s empowering him. But like 30 years ago nobody had to worry about this.
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It was completely different and if we miss it and we are trying to parent as we would have in the past, we are going to miss out on how to understand their culture and how to parent them effectively. We’re just going to miss it.
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Well, we want to just say no iPad until you’re 30. That’s what we want to say, or we?
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want to blame them.
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Why would you look at this?
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How could you be on this thing?
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And I think that that you know I wanted to do that too. I want to go to an island. I don’t want the exposure, but it’s here and so we have to understand it. If we’re going to effectively parent it like we have to know what they’re being exposed to.
0:05:39 – Speaker 1
I do want to say here, because this is a common conversation that we have people say, well, we’re just not going to have any technology, so I don’t have to understand that culture because I’m going to allow my kid to be in it. And time and again, me having the younger kids I’m around parents with younger kids. They come to me and they say we didn’t, we didn’t have an iPad, we don’t do the phones. And yet my kids saw this at school. My kids saw this in the back of the room at Bible study, at Children’s Church, at their friends house. The neighbor showed them. I mean, there are all these places where your kids can be exposed to things, even a billboard driving down the street that if you’re not having the conversation and understanding that this is the world we live in, you will miss the opportunity to speak into your kids about it.
0:06:22 – Speaker 3
Well, and my daughter? You know, you guys know my story. I have said it over and over at the fourth grade lunch table. She wasn’t even shown anything. She was told about the pornography Verbal exposure that somebody saw at night, you know, and so it’s on the playground. It’s the conversation. I saw this on the playground. Have you ever heard about that? It’s all of that. They are overexposed and we have to know One, that they’re they’re they’re seeing and hearing all of that. And two, we have to know the content, because we’re not going to be prepared to speak about it. You know, we’re constantly going to be saying they’re too young, they’re too young, but if they’re on the playground talking about it, they’re not too young. It’s happening Like we got to talk.
0:07:00 – Speaker 1
We got to talk, yeah, I know, but you know what? It’s one of those things there’s. There’s topics that are new, and then there’s things that have always been around, but they’re different now. Like pornography is not new. Listen to our pornography series we have here. It’s really good. We attack it from all different angles, but it’s different now. The access to pornography, the type of pornography All that has changed.
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I remember walking into the back room of a video store when I was in college. It was my first real exposure and I had to have a photo ID to get in and I know kids had fake IDs in high school. I did not. Let me just put that out there I did not do that.
I did some stupid stuff. Always been around. It’s different now. I mean, your kid can literally be two feet away from you with earbuds in their devices are so small Watching hardcore video pornography. Yeah, with all sorts of different sexualities being represented and genders being represented.
0:07:57 – Speaker 1
That is going to cause some confusions and some questions when they see that Absolutely, and if you’re completely unaware that this is possible, you will miss the opportunity to talk to them about this, to prepare them, to also protect them.
0:08:10 – Speaker 3
Bullying. Let’s talk about that for a minute, because that’s not new. You know, we, we. I remember growing up and I would see, you know, people circle, everybody that was getting bullied and or the fight or whatever you know, and people would be cheering and it would be embarrassing and whatever. But it would spread by word of mouth. You know about what happened and the story would get lost in translation and you wouldn’t really know what happened.
But now what happens, you know, picture, picture this, just a sixth grade boy getting bullied and everybody gathers around him, phones come out, it’s recorded. So if little boy piece his pants or starts crying, it’s recorded. Yeah, and before your kid walks in the door that night it has been snapchatted to the entire school population. So when your kid comes home and says my life is over I know we tend to think they’re being overly dramatic and often they are, but we must recognize it is a bigger deal. Today there are videos of our kids, like our kids constantly have to think about being recorded going to the bathroom, changing in the locker room. We didn’t have that.
0:09:22 – Speaker 1
Well, and even beyond the being recorded and being snapped, and a kid doesn’t even have to have an interaction with another kid and they can bully them into a place where they feel like they want to commit suicide. They don’t have to have any physical confrontation. It happens all the time. My husband is in a situation. It can be all online. It’s all online. They’ve never even talked and someone will pinpoint someone, and because of the veil of being behind a screen, kids feel like they can do whatever they want to do. People feel like they can do whatever they want to do. Kids will create fake accounts to bully each other, to bully each other anonymously, and so the ability to hurt someone has never been easier.
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Never.
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Social media and the online world has changed All the things that we know. It’s magnified it.
0:10:12 – Speaker 3
Well, and to the parents out there that are like, well, my kid’s just not having social media, listen, I am with you. You need to delay it as long as you can delay it, because it is a lot to parents. But at the end of the day, even not having social media like there’s accounts at high schools where they make fun of people and they’ll create memes of people and it’ll be like an anonymous account Nobody knows who’s running it You’re kicking, get bullied on that and not even have social media and then find out about it at school. And then it’s even worse because they’re not even seeing it for themselves or hearing about it. So it is this whole culture that we have to understand. It’s like a whole new world, and you know we can talk about sex and sexuality and transgender too.
We have three shows on all of those things. Again, none of those things are new. All of those things have always been around, but the exposure to it is happening in kindergarten now because they’re online seeing it, and so their questions are more detailed. We’re not prepared for them. We need to be aware of that. One thing I want to say, too, is you got to be careful about. We talk a lot about making sure you’re ready for the conversations you also like protect your kids. Don’t let them be overexposed. You know, as a first grader don’t say, well, we’re going to watch this R rated movie because we’re going to talk about it. No, protect them as much as you can. You know, protect their little innocence, but when it is broken, we need to have a place where they can come talk to us Like that’s the point, speak into this. You have young kids here, so I’m like looking at you, like talk about this.
0:11:50 – Speaker 1
I get this question a lot. Moms and dads will say you know, I heard about this happening and my kid didn’t say anything. Should I tell them about it? And then we talk about it because you know we want to have open communication and so the conversations that I explain or I share with them about how I introduce those topics is I’ll use examples from family and friends and nextTalk team members to bring up a subject with my kids. That’s age appropriate. So let’s say your son had an experience at the lunch table and you share that with me. He allows you to share that with me. You know we’re in the car driving.
I’ll say man, you know so and so is at school today and they heard this crazy thing at the lunch table and you know what they did. And my kids will say what did they do? I said he went home and he told his mom right away because it was something that was unfamiliar to him or made him uncomfortable, and she was able to explain it in a way that made sense and every time they’ll say what was it. And that allows me to say I’m not sure that this is something that your ears and your heart and your mind are ready to hear yet. When you’re older, I’d be happy to explain it to you.
But is there anything on your mind? Is there something that you’ve been hearing at the lunch table or on the playground and that usually opens up conversation? And sometimes I can be even more specific, like man, did you hear that song? There were some things in there that were a little bit different, and I wait for them to tell me. I ask them and I gauge the conversation based on what they know. You don’t want to over expose your child, but you want to be there to answer the questions when they’re ready.
0:13:24 – Speaker 3
Well, and I love that, and I think it’s so applicable because so many times we want to make sure they’re prepared, but you know you don’t want to pull up a pornographic picture on the iPad and be like, okay, I need you to see what this looks like. That’s not what, that’s too much. And you need to know what your kid can handle too. Every child is so different in how they can handle it and process it, so that is extremely important in knowing when to describe something. Just recently, my 11 year old asked me about something and I didn’t think we were ready for it yet, but he was asking me about because something happened at school.
He had heard something right, and so I thought, okay, I’m going to explain this to him in age appropriate ways. I’m not going to give him too much information, but I am his Google, so I want him to have the information. So I started explaining it and he literally put his hand up to me and he was like stop. I think that I want to protect my heart and mind for another year. I don’t think I need to know this yet, and it blessed my heart so much because he knows that I’ll tell him in age appropriate words. You know not too much, but he wasn’t even ready yet and he has learned to like protect himself, like he’s like. I don’t want that in my mind yet and I just love that.
0:14:45 – Speaker 1
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0:15:31 – Speaker 2
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0:15:39 – Speaker 3
Investment advisory services offered through PACS Financial Group. So we’re talking about understanding our kids culture today and we talked a little bit about how things have changed. And one other thing that I wanted to add to that, kim, is peer groups, and Charles, your husband, mentioned this on the video series and I thought it was such a great point. He said when I was growing up I had three or four buddies living next to me and that was my peer group. That’s who I got information from, like if I had a sex question or a birds and bee question or whatever.
And it was three or four dudes and they didn’t know much you know, and they had, they gave wrong information and whatever. But now our kids can Google it and have every opinion known to man, and I think that’s a shift that we must recognize too. You know, before it wasn’t as important to be their safe place. Now it’s like the answer. I mean you got. You got to be their safe place, you got to be the place where they will ask the questions.
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And we were just talking about that, about the Super Bowl, like y’all were looking at Twitter and different online things as you were watching the game, and so all those opinions get filtered into your thought process and it becomes part of the conversation, whereas things you might not have thought of or places you might not have gone might not have been part of the conversation. We are sheltered because we have little ones and we’re not on social media yet, so the conversation was just what was in the room and I was thinking about that. I was like man, as our kids get older, even ideas that are introduced are in huge amount. They’re processing so much over just even something like a football game.
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One thing that I do as a mom is I like to read comments and replies to tweets that I don’t agree with. Yes, and I like to do that, not to? I don’t. I don’t enter into debates with them. I don’t like start, you know, fighting online, but I want to know what culture is saying. Yes, because when my teenager comes home and they’ve had a discussion I’m using air quotes here or a debate in class about a hot topic, I am fully aware about what culture is saying from both sides. Yes, I love. There’s a verse in Ecclesiastic. It says stay in touch with both sides of an issue. It’s such a great scripture to be able to see both sides of it. That doesn’t mean you don’t know truth. You know, you know truth, but you need to know what culture is saying, because that helps create conversation with my teenager.
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Well, I’m just going to say this, and I think sometimes, especially as Christians, we struggle with this. It is okay to see some of the points in an argument against someone who has a different viewpoint.
Yes, it is oh and your teenager needs to hear you say that. They need to hear you model healthy conversation where you say you know what. That makes sense. What you’re saying, this part of what you’re saying. I can see why you feel that way. They need to see that and it’s healthy and it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you’re switching political sides. It doesn’t mean that you’re believing what someone else is believing. It means that you’re recognizing that there are some truths in what they’re saying and that is okay. Yeah, and you can’t do that if you don’t know what’s going on culturally.
0:18:55 – Speaker 3
I think that really helps the conversations with teenagers, especially because they’re growing up in a world where everything’s accepted, yes, like, and if you are the parent that’s coming off like this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, you’re going to lose them, like they’re not going to listen to you. So if you can say honey, I understand how people this is a struggle, but go read this Bible verse and tell me what you think about that and let’s look at it from God’s view and then let’s talk about why we can see both sides but then know that this is truth. Yes, you know, and it’s. That’s a process. And the other thing that I love is when we like what you were going back to, kim, when we understand the culture, when we understand what’s going to happen, what’s happening to our kids, we can plant seeds without overexposing them. Yeah, so what I mean by that is okay, let’s talk about sharing nude photos. Okay, kids refer to it as sharing nudes. They don’t refer to sexting anymore. We have a whole show on that. Go listen to that show. It’s called sexting versus nudes sharing nudes. This is a whole new thing that we have to parent. This isn’t like a shift, this is like a whole new thing that kids are doing. They’re sharing nudes because everything is snapped and recorded and shared. So An example that I like to give at events I do this a lot at events is you know, when you have a two year old walking in the room and they have a sippy cup and an iPad and they’re barging in on the bathroom and you’re going to the bathroom or you’re chowering or whatever, you’re not dressed right, that is such a teachable moment.
Okay, they don’t get in trouble, you don’t go ballistic but cover yourself with a towel or whatever. And it’s a great teachable moment to say hey, honey, you see that iPad you’re carrying in. Like all you have to do is hit that button and it takes a picture of me and I don’t have clothes on. Like, oh my gosh, we don’t take pictures of people without clothes on, right. Okay, okay, because you understand the culture that kids are sharing nudes now and that’s a thing. It’s like a common practice with kids. You can plant a seed in your two year old without overexposing them. Yes, you’re not saying saying to your two year old, did you know? Yeah, kids are taking new photos. You don’t do that, right, but because you’re aware of the culture. You can plant seeds because you know what’s coming.
0:21:14 – Speaker 1
I have to say this real quick because I know sometimes moms get overwhelmed with this part when they have younger kids, and so I just want to throw this out there. What has helped me so much in having like a heads up mom or friends that is ahead of me to tell me what’s happening in the culture? It helps me gauge where I need to be putting my focus, just like when you have a baby, a new baby and your first time mom. If you remember, you felt like you wanted to fall apart when something changed because you didn’t know that that was normal. But if you had someone that said, hey, that baby is going to wake you up in the middle of the night and it’s normal, it’s okay.
You’re not going to feel, you’re going to want to lose your mind when you don’t want to sit in the middle of the floor and cry yes, you’re not, it’s going to happen. That’s part of it. You were mentally ready at least a little bit more for that season to come. That’s why we read the books. That’s why we ask people about parenting. This is the same thing you need to know it’s coming so you can prepare your kids appropriately and yourself. You need to know that I’m going to need to be fully engaged in the culture online and off of my kids in just about a minute. So right now I don’t do a lot of social media because I need to be engaged with them at this age where they’re not online. But I know it’s coming, so I have to parent them to be prepared for it.
0:22:27 – Speaker 3
It’s so good. That is so good. I write in my book about a heads up mama and getting a tribe. It helped me so much getting my kid on social media Because I needed to know what do I need to be aware of what? And all of that helped. And listen. If you’re out there like I don’t have a heads up mama, let nextTalk. Be your heads up mama. We are posting all the time. If you are listening to the podcast, you are getting a good dose of what the culture is like because we talk about it a lot. We have every subject under the sun. We can be your heads up mom or dad for you. Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about generally the culture and how it shifted and changed, and how we’re facing new things as parents and kids. Right In this last point, I kind of want to talk about listening to our kids, their unique personal culture.
0:23:14 – Speaker 1
Yes.
0:23:15 – Speaker 3
Because here’s the thing we got all this going on over here that we just described, all these pressures they know when they’re not invited to the party and they’re all the stress of bullying and being recorded and all of that being posted and made fun of, all of that right. But then your kid has specific things going on, so they may be on a basketball team or they may be in theater or a soccer team or whatever, and they have these unique stressors that impact their personal culture. They may struggle with perfectionism, like they get really upset when they aren’t starting or they don’t get apart or whatever you know you need to be. This is where you just have to listen to your kid, like it’s so important that you listen more than you talk.
0:24:01 – Speaker 1
It’s so wise? Absolutely. I even had a conversation with a teacher that said the culture of each class is different and it’s important to know who your kids are with and what the culture of their class is. So in those elementary years, when they’re together all day long, the culture of their class is different the culture of their friend groups, the culture of their team and then, like you said, their uniqueness, whatever it is that they’re doing and struggling with, and each one is going to be different. On your family, they’re not all going to be the same.
0:24:29 – Speaker 3
And it’s going to change. Seasons are going to change. I mean, I just we Matt and I use our his commute time to talk, and normally we’re talking about the stressors coming at each of our kids and how, what, what conversations we need to have. We need to be aware of this. We don’t have problems, but we have these. We’re seeing these patterns that we need to be aware of and have conversations about, and so you should know, like, what’s causing your kid stress, what is their biggest number one struggle right now. Like you need to be able to be able to look at each kid and be like, okay, this one struggles with telling their feelings or this one struggles with you know anger, this one struggles with failure, like have that pressure point. Know that, and that is like knowing your kid’s personal culture too, and that’s so important in this whole culture show.
0:25:16 – Speaker 1
Number one we have to understand the culture to effectively parent it. Number two when we know the culture, we can plant relevant seeds. And number three listen to your kids. Know the general culture, but also know the personal culture of each of your children.
0:25:33 – Speaker 2
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim on AM 630, the Word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Find our free video series and podcast at nexttalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page
