Abusive men who use pornography leave chaos in their destructive wake. In addition to the affected partner, children suffer deeply. A child’s exposure to pornography is considered sexual abuse. Learn how to protect young children from pornography.

A Child Exposed to Pornography Has Been Sexually Abused

A child’s accidental exposure to a pornography user’s pornography is considered sexual abuse. Children who view pornography are in trauma. They need immediate trauma-focused care to be able to process and heal.

Trauma from pornographic material exposure can affect children in many ways. Often, traumatized children experience:

• Sleep disturbances including nightmares and insomnia
• Mood swings and behavioral issues
• Somberness, sadness
• Preoccupation with sexuality
• Fear and anxiety about safety

You Can Set Boundaries To Protect Children

Courageous women who face the devastation of betrayal trauma, emotional abuse, and sexual betrayal can find help, healing, and support as they move forward with setting and maintaining boundaries that will keep their children safe from a pornography user’s material.

An example of a boundary that would protect women and children from the chaotic harm and abuse of pornography use, would be to ask the pornography user to relocate to a different living space so that his material cannot harm anyone in the family.

You Can Be Proactive in Teaching Children About Pornography

Often, children have a trauma response to pornography. All children who are exposed to pornography are sexual abuse victims. They should be treated with compassion, respect, and the intentional care that any trauma victim would receive for sexual abuse.

In addition to trauma-focused care, women may find some resources helpful in helping their children understand the truths about pornography.

The book Good Pictures, Bad Pictures may be helpful in teaching children about pornography:

 It defines what pornography is.  If a child has a simple definition they can recognize it and have a vocabulary to tell about it.

It gives kids a plan for when they see it. We have the CANDO plan.  It includes closing their eyes, telling a trusted adult or parent about the exposure, naming it when they see it so they label it and recognize it. How to deal with the memories. Pornography creates shocking memories.  Many of us can still remember when we were first exposed and can call up the memory if we want.

Kids Can Teach Their Brains To React Healthily To Porn

The third is it gives children the power over porn by teaching them how their brains react to it.  Kids learn about their thinking brain and their feeling brain.They learn to keep their thinking brain in charge so that pornography can’t hijack their feeling brain.

Number four is that it protects kids from addictions of all kinds. Although we are focusing on pornography, the addiction process is very similar, no matter if you have a behavioral addiction like pornography or gambling or video games or a substance addiction.  It’s really important for children to understand about all addictions and how they can avoid them.

Number five may be the most important. It unifies the family to fight the dangers of pornography together by getting it out in the open.

Kristen Jenson, co-author of Good Pictures, Bad Pictures

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Full Transcript:

Anne (00:00):
I am so excited to have Kristen Jensen with us today. She is the founder of Defend Young Minds, an amazing website that teaches parents how to help their children avoid pornography addiction, and also more importantly to help them be emotionally healthy, cause that’s the only way that children can protect themselves from pornography addiction. Welcome Kristen.

Kristen (00:22):
So good to talk with you today. Thank you. I’m excited.

Anne (00:26):
Kristen knows me in my real life. Kristen is a frequent speaker and guests on podcasts. She does webinars, radio broadcasts, and she’s a member of the Prevention Task force of the National Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation. I am really, really happy to have you here, Kristen. Can you tell us a little bit about why you started Defend Young Minds?

Why Did Kristen Start “Defend Young Minds”?

Kristen (00:48):
Well, I started Defend Young Minds, actually to begin educating parents about the risks of their children, their young children, seeing pornography. So many parents are not aware of how young children are when they start seeing it, how accessible it’s become. And also, I was writing my best selling book, Good Pictures, Bad Pictures. I have a friend who called me up one night and started pouring at her heart, her 17 year old son. They had found out that he was sexually abusing his siblings, his younger siblings, and that he had been involved in looking at pornography. And so when she called me and told me this really sad, tragic story because not only did he have to leave the family and go into a program and be prosecuted their younger children all had to go to counseling and it, it was a huge trauma.

“I felt compelled to write this book”

(02:02):
When it got out to their friends, of course, then their kids became even more isolated because no one wanted their kids to play with her kids. And I mean, it was horrible. And so I woke up the next morning after hearing her story and realized there needed to be a resource to help parents teach their young children about this danger. So I went and looked online and I did searches and I couldn’t find anything. And I started doing some research and I just felt compelled to write this book. I thought even if it’s only for my own future grandchildren, you know, there needs to be a resource out there. Happily, it became a number one bestseller on Amazon and it’s growing and growing and getting out there. So we’re really happy that this is helping so many families.

“Let me reattach my ‘thinking brain'”

Anne (02:56):
It’s on my shelf with all my other picture books and sometimes pull it out and kind of talk about it. And my son talks about his frontal lobe sometimes, like if he’s throwing a fit or whatever, I’m like, your frontal lobe is not working, you know, <laugh>. And he’s like, lemme reattach it. Hang on.

Kristen (03:13):
The thinking brain.

This book is for kids AND parents

Anne (03:15):
The thinking brain. Exactly. So the book is called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures: Porn Proofing Today’s Young Kids. Is it a book for parents or for children?

Kristen (03:25):
Well, both, you know, I have parents tell me all the time that they learn just as much as their kids because what we’re trying to do is help parents open up a conversation. So we made it into a read aloud book so that it gives parents a script. You and I inherited scripts from our parents to deal with certain problems. When I was a child and I got bullied a little bit or teased at school, my mother had a script from her mother and she told me, kill ’em with kindness. Don’t let them see you sweat. Don’t let them see that you, that what they’re doing is bothering you. And that was a script that she had learned from her mother. And so then she taught it to me, but we don’t have many scripts about internet pornography. It’s a new reality and parents don’t have a script for dealing with this problem. So I thought I will write a script. And it took us three years and it models a proactive approach so that parents get in there and they begin the conversation hopefully before their children have been exposed or at least soon after, so that that they are able to help their children process this and know how to respond.

Defining what pornography is, is important

Anne (04:46):
Yes, it is amazing and I’m really grateful for it as a resource. Well, thank you. Like I said, I, we do use it in my home.

Kristen (04:53):
I wanted to just tell you a few of the things that we do in the book for parents and I think they’ll really be in interested in knowing how this book can really help them. So there are five things. First one is, it defines what pornography is because if a child doesn’t have a simple definition, they won’t be able to recognize it and have a vocabulary to tell you about it. A simple definition. And number two, it gives kids a plan for when they see it. So if they see it, what, what do they do? And we have the can-do plan and it’s a five step plan. It includes closing their eyes, always telling someone like a trusted adult or a parent about the exposure, naming it when they see it so that they label it and recognize it. And then the two other steps are helping them to deal with the memories.

This book helps parents learn how to neutralize memories of pornography

(05:54):
Pornography produces really strong memories, shocking memories in a child’s mind. Many of us can remember the first time we saw a pornographic image, it was so shocking. We can still bring up that memory if we want to. The final two steps are helping children to deal with those memories and neutralize them and basically help them forget in quotes I’ll say forget those memories. So it’s a really important plan for them to have. So those are the first two things. And then just quickly, basically number three is that gives kids the power over porn by teaching them how their brain reacts to it. So you’re telling me about your son and how he says about his frontal lobe. You know, you know, kids learn about their thinking brain and their feeling brain, and they learn to keep their thinking brain in charge so that pornography can’t hijack their feeling.

“Fight the dangers of pornography together by getting it out in the open”

(06:49):
Brain number four is that it inoculates kids against addictions of all kind. Although we’re focusing on pornography, the addiction process is really similar no matter if you have a behavioral addiction like pornography or gambling or video games or a substance addiction, it’s really important for kids to understand about addiction of all kinds and how they can avoid those addictions. And then number five, which may be the most important thing of all, is that it unifies the family to fight the dangers of pornography together by getting it out in the open. This is a common danger for all of us. We need to fight it together. It’s not just we want you kids to be careful when you’re on the internet. We are all being careful when we’re on the internet and this is a common enemy and we’re gonna fight it together. You’re not gonna be alone because kids whose parents haven’t talked to them, they’re fighting this alone. Whether the parents know it or not, they’re dealing with this alone and many of them are losing that battle. So let’s pull together and help our kids and hopefully good pictures, bad pictures, we’ll help the parent begin these conversations and empower their kids with these skills to fight the effects of pornography.

“Make sure we can talk about anything”

Anne (08:14):
Absolutely. I think it’s so important. If we really wanna protect our kids, the number one thing we can do is to be in recovery ourselves and we are becoming healthy. For me, that has been a process and I’m still in that process and I’m on that path, but it is a process. The second thing is to make sure that we can talk about anything. And your book helped me have a script to talk to my kids. You know, one day we were watching just like Octonauts or some simple little show on Netflix and my son said, there’s not any pornography in this show and he’s four. And I said, Nope, there’s not. It’s a great show. That’s good. It’s just something that he could say and we can talk about.

Talking about pornography with your kids doesn’t have to be awkward

Kristen (08:52):
Well, you know what, if you could talk to a four or five, six year old about pornography and say the word pornography when they’re 13, it’s not gonna be awkward, right? If you wait till they’re 13, it is gonna be more awkward to talk about it. We have been asked to write a junior version, good pictures, bad pictures, porn proofing today’s young kids is geared to kids ages seven to 11. And although there are many people that have read it to their younger children and many parents have come and asked for something even simpler because every three year old is on the iPad, we’re coming out with this in February. Good pictures, bad Pictures Junior. A simple plan to protect young Minds. And it’s a picture book, all good pictures, <laugh>, simplified version of our original book.

“It’s a fight every day”

Kristen (10:55):
I’m so glad for people like you that are getting out there helping others with this problem. Helping women to recover from betrayal trauma and helping them get healthy and then in turn help their children be healthy. It’s, it’s so important and it’s a challenge in today’s environment. It’s a whole lot of problems with pornography, right?

Anne (11:25):
My family was destroyed because of pornography. It’s just a, it’s a mess. And so many women all over the world and our children are dealing with the effects of it just constantly in our everyday lives. And it is a fight. And we have true heroes who are healing from the trauma and setting up good boundaries for their families to keep themselves and their children safe. Then just learning to heal, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s a fight every day. Kristen, you are a true hero who works on this and I’m, I’m grateful to know you, so thank you.

Kristen (11:58):
Thank you so much.