Parenting

The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.

Jill Geigle is passionate about educating families and communities on preparing and protecting children from pornography. She is currently the Director of Parent and Child Advocacy at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation working to stop online child sexual exploitation.

Jill was also recently a guest on LDS Living’s All In podcast. She shared a powerful analogy to explain why rather than focusing solely on protecting their children from any exposure to pornography, parents need to prepare their children for when they do see it.

“It is not an if our children run into pornography and sexually explicit content. It’s a when,” Jill says, “The only true way to actually protect them from ever seeing pornography would be to just lock them away so they would never see a screen in their life. And so what we want to try to do is change from that word of protect to the word prepare.”

To illustrate this point, Jill shared an analogy about trees. As a child, her family had a cabin surrounded by beautiful, big Ponderosa pine trees. Over the years, the family battled a parasitic infestation called mistletoe that threatened to wipe out the trees. At first, her father tree trimmers to cut out the mistletoe. But year after year, it returned.

The family decided to try a new approach. They hired a forester, someone skilled in caring for trees, to advise them.

“[The forester] said, ‘Look, mistletoe is a natural part of the ecosystem of a forest. What you need to do is strengthen your trees. So that as your trees grow, they will be strong enough and healthy enough that … they will be able to overpower the mistletoe. …’ Then he recommended certain things, clearing part of the forest, giving more room for sunlight, making sure we have adequate water throughout the forest, and putting down nutrients in the soil,” Jill says.

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.