Okay, parental units. I have to clear my throat and step up onto my rickety, wooden soapbox. I am forever shocked when I hear that precious baby boy or little princess has unfettered access to the armpit of our generation.

The internet is simultaneously the red, beating heart of beauty and the big ole brown butthole of our existence. It brings us unparalleled blessing in the form of Dr. Google and acquisition of knowledge and a place to foster acceptance and learning about  people and places we might otherwise never come in contact with.

Conversely, it holds within its dark and tempestuous bowels the unbridled evil of the likes that will forever stun me to the bottom of my spleen.

Why in the world would we ever allow our children, tweens and teens unrestricted access to the butthole of our modern existence?

Most of us adults have issues with excess and too much Facebooking and making good choices and we’re supposedly grown. People, your kid’s frontal lobe is not fully developed until they’re about 20 years old.

As in, THEIR BRAIN IS NOT FULLY GROWN.

They don’t even have the brain power, much less the willpower to adequately monitor and control their use of a substance which is akin to crack. Yeah. The drug.

There are studies which shed light on the fact that the internet and social media can function in your kid’s brain much like cocaine. It’s addictive. And they’re sitting in their rooms all hours of the day and night effectively snorting cocaine while we watch and think, “Johnny’s 16 now. He can drive. Surely he can moderate his use of the internet.”

Wrong.

He can’t. Neither can Janie. They’re smart, they’re sneaky, they seem like adults. They’re not adults. They need our help.

Here’s a little tidbit for you. Doctors are dealing with the curious case of impotence in teen boys for the first time in forever.

Yes. You read that right.

They’re languishing in their rooms at night, soaking up the riches of the bottom-feeders of the world; swimming around in the muck of sexual deviance and criminality and they think it’s normal.

The internet is telling them a delicious lie about what sex and intimacy are supposed to look like and they believe it. It’s causing their bits and pieces to stop working because the reality of relationships and sexuality and intimacy as a 15 year old is vastly different than what their excitatory neurons are experiencing on the little blue rectangle in the middle of the night and they can’t reconcile that.

Girls are sending pictures of their boobs and butts to these impotent man-children and basing their worth off exploiting their faces and bodies on social media. They’re comparing themselves to the human Barbies and Kendall Jenner’s unnaturally UGE lips and they just can’t compare.

What they see isn’t representative of the real world, but they have a hard time distinguishing between reality and electronic, glowing fiction. They also have electronic rage. It’s true. Staring at the screen turns them into roid-raged lunatics and it all has something to do with that undeveloped part of their brain directly behind their forehead. You can take that to the bank. It’s science.

I’m decidedly against censorship. Nothing gets me more riled up than book banning, censoring information and media scrubbing. I am horrified that I operate within a culture that will demand books about vaccinations be banned from Amazon, but casually shrugs at stories touting the glories of strangling your sexual partner or a website with step by step instructions for having sex with farm animals. Wanna build a bomb or starve yourself? We have tutorials for that, too.

Step back objectively and imagine the citizens of the future studying our culture from afar based on the interwebs. How jacked up are we?!

I’m not selling censorship or hiding the truth or sheltering. I’m selling parenting.

My kids will be the first to tell you that I hide nothing from them. Except maybe that one time…but that’s a story for another post. I horrify them daily by telling them the God’s honest truth about anything they question. One of my biggest parenting wins was casually mentioning to my older daughters that a book was once banned and then watching them lurk around, eyes darting while searching for the book on our shelves at home. It was a proud moment.

Back to the interwebs and electronics. You have to help them. You wouldn’t let them snort cocaine from their pinky fingers in their lairs all night. Don’t let them crack out on their phones, either.

Make those turkeys earn their phone. Nothing’s free kiddo. Get to scrubbin’ that toilet bowl, suckas. Mow the yard and get some vitamin D and muscle movement, for Pete’s sake.

Have screen/internet time limits. Use an app if you can’t remember or don’t want to police them 24/7. My favorite is when I hear a groan and a sigh because someone has used up all their internet for the day. My mommy-heart just chortles.

Explain the rules and expectations and then stick to it. They’ll hate you. Nobody ever said parenting is a Miss Congeniality contest.

Start early. If your kids are little – start now. Set the expectation. The phones, the tablets, the laptops, the TVs. They all belong to Mommy and Daddy and we make the rules.

Collect the phones at night. No teen ever needs to text or troll Insta or send dick pics after 10pm. For real. Read a book. Made out of paper.

Have passwords on the computers and phones. Make it known that the parental units own the phones and devices and therefore control every aspect of the device and its usage. The end.

Don’t let them sit around like listless whales in their rooms with electronics. Tell them to stay in the living room/kitchen with their phones and tablets or deal without them. Do your homework at the kitchen table, kid. I don’t feel bad for any student who has to endure this torture.

If it comes down to it – cancel the phone, cancel the internet. Suck it, kid.

Most of all: dialogue. We must talk to them. There has to be communication. It’s hard. It’s embarrassing. Who really wants to discuss non-working penises with their 15 year old boy? No one. But we have to. They have to know that their schlongs could stop working if they indulge in the unreality of porn.

This is the reality, folks.

Talk about sex, talk about friends, talk about gluten-intolerance and anorexia. Talk about periods and prostitution and drug addictions and the dangers of human trafficking. Talk about high fructose corn syrup and dating. Talk about your rules and expectations and start early. Three year olds can understand a little bit about their bodies and will start asking sex questions. Tell them the age-appropriate truth.

My 3 year old knows his brother has a hemorrhoid and he told the dentist about it.

See, they know stuff.

Talk about that Asian bird-leg Momo sculpture and the videos they watch and the things they see. Have regular times where you chat and go over what they’ve been doing/seeing online. Help them know what to do if they find themselves in a sticky situation or see something they don’t understand. Make it clear that they can always come to you for real answers and information. You are an open door.

Teach them online and social media etiquette. Talk about what’s okay to post and what isn’t. Stay up to date about what’s going on in the electronic world.  If you don’t know, Google it, ask your mommy-group. Ask your kid.

Scroll through their social media platforms with them. Talk about what you see. Let them know you stalk them electronically. They will find comfort in knowing you’re there and boundaries exist. They will. Even if they fight you and roll their eyes.

Let them hear the truth from your first before listening to the slippery lies the world will tell them. Tell them how you don’t have all the answers but you can find them together. Tell them how much you love them and want the absolute best for them. Your motives are pure.

The answer isn’t to sanitize their world and never let them use the internet, electronics, social media, or watch television.  The internet is a mainstay in our culture and likely will be for the rest of forever. They have to know how to effectively navigate that world. Their future depends on it.

It’s our job as parents to show them how to make the internet their slave and work to their advantage, not the other way around. We can’t strap a vial of crack cocaine around their necks and say lovingly, “Now don’t use too much of this, dear.”

It’s so hard. It’s brain-numbingly difficult to navigate parenting on a daily basis. The advent of electronics and the internet ushered in with it a whole new world to traverse, but it’s worth the wrestle to keep our kids safe, healthy and happy.

Keep it real, ya’ll.