Build a Safe Place

What if your child trusted you more than the internet? We unpack how to become a genuine safe place for kids and lay out the daily choices that keep kids coming back to us with their biggest questions and hardest moments.

Chapters

• 0:00 Building a Safe Place at Home
• 1:07 Respecting Privacy and Sharing Online
• 4:41 Consent, Young Kids, and Sharenting
• 7:02 Filming Kids’ Hard Moments for Likes
• 10:20 Preparing for the “You’re Not Cool” Stage
• 12:24 Be Their Source: Don’t Let AI Define Terms
• 16:45 Calm Reactions Build Daily Trust
• 20:30 A Parent’s Script When Caught Off Guard
• 24:05 Trust in Little Things Becomes Big Trust
• 27:05 Brick Pavers: The Trust Foundation
• 30:06 Proving You’re Trustworthy Over Time

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Next Talk Podcast. We are a nonprofit passionate about keeping kids safe online. We're learning together how to navigate tech, culture, and faith with our kids. Build a safe place. Your kid needs a safe place to process what they're seeing, hearing, and feeling. We want our kids to feel safe with us. You know, my husband has a super high stressful job. He crawls in bed with me at the end of the night and he vents. Would I ever put that on Facebook or text my friend group what he just told me? No. Because I respect my husband. I need you to respect your child. When our children are little, they do tend to just tell us things. How we react over time will determine if they continue telling us things. So for example, I remember when my kids were little, we would go to play groups at the park all the time. And I loved it because my kids could go and play with their friends and get their energy out. And I could just have a minute with my mom friends. But you know, I look back on those days. I made some mistakes when I was talking to my mom friends in front of my kids. And, you know, we would just, we were venting and we were young moms, and we would say things like, oh, this one has trouble with bed wedding. Oh, this one, you know, they are very jealous or they have a temper. And we would put these labels on our kids. And you know what? I look back on that and I think, our kids were listening to us. Were we communicating to them that their secrets aren't safe with us, that their feelings aren't safe with us? And if I could go back, I would be way more careful with even simple statements that I would make in front of my kids. Now, I'm not saying as parents, we don't need a safe group of friends that we can talk to about those sorts of issues. Absolutely, yes. But it needs to be done away from the children. The other thing, too, is my kids, you know, grew up. I learned this. When our kids start crushing on someone or they hit a milestone, you know, start their period, start shaving their legs, whatever it is. That is not Facebook material for us. Our kids' privacy, it matters. And learn from me what I wish I would have done so much sooner is ask my kids permission to post about them. I didn't start this until middle school. And again, I wish if I could go back, I would do this earlier. I would ask them to post. Even today, you know, we have one young adult out of the home. She's a graduate student. We have another 18-year-old who's getting ready to leave. But even at this age that they are, if there's a family photo that I want to post on Facebook or Instagram, I will text our family group chat and ask if it's okay. Because in my mind, it's a beautiful picture, but but they may not like it. And what this does is it just shows our kids that their voice matters. Like their consent matters. We respect their privacy and their feelings. The other thing that I want to say about posting, sometimes you will ask your four or five, six-year-old, hey, can I post this picture of us? Or can I share this story about you? And they may say yes. You know, they're a young child. And I think we need to be careful with this because really kids cannot consent. They can't. They may not quite understand what that story or picture will feel like when they're 16, 17, or 18. So I would caution you here, even if you ask permission of your young child to post something and they say yes, I think you need to put yourself in their shoes. Would you be okay with that story or picture being out in the world when you were 16 or when you were a teenager? We just have to look ahead for them and protect them. Do you want to speak about something here? A new trend that I'm really seeing on social media. And I think it's just because everybody's growing up so digital now. You know, we're filming in our homes, we're we're constantly on stories, talking on our homes, and people are in the background, kids are in the background. And so we've really gotten comfortable for just everybody being on camera, our emotions, our thoughts, our private life on display in social media. And the trend I'm seeing is, you know, a kid may be having a temper tantrum or a bad day or whatever, or we're getting ready to tell a kid bad news and we want to record their reaction and we post that for the world to see. This wasn't a thing when my kids were little, so I didn't get swept up in it. But I just ask you to pause and think, you know, if you were having a bad day, if you were having a crazy parent mode moment, would you want your kid to record that of you, your worst moment, and put that on social media for likes? We just need to show our kids respect. They are a little soul that we've been entrusted with. And a lot of times when they're little, they will tell you things. They will open up to you easily. But as they get older, something changes and you're not cool anymore. And the world kind of feeds our kid that it's it's not cool to talk to mom and dad. It's it's more cool to like keep secrets and sneak around and sneak out of the house. Like that's kind of the culture that they're fed. So we honestly need to be starting about it before it happens. I want you to be thinking about the moment that your kid may not think you're cool and have you prepared for that moment that your kid may still feel safe with you. Also, part of being a safe place is answering your kids' questions. When my kids were six and nine, I started this new thing in our home and I told them if you ever hear a new word or an idea, and it could be you're on the school bus or you could be on the playground or you could be online, but but you hear this new word and you're like, hmm, what does that mean? I want a red flag to go off in your brain to come home and ask me. Please don't Google it. You could get wrong information. Please don't ask your friends. They may not really know and may give you incorrect information not knowing. And so I want to be your source. I'm your Google. Now, technology has changed to where now I would say be your kids' AI bot. Right? Now kids really aren't asking Google anymore. They're going and asking AI bots, they're asking chat GPT. And so we need to be their source, especially when they're young. Will they age out of this? Yes. They will age and grow and be able to chat GPT stuff and research stuff and then come to you and talk about it. Yes. But when they're little, we don't want them Googling. We don't want them asking Siri. We don't want them asking AI. We are their source to ask questions. And when they ask you, then your reaction matters. So we we did a podcast a couple weeks ago about avoid crazy parent mode. When we can get our kids asking us what they're curious about, and then we respond calmly and give them the information in age-appropriate terms, where we're starting to work together to keep them safe from all the bad stuff in the world, then guess what? Over time, that standard operating procedure of them confiding in us, us not overreacting, it builds a safe place. It's a process. It's not going to happen overnight. Every conversation that you have with your child, every time your child asks you a question about what something means, or tells you something about what's happening in their friend group, or tells you a feeling that they're having that maybe scary for even you to hear, and you don't overreact, you're building a safe place. You're creating that over time, every day, in and out, the hard work of creating that healthy dialogue in your home. I had a mom one time, she came to an event, and I was talking about this point about if your kid hears a new word or an idea, I want a red flag to go off in their brain that they're supposed to come home and ask you. Well, she left the event that night. She went home the next day. She took her kid to school. And on the way home from school, she asked her son, eight years old, in the car. And she she told me later, she said, Mandy, I thought you were crazy. There's nothing he's not telling me. And we all feel that way. I have felt that way for years, right? There's always stuff that our kids are carrying that they're not telling us. We got to dig, we got to work for those things. But she was driving him home in the car after school, and she said, Hey, buddy, I just want to ask you a question. Is there any new word or an idea that you've heard of and you're curious about what it is? He asked her three different times, Am I gonna get in trouble? Am I gonna get in trouble? Am I gonna get in trouble? And she said, I was bracing myself because I knew there was something he was struggling with to process, something that he had heard. And she stayed calm and she said, You're not in any way, shape, gonna get in trouble. I just want you to tell me if there's things swirling around in your brain that you're wondering what they mean. And out came some cuss words, out came some gender stuff, out came some sexual stuff. She could not believe that her sweet little eight-year-old was carrying that around all alone and not telling her. She said they drove home that day and they talked the entire way home. They pulled into the driveway, into the garage, turned off the car. It was a nice day outside. They kept talking. They had the windows down, they just kept talking. They were having such good conversation and it went on for so long that the dad was in the house and thought something was wrong. So he came out to check on them. And she said, Oh, give us a minute. We're just having some good conversation. That happened at an event on a Wednesday night. I think she had the conversation on Thursday. The following Wednesday night, I had another event in the same city. She met me before I even started that event that night. And she said, I left here last week thinking you were absolutely crazy. There's no way my eight-year-old is carrying around words and ideas that he doesn't know existed. And she said that one question that I asked him changed everything because I was able to respond calmly, avoid crazy parent mode, give him some age-appropriate answers to his questions, reassure him never to ask friends or Google or AI about that sort of thing. And she said, we made huge strides that day in that one conversation to build a foundation for a safe place. This is what I'm talking about. We just have to be willing to have the courage to step out and ask these questions. Our kids are carrying around difficult things that they're trying to process. And they need to process them with us, a safe person who's going to love them no matter what and give them correct information. Now, when I say I want you to be the source, you know, that's your family, your choice on how you handle that. But Christian parents, this is vital for us because the world is filling our kids with all kinds of non-biblical messages. When we get a voice in our kids' life, when we become their safe place, not only are we keeping them safe from harm, like pornography addiction, online predators, you know, grooming, that sort of thing that everybody will if they implement this. But as Christian parents, you know what we're doing? We're developing their faith because we get to point them to Jesus. And we don't have to know it all. That's what I love about being a Christian parent. I'm falled, I mess up, I don't know everything. But there is one who is all-knowing. He's creator, he's savior, and he's given us a Bible, a blueprint to live our life by. So, what was cool in my home is that when my kids would come home and start asking me questions once I implemented this, there were some big scary questions that they asked that I wasn't sure. What does the Bible say? And why do I believe what I think I believe? And guess what? We dug into the word together. I grew in my faith right alongside my kids growing in their faith. So this is just a beautiful picture about discipleship in our home when we can become a safe place for our children. Now, I want to give you a disclaimer here because sometimes you pick your kid up from school and they get in the car, and maybe they're five, they're in kinder, and they jump in the car and they say a big sexual word, and you're like, there's no way we're here yet. There's no way I can describe to my five-year-old what this is. We may need to have some other conversations first before I can answer this question. Here's what I want to tell you. It is perfectly okay to say to your child, thank you so much for asking me. That's what I always want you to do. I don't want you to Google this or ask any technology what this is or ask your friends. I want you to go to people who you trust in real life, and that's that's, you know, me and dad, or these safe, trusted adults in their life. So thank you so much for asking me. It's always what I want you to do. This is a big question. It's like an adult question. And what I don't want to do is give you too much information that your brain is not ready for yet. I want to give you the answer in age-appropriate terms that that won't scar you for life. I laugh when I say that because that's a phrase I used to use with my kids. And at one point, my son even had a rap in our home where he would dance and say, Scarred for life, scarred for life. Everybody, everybody scarred for life. It was like a little song we would do when they would come home and ask me, and I would joke with them and I would say, Thank you so much for not scarring yourself for life. You know, that's what I want you to do. And it just became a running joke in our home. But one of the things that you can easily say is, this is a big question. I don't want you to be scarred for life. Can I have a day to think about how to give you this answer in age-appropriate terms? So that's kind of your out if you got if you get caught off guard with a question, but you want to be their source. Here's what I want to tell you. You cannot use this as an excuse not to go back and answer their question. You cannot. Because if you just then ignore it, your kid is gonna think my questions aren't important to mom. She didn't come back and give me the answer. So now I do have to ask Google because I need the information. So what I used to do is I would set a timer on my phone. If there was a big loaded question and I wasn't prepared to answer it yet, I would set a timer on my phone for 24 hours from that from that time period or when I was gonna address it the next day. And I would go back to my kid and I would say, Hey, that thing you asked me about yesterday, I've prayed about it, you know, I I I researched some information on really what I wanted to tell you, and now I'm ready to give you that information. And you know what? Sometimes I would go back to them and my kid would be like, you know what? I don't even need it anymore. I'm done. I've moved on. I was like, yes, praise Jesus. But other times my kid would be like, I'm so glad you came back to me because I have more questions now. And we would go down the rabbit hole of curiosity because I would rather them do that with me than chat GPT. We must be intentional about building this safe place. One other thing that I want to say about this, you know, we're talking about building a safe place with like answering their big questions. And that's a way to build the safe place. Another way to build the safe place is just simple things throughout life. Let me give you an example of how you can build the safe place with little things throughout their whole life, just being simple. It may not be a big sexual question that you're responding to. So, say you have a six-year-old boy and he comes home and he says, Mom, please don't send the yogurt with blues clues on it anymore. Please, that's so embarrassing. Oh, son, I'm so sorry. I didn't even think about that. Would you like a different kind of yogurt or no yogurt at all? Let me know. I know that seems so simple. It's stupid yogurt. But what are you communicating to your kid in that moment? Their feelings and their voice, it matters to you. This is important when building a safe place. If they trust you with the little things like that and you respond really well, they're gonna trust you with the big things when they get older. And so that's why it's super important. I always have this visual when I talk about building a safe place, and I use the word build because it is a process that you're doing over time. But I always envision, you know, brick pavers. And in talk, my first book, I actually have brick pavers on the bottom of it because I had this visual when I was trying to build the safe place all those years ago with my kids when I realized this was key in keeping them safe online. And so, you know, brick pavers, you lay one down at a time, one down at a time. And then eventually you have this beautiful foundation, this patio. And that's what it's like. Every conversation is a brick paver that you're adding to this foundation. And I want you to think of it like that because it's empowering. You know, when they talk to you about their yogurt embarrassing them and you fix it for them, you're like, oh, another brick paver. Then they get in the car after school and they're like, Mom, somebody's bullying me on the playground. And you say, Give me an example. Tell me what you mean by that. And then you have this great conversation about that. Another brick paver is added, you know, to your foundation. Every conversation where your kid confides in you about something, what they're seeing, what they're hearing, what they're feeling, how you respond, it either adds a brick paver to that very strong foundation, or it rips out a brick paver. And then there's a gaping hole of a problem in the relationship that needs to be fixed. Now, one of the things that I want to tell you is this. For those of you who don't know, I've been on this journey for 12 years of trying to build a culture of honest conversation in my home to keep my kids safe in such a digital confused world. And this key thing, the building the safe place, I saw it happen. I saw the brick pavers begin to be laid in a really cool pattern. I saw my kids very much trusting me. You know how I noticed that I was improving? When we first started this, I would get questions like, Are you gonna tell anybody? Are you gonna put that on Facebook? Kind of like that little boy in the car who would say, Am I gonna get in trouble? Am I gonna get in trouble? I would get those questions because my kids would fear that I would tell somebody. But over time, I became trustworthy. And they understood, they started to understand when I would ask permission to post or ask permission to tell a story. You know what that communicated to my kid? Okay, everything that I tell mom and dad, it's it's ours. And she will ask permission if she wants to share that. So it's not on me to ask her not to share. She's gonna default to keeping it just for us. And that was really cool to see the shift. It never became, I mean, now when my kids tell me something, they never preface it with, are you gonna tell anybody? No, because they know that if I'm gonna share their story, I will ask first. I will ask permission. I have proven myself over a decade of my kids that I can be their trusted, safe place. When I was writing my first book, I was really in the thick of trying to lay that foundation and build the safe place. One of the things with my book was I shared some stories about my kids in there, and I would always ask their permission. I would say to them, nothing I say on a stage, on a podcast, or in a book will go out into the world unless I ask you first. And I still joke with them guys because there were some good stories I wanted to include in my book, and they wouldn't let me. And I don't know, I'm kind of hoping as they get older that maybe they'll be like, okay, you can share that story now, but I don't know. We'll see. Because guess what? The relationship with my kid, it's more important than book sales. We always have to put our kids in the relationship and the safe place we're trying to build. We need to make that the priority. Now, one of the things that caught me off guard, and I'm gonna be very real with you, was the things that they would tell me as they got older because they felt safe with me. So I would feel like I would go to Friday night football games and I would know a lot of what was happening with these kids because my kids were confiding in me. And many times I would want to reach out to those parents and you know, tell them what was happening, and I could not. But and I think with open communication and with parenting the next talk way, kind of our vision for what we're proposing to the world about the way to keep kids safe is by building this relationship, right? I think one of the hardest parts is next talk families know a lot of stuff because our kids are confiding in us. It's very difficult to process. You will have tears about what they're struggling with and what their friends are struggling with. You will have tears about that because you know. I would always offset, though, with the fact that I'm so glad I could carry this with them and they're not carrying it by themselves. That's how I would always reconcile that in my mind. But I did have to come up with a few disclaimers on when I have to report or when I have to get involved. So you really have to pick your battles here. Each situation is different. You have to use discernment. Do you know this family? Do you know how this family would respond? I would always say this: don't ever talk to another family or report something without having a conversation with your kid first. Because you don't want to break their confidence. A big loophole for me was this. Anytime I knew another kid's life was at stake or a serious mental health issue, like there was I had to get involved on some level. And here's how that went in my home. Old Mandy originally, you know, my kid would have confided something in me, maybe somebody suicidal, or they're being bullied and they're worried about their mental health, something like that. Old Mandy probably would have texted everybody, you know, involved, would have maybe posted about it on Facebook. I wouldn't have used names, but I would probably have said, if you have a kid at this school, you need to, you know, talk with them because they're bullying or they're being mean to this person or whatever. I would have tried to reconcile the problem in a public way. The shift is that now new Mandy tries to get the kid help in a private way by also respecting my kid's confidence. So the conversation now would be say your kid confides in you. This friend is having suicidal thoughts. Honey, thank you so much for telling me. I'm so proud of you. I'm so glad that you don't have to carry this alone. This is a lot for a young person to carry that their best friend may confide this in them. I always want you to know you're safe and and that I won't break your confidence. But in this situation, we have to make sure this kid is getting the help they need. So we have some options here. I can email your school counselor and I can say, please, we want to remain anonymous as much as we can, but we need to report this. We just need to make sure the kid, you follow up with this kid and get the kid counseling. Or, you know, there's the anonymous text number at your school. We have this in our district. Some of you guys have this in your school districts where you can text stuff anonymously and report it. If you're really good friends with the family and the mom or the dad, you know, you may have a conversation with, I need to call this person. I need to just make them aware that their kid is struggling in this way so the kid can get help. This is a moment where you can actually empower your kid to do the right thing, but also work to maintain their confidence. I tell you to approach it like this because I want you to think about something. Say your child comes home and your child confides in you that their friend is suicidal. You don't talk to your kid or have any conversation, you just email the school counselor and principal and say, this kid needs help ASAP because you want to do the right thing. Likely what's going to happen is the school counselor is going to call your kid down the next day and say, tell me what was said. I'm just gathering context. When your kid gets called into that office, your kid is thinking to themselves, I'm never going to tell mom or dad anything ever again because I cannot believe they called the school. So what I'm telling you is sometimes we do have to report, we do have to get the school involved, but it should always be a conversation with our kid. We have to do this for this kid's well-being. What if this kid hurts themselves? They confided in us, they made an outcry to us. So it's on us now to make sure somebody at a higher level can get the kid the help they need. Okay. Also, I want to say this about schools. Once you report and you've got a counselor involved, you don't get to know what's going on with that kid. Step away, pray for that kid. You know, maybe your child is still confiding in you about what they're seeing or what they're hearing from that from that kid. If it escalates and you think that the kid is still not getting help, you can reach out again. But but the school doesn't owe you any information. You've done your part to report it, and now the school needs to take it from there. I share all this because it comes up a lot. If you do this really well in your home, if you create a safe place, you're gonna know more information than you ever wanted to know about what's going on in the lives of your child's friends and their families. You're gonna know all the scoop. So how you handle all that information is important. It's not gossip, it's not to be shared in group chats or talked about anywhere else. Because if it gets out and your kid finds out that you are the one that leaked it without a conversation about the reporting context in those certain situations, you have then lost the trust of your kid. And I always talk about trust in a relationship, like it's a glass plate broken in half. You can't move forward until that is repaired and come back together. It's the same thing when our kids lie to us, same situation. We we have to resolve that before we can move forward. And it's the same thing with us as parents. We can't use the information that our kids are confiding in us and trusting in us to process the world to. Earn points over here on social media that our kids are confiding in us and tell the whole world what's happening. We can't do that. The information that's been entrusted to us, it's vital to handle that carefully. Report when you need to report. When another child's life is at stake, you've got to report. But you've got to do that with conversations with your kid before you report on why it is imperative to get involved. Also, it's really cool to see when you and your kid kind of report together. Your kid can help you email the counselor. The kid can help you decide how to report. It's really cool to be able to see another child maybe get the help they need and get better. And then you can go back to your kid and say, you know, because of you, like God used you to help keep this kid safe. Your friend confided in you. You told me we worked together to get that kid help. And now look, look what your bravery did. It saved a kid. It's an empowering thing to teach your kid to do the right thing when nobody else knows or is looking, and it's not a public thing. And so many times when old Mandy was responding, I took my kid out of the process. So my kid didn't get to see how empowering it would be to do the right thing in private. So bring your kids along on that journey. And together, you are going to create a beautiful, safe place. They are going to ask you awkward questions that is not Facebook or joke material for you. They're going to confide in you about what they're seeing or hearing. They're going to confide in you what's happening at sleepovers with their friends, what's happening on the bus through conversations. Listen, no filter is going to catch all of that. But the safe place, it will.

SPEAKER_00: 31:55

Next Talk is a 501c3 nonprofit keeping kids safe online. To support our work, make a donation at nextalk.org. Next talk resources are not intended to replace the advice of a trained healthcare or legal professional, or to diagnose, treat, or otherwise render expert advice regarding any type of medical, psychological, legal, financial, or other problem. You are advised to consult a qualified expert for your personal treatment plan.