🙋🏻♂️Have you heard your kid use a word or phrase and thought “where did you hear that?! That’s not ok!” Here’s how I handle that when I think they heard it from a video game or video
🤯First of all, it doesn’t actually matter where they heard it. Yes, we want to be sure to keep a close ear on things they watch and screen their content to make sure it’s safe. But, kids overhear a lot of things from a lot of places. If they overheard a bad word in the supermarket, we wouldn’t blame the supermarket. If our first instinct is to say “I KNEW you shouldn’t play Fortnite! You wouldn’t have learned that word otherwise” the message were sending is this is the game’s fault. The game may have facilitated the incident but it’s not the underlying cause.
🚩Ultimately we want kids to come to us if they overhear something inappropriate. If our immediate instinct is to blame the game or show, our kids may not feel as comfortable coming to us the next time they overhear something. After all, they don’t want to lose access to things they like.
🤷🏻♂️Now, after my example in this video, will I delete the offending video from our browsing history? Yep. Will I allow my child to watch it again in the future? Nope. But that is MY decision to make as the adult. If my child asks me to watch it again I’ll simply enforce the boundary; this often sounds like “that isn’t available” or “that isn’t a video we’re going to watch”. Our kids may not like that, and that’s their right.
🧠By approaching this from a curious and problem solving perspective, as opposed to a defensive or reactive one, we can encourage honest communication with our kids while still doing all we can to keep them safe.
