Answer their Questions

What if the scariest question your kid asks is actually a gift? We explore how a single moment of trust—when a child chooses you over Google—can prevent an algorithm from becoming their teacher. From highly sensitive topics to messy, real-life dilemmas, we unpack a practical, compassionate way to be your child’s safest source in a world that rewards shock over wisdom.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Answer Their Questions
• 2:28 From Encyclopedias To AI
• 3:51 Fear, Complacency, And A Mindset Shift
• 6:48 Age-Appropriate Responses And Timing
• 8:45 Accuracy, Politics, And Owning Mistakes
• 10:37 Exploring Scripture Together
• 12:03 Red Flags, Reporting, And Safe Culture

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. Answer your child's questions. That seems so simple, but it's part of the next talk 10 for a reason. And if you recall, the next talk 10 is like a formula to create a culture of conversation in your home with the goal of keeping your kids safe online, but also just in a digital world, an overexposed world. So even if you're not allowing tech, it keeps your kids safe from anything they may be exposed to from other kids or through conversations or on the playground. But today's topic is answering their questions. You know, I grew up in the generation where if I was curious about something, I would maybe ask a friend or like this is gonna date me, but I would look it up in an encyclopedia. That's crazy to think about how far we've come. Makes me feel ancient, actually. When I wanted to get information about sex or a body part, that's what I would do. And of course I would get wrong information from my friends. But I think about now the world that our kids are growing up in. They have AI, they have Google, they have the opinions of the world at their fingertips. And so if we're not careful, that responsibility to answer their question can easily shift from us to the world. And that's why we need to have our guard up. We have to be intentional about being their Google, about being their AI bot. We have to be the source. And to do that, we have to answer their questions. Because if we don't, they have a backup plan. I didn't. I want to be honest. When my kids were younger, I was really bad about them blurting out a question and then me just pushing it under the rug because I didn't know what to say. Their questions scared me. I was afraid I was going to answer it wrong. And so I really got into a bad habit of uh pushing things under the rug and ignoring their questions. In my life, I identified that as almost being complacent. There's actually a verse in Proverbs that says, fools are destroyed by their own complacency. And this practice of answering my kids' questions, I really saw myself getting complacent in this area. And that's dangerous because then it opens up my kids to going to technology, to getting the answers, and it may be on biblical answers that they get. And for me in my home, that's not what I wanted. The other thing is this you know, if your kid blurts out a highly sexualized question and you don't want to answer it, old Mandy would be afraid to respond to those highly sexualizations because I mean, what do I say? How do I say it in age-appropriate terms? What if I say too much too fast and scar them for life? You know, there's that fear built in. But one day when we were driving down the road and my kid blurted out a highly sexualized question from the back seat, I truly felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart in that moment. And this is what I heard. What if your kid would have Googled that? And immediately I thought it would have taken my child to pornography. And because my child felt safe asking me, I actually saved that child from pornography exposure. And so it was almost like God was showing me how to shift my mentality. Instead of moving from when old Mandy would hear those questions, I would get mad. Why is there innocence being stolen? Like, why does the world have to be so sexually? I would go there and I would just get bitter. But I had to shift my mentality to, oh my gosh, because my child felt safe asking me this question, I literally was able to save my child from pornography. And that shift really motivated me then and empowered me to start answering their questions and being their source. Now, I said this on an earlier video. If you have younger kids and they blurt out a highly sexualized question and you don't know how to respond, it is perfectly okay to say, honey, thank you so much for asking me. Can I pray about how I want to give you this information? Because it's a big question. And I just want to make sure I give you the right words and description for your age, for what your mind needs right now at this moment. And typically kids will be like, sure, mom, sure. But but listen, this is not an excuse to sweep it under the rug. So what I used to do, if there was a question that popped up that I didn't know how to answer, and I had this little, you know, tool in my tool belt of, can I have a minute to pray about this before we talk about it? I would actually set an alarm on my phone to come back in 24 hours. And a lot of times, like kids like to talk in the car one-on-one, but also bedtime is a great time because the lights are out. You know, you can be rubbing your child's back. It's less intimidating and say, hey, are you ready to tackle that question now? Sometimes it's on the way to school. You have to discern when is a good time, but please go back and answer their questions. Because what it does is it tells your child that their questions are important to you, that you truly do want to be their source of information. I also want to say this about answering their questions. Make sure you're giving them accurate information. And what I mean by that is my mind flashes back to a story when my kids were younger and it was highly political, you know, it was a political year and all kinds of information was out there. And I remember one time on the way to school, my kids asked me a question about one of the candidates. And I just blurted out, well, this is what they stand for, or this is what they support. And honestly, a couple hours later, after I dropped my kids off at school, I realized, like I saw an article, and it was the wrong information, or it was different news media outlets saying different things. But in my mind, I thought, well, if my kid sees this news article, she's gonna think that I told her the wrong information. So actually that evening, I went back to her and I said, Hey, you know that question you asked me this morning about that political candidate? I just kind of told you what I thought. And I think that's what this person stands for. But honestly, I did some research today and I saw some news media outlets reporting it differently. And I don't know, truly. I think this person stands for this, but we have different outlets reporting different things. And so I just wanted you to know that when you ask me a question, I'm just trying to give you them the most accurate information that I have available. And that really built a credibility in our home to where my kids wanted to ask me questions because they saw through that experience that I was actually taking it seriously. I want to give you the correct information. Also, this around politics or a certain belief system. You know, for me, you know, we're Christians, so for our home, the Bible is our moral compass. Sometimes my kids will ask me questions and I will say, that's a really difficult question. Like, I don't know. I'm not God, I get things wrong all the time, but why don't we dig into scripture and see what that means together? Right? And kind of go on this journey of learning and digging into scripture and what would God say about this? That's been cool too, because it also teaches my kids like I don't know everything. I'm trying to answer your questions, but I'm also human and I'm not all-knowing, but God is. We have one in our life that we can trust with everything. And he thinks differently than us, and he thinks bigger than us. He knows more than us. And so we can really dig in his word and try and figure out what this means together. I think that's a great way to learn about God together and grow in the word together as a family. Those are just a couple of examples that I wanted to share with you about how important it is to answer their questions in today's digital world. As we talk about the next talk 10, you can see how all of these things work together to create this formula to keep kids safe. So, for example, this one, answer their questions. This is very, very important after you implement the red flag reporting, which we already discussed recently on another show. But these red flag reporting, it's a list of things you want your kids to report to you. And when they report them, or you know, one of the things on there is if there's a new word or an idea that you don't know what it means and you're curious, a red flag alert should go off in your brain to come home and ask me. So we're creating this list of things we want our kids to tell us. When they come home and they ask us the questions or they report something to us, you know, like I went to the neighbor's house and the neighbor girl pulled down her pants, right? Because body parts are on there or on that reporting list, on that red flag alert list. So that would catch that. We're creating an internal filter for our kids. As they're reporting these red flags to you, then the core practice of avoiding crazy parent mode comes in because it's always thank you so much for telling me, thank you so much for asking me. And then this core principle comes in as far as we have to answer their questions. We have to dive deeper into what they're reporting to us and have a conversation and disciple them on what this topic means. So as we dive deeper and deeper into these next top 10, you can see how it all comes together to create a perfect formula on how to build this new culture of open communication in your home. So I want to encourage you. I know it's scary sometimes to answer their questions. I know it breaks your heart when they actually ask you a highly sexualized question or they report something to you that's highly inappropriate. I get it. I understand that gut moment when you are just like, what in the world? I should not have to talk to my seven-year-old about this. But I hope and pray after this show that you can shift your thinking. Because imagine your seven-year-old carrying that all alone. Imagine your seven-year-old on a screen by themselves searching that. You saved them from all of that because you are answering their questions. So implement that red flag reporting, avoid crazy parent mode, answer their questions, and then guess what? You're building a safe place. That process is building a safe place. That is why the Next Talk 10, these core practices, keep your kids safe.

SPEAKER_00: 12:43

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