KirbyAndersen.com

I wrapped up a series yesterday entitled, Raising Godly Parents, with a message about a parent’s responsibility to protect the child from influences contrary to God’s ways. It comes down to establishing boundaries limiting your child’s involvements and exposure to certain activities and people - insulating, not isolating. With proper training and keeping communication lines open, a parent can feel more confident that the child will make good decisions as he/she grows older and becomes more exposed to “the dark side”.

While under your care, there are things we need to monitor to guard the heart (Pro. 4:23) of your child. Without repeating all I taught in my message, here are some tools we’ve employed in our home to help with our role as godly protectors:

• Make a list of approved TV shows.
• Mute TV commercials. Or better yet, get a DVR (digital video recorder) and record TV shows, then watch when you want and fast forward through commercials.
• Establish a rule that a child must get permission first before turning on the TV.
• Set parental locks on your TV. Check your instructions for your cable or satellite service. You can block shows by rating, specific shows, channels, etc. Choose to hide adult channels so they don’t even show up on the guide. In our home, only mom knows the password.
• Buy and install a TV Guardian. It’s a add-on box that filters language on TV shows, dvds, and videos. Unfortunately, the company has just stopped manufacturing but you can still find them online via eBay, etc. We use the 301 model. TV Guardian is also trying to get included on cable and satellite services. You can find out more here.
• Subscribe to Plugged In Magazine from Focus on the Family and/or check Plugged In Online to get reviews on TV shows, movies, games, music, etc.
• Check movies for content at Screen It!
• Read the series available at Focus on the Family for parents of tech-savvy kids.
• Check out the accountability and filtering software from X3Watch. Also, you may find some of the information from XXXChurch.com helpful.
• A couple of great books to help your teenager son or daughter learn to deal with sexual temptation: Every Young Man’s Battle and Every Young Woman’s Battle.