Let’s talk about YouTube Kids and the dangers children (and parents) face with this platform… As parents, we have to be diligent and monitor what is entering our child’s eye gates and ear gates… because friends, the Devil is no respecter of persons OR AGE.

He doesn’t care if you’re a baby, 6 years old, a teenager, or an adult… he comes to do 3 things: to steal, kill and destroy. He steals time and emotions, destroys relationships and lives and ultimately wants you to kill yourself or someone else. The later is always the end game… he lies, manipulates, and pushes people to lose their minds and while in that state, do the unthinkable.

These battles always take place in our thought lives and being able to control your thoughts and identify the destructive ones is how we win the war… now we need to teach these skills to our children and the earlier, the better!

We have got to start teaching them the difference between thoughts that bring life/joy/hope/happiness vs thoughts that bring sadness/anger/hate/death. When you watch or listen to something, ask this question: what is the fruit that is coming forward?

I explained it to Liberty like this when she was 6… everything you watch and listen to is a seed. Whatever seed we plant WILL GROW so we have to be careful what we plant in our hearts and minds. If we plant good things that make us laugh or make us happy then good things will grow. If we plant scary things or angry things then bad things will grow. Liberty has become pretty good at self-regulating after that story and we often discuss what we are planting in our hearts and minds.

The other gift we can give our children is rooting them in their true identity – that they are uniquely made and reflect a special attribute of God (like a diamond with many facets, we each reflect a unique identity of God). We want our children to know that they are bold, kind, brilliant, beautiful, creative, full of life and are meant to change nations. We must confess over them their TRUE God-given identity – even when they think or say the opposite – we should lovingly stop them and say, “no – you can, you are, you will…”

Last, we have to teach our children that not every thought is their own. There are two forces in the world calling to us… one that speaks life and one that speaks death. Thoughts that produce those angry feelings and sad feelings must be cast down and replaced with a positive thoughts. Taking it one step further we have to watch what they are saying over themselves. Are they speaking life and possibilities over themselves or are they saying that they can’t do something or that they are stupid? We should try hard to teach them how to speak life over themselves instead of curse themselves on accident. One proactive step is to routinely pray over them to break off any word curses they may have spoken over themselves, that others may have spoken over them, or even things we as parents may have said over them in a frustrated moment. I do this from time to time when Liberty is sleeping. ?

Anyways, these are things I do to try to combat the moral issues we are faced with as parents with advances in technology. There are a lot of great content creators on YouTube and a lot of family-friendly channels. I don’t think the solution is to completely shield our children from these cultural issues but it’s our job prepare them (to the best of our ability) for what they will face and find online.