supporting parents in an online world
This month’s guest post is written by Heather Cate from Proven Ministries. Grateful she’s here to give us some helpful hints on having the sex talk.
Do you remember your first “sex talk”?
I vaguely remember mine. My father showed me a picture book for kids with drawings and basic descriptions of our reproductive systems.
While I’m sure I grasped the concept of how babies get made, as much as one can grasp at the age of 8, what interested me more was sexuality.
Continue reading “The Sex Talk”
Who has time for self-care when their child is struggling? As parents, we tend to put everyone else first, neglecting our own well-being. We take on guilt and lose our individuality. We assume we’ll have time to take care of ourselves after the crisis has passed. But while we’re frantically patching up the problems on the outside, our insides are deteriorating.
This week, I join Marilyn Evans at ParentsAward/Media Savvy Mom on a podcast to talk about the importance of self-care, especially when our child is in a crisis. Head over to the podcast here and listen to us discuss the importance of self-care. The show notes are listed below to give you a taste of what you’ll learn.
Continue reading “The Importance of Self-Care”
After learning of my son’s transgressions with porn, I analyzed every angle I could about his issue. The one question I kept asking was “Why?” Of course, there was the obvious. He’s a curious teenage boy with out-of-control hormones. But that only answered the question of why he initially sought porn. The question of what triggered his continuous use still seemed elusive.
Continue reading “Boredom Leads to Porn Use”
I saw the questioning look in his eyes. I interpreted it as, “Should I tell her? How will she respond?” I had seen that look in his sister’s eyes before, too. It typically appeared when there was something that needed to be said but no one wanted to be the one to upset mom. Someone put a scratch in the floor when they dropped a utensil. A red sock turned the white clothes pink. (Okay, I made that up. We’re not particular about the laundry, and this has never happened to me.) One son backed into the other son’s vehicle. Bad news. Upsetting information. An incriminating tale.
Continue reading “Not My Child’s Job to Protect Me”
My son recently gave me permission to write in my given name, rather than a pen name. I’ve written using a pen name for his comfort. (And, let’s face it, for mine too!) I didn’t want to taint anyone’s view of him . . . or our family. But we are five years into this journey, and our household recognizes the need to rip off that Band-Aid. The topic of pornography has been kept under a lid for too long. If we are to educate and communicate within our circles and community, I need to be free to write in my given name. Still, it’s a bit awkward to have your mom announce to the world your past behaviors, ones that have been kept close within the family for so long. So I applaud his courage and bravery.
Continue reading “Today’s Porn: Not Your Father’s (Grandfather’s) Playboy”
My son struggled with pornography for nine years. His fascination began when he was nine or ten and turned into a full-blown addiction sometime before he was fourteen. His dad and I found out about it at that point and vowed to get in the trenches with him to help him . Unfortunately, he wasn’t completely honest with us, so he fell back into his ways fairly quickly—even though we talked with him, added filters to our devices, and updated our house rules.
Continue reading “In the Trenches with Your Child”
In a previous post, I referred to these seven stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. Recently, I explored these stages more thoroughly and identified the process I walked through when I first heard of my son’s fascination with pornography.
Continue reading “Stages of Grief – Bargaining”