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You Are What You Eat: The Importance of Knowing What Your Children Consume from Media · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Today I have a special guest, Kayla E.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Green.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: She's an author, poet, and homemaker.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And when she isn't writing or reading or spending time with her family, she loves singing loudly and off-key to Kay Love Radio and pretending she's a unicorn.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: She's written an award-winning YA fantasy novella.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: She's written an inspirational poetry collection.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: She has stories and poems featured in various anthologies and in Clean Fiction Magazine and online Wow, Women in Writing.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about Kayla and all of her books, you can connect with her on her website, which is also called The Unicorn Writer, which will be listed in the show notes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome Kayla, and we're excited for you to share on You Are What You Eat, the importance of knowing what your children consume from media, a very important topic today.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to talk about our topic today.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, children are so important.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: They are a blessing.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we really need to make sure we know what they are consuming, that as they get older, they know what they're consuming.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the topic today, you are what you eat, it's really founded on the Bible verse, 1 John chapter 2, verse 16.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm going to be sharing the ESV version.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we, you know, we all know as adults, the um amount of media consumption has increased over the years, especially with TV switching over to streaming services, social media being accessed on mobile devices, internet.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: We've got music, books, all of these are things that are put out into the world to consume.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And not everything is of the father.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of things are of the world.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important that we are engaged with what is being consumed in our households.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: We can look at a lot of different studies done, a lot of different professional organizations have shared that media consumption does have just general media consumption has negative impacts.org has shared how media consumption and constantly being quote plugged in, quote, can create so many distractions for our children.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Distractions from school, distractions from church, family, friends.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the more quote unquote plugged in they are, the more likely there is to be exposure to not only material that is of the world, material that is inappropriate based off age or just inappropriate in general, is not something we would want to consume, and definitely not something we want our children to be consuming, can lead to higher rates of mental health struggles, higher rates of anxiety, depression.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to share a little anecdote today to kind of show how easy it is for children to pick up material that is of the world, things that are not appropriate, things that when we really look at it, it's like, oh, this is not what we want our children consuming.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: When I was working in an elementary school, I had a nine-year-old so excited to come in.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um she had a book.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, her mom took her, told her, because she said, I want to get my own book.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, books were not something that they had a lot of at the house.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And her mom, you know, was being very supportive.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Yeah, if you want a book, I would love to buy you a book.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she let her nine-year-old pick out a book.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: The issue here is that the nine-year-old picked out an adult novel.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the mom was just so happy that her daughter was reading.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: She had no idea what was actually in the book, and the book centered around a lot of abuse, domestic.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there were intimate scenes on page, alcohol abuse, all of these heavy, heavy topics.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I shared this to show, you know, we do want our children to read, but books are still media, it's still something being consumed.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to be involved.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just we do want to preview material, but we also want to be involved.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: We want to have age-appropriate conversations with our children.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, why can't I read this?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to go back and have this biblical lesson, 1 John 2, 16.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: We want to consume what is of the Father, not of the world.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: We want to reflect, um, we are what we eat.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: We want to reflect God and we want to consume what He wants us to be.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: We want to be light.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to fall victim to these worldly desires.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay to have these conversations rooted back in the Bible because we want our children as they grow up.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's not, you know, let's take a nine-year-old.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Once they become a little bit more independent in middle school, high school, um, we want to have that foundation set to have conversations with them, but also that they have that discernment to be able to decide what they want to consume.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they've got that foundation to know, this is not for me.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to consume what's going to, you know, help me grow in my faith that's going to help me glorify God.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And ways to do this is one to have open conversations, but also we can look at um resources that share types of media that we know are going to be God honoring.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're not going to be um of the world, they're not going to be damaging.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so talking about music, there's hey Love Radio, there are Christian radio stations or clean radio stations that aren't going to be exposing children and letting them consume um vulgar language and vulgar ideas.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as turns of books, you can find publishing houses such as Ambassador International or Shadow Mountain that are putting out um wholesome books written from Christian worldviews.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um make sure you're you're talking to your kids, um, that they're you know not staying quote unquote plugged in all the time with TV social media.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um have conversations with them, encourage time together, make it fun, not like a punishment, just we want our kids to be set up for success by knowing what they're consuming now and helping them develop discernment and the ability to go back to we want to consume um stuff that goes back to God and not um that is from the world.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those are very good points that you make.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's so true.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter's grown now, but when she was growing up, you know, I could trust the school library, I could trust our public library to have decent books, our bookstores.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I walked into Barnes and Noble not long ago, and in the children's section, I couldn't believe how many LGBT books, and you don't always know them, you don't always know by the cover.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just more and more important that parents really know what's in the book.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know one good source, uh, I I believe Focus on the Family has a department that reviews books for different ages.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that might be a really good way for parents to find out.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know parents are busy, but it's so, so important, like you shared, that they know what their children are consuming.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for sharing these tips with us, and we'll hope to have you back in the future.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um absolutely.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I really um enjoyed being here and talking about this.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.