Parental Censorship – An uphill battle

For those of you who can remember, we were prevented from being exposed to media violence with all its extremes and graphic gory details, and, inappropriate behaviour by the use of a good old fashioned parental censorship technique called, turning off the television.

In the case of contempt, being sent to our bedroom to read a book or play with our toys, with no way of escaping to another world via the net, finally resolving the situation for our parents.

Well, hasn’t that changed! Sending children to their bedrooms now is akin to sending them to Disneyland, with all the mod cons of today at their disposal. Heaven knows what they get up to when away from parents prying protective eyes.

To cater for situations like this, some parents have even resorted to spy software to secretly record every detail of what their children do on the computer to keep tabs on them and the people they meet online.

Parental censorship is made even more complicated with the advent of live reporting from war zones on television, YouTube and LiveLeak to name just a few, all too real shoot’em up computer games, murders with their subsequent body dissections on shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, computers in nearly every home and access to the net via cell phones.

With so many avenues to the dark side of life what hope do impressionable minds, both young and old, have from being desensitized to the things that should make us weep and or cringe in horror.

Exposing young minds to acts of inhumanity, foul language and sex before their time, also leads them into thinking all of this is quite the norm and acceptable which has far reaching consequences, not only for them but for their children when the time comes.

The legacy we leave our children is founded on our good character, good conduct, constant vigilance, the right teachings and a whole lot of patience and common sense, all of which starts from the time they are born up until they slip from our grasp when we take our last breath.

Having seen for myself what can happen to a human being, all I can say is, that no one should be unnecessarily exposed to life’s sad extremes if they want to remain completely sane and untouched by human indifference. As for me, U2’s words, “I’m not broke but you can see the cracks” describe me very well.

Yes, I’m all for parental censorship, up until the time our children are old enough to understand and know the difference between right and wrong, and, to put what they have learnt into practice; with us as parents always in the background ready to give a guiding hand and to help out when things go wrong.

So what do you have to say for parental censorship? What have been your successes and failures?

To be continued…