Create Guidelines || nextTalk10

The hardest part of digital parenting isn’t picking the right app or filter—it’s building a home where conversation is constant and boundaries make sense. We walk through the simple guardrails that protected our kids and explain how relationship-first parenting can coexist with firm, clear rules that kids actually respect.

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Relationship Over Rules

SPEAKER_01 0:01

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. Today we're talking about the Next Talk core principle of creating guidelines. If you are familiar with what it means to be a Next Talk family, we believe that relationship is greater than rules. And I honestly love that Josh McDowell quote. He says, rules without relationship leads to rebellion. Many of us grew up in strict Christian homes where there were a lot of rules, but we didn't talk much. We didn't have open communication and we didn't have healthy dialogue. I know in my case, that led to a lot of rebellion in my teenage years. There were rules, there wasn't a lot of open communication about things of the world. And so I just rebelled against those rules. I didn't understand the why behind them or what they were for. So I was a wreck in my teenage years. You know, God gives us a command in Deuteronomy 6, 6, and 7. And you hear this verse all the time at Next Talk. But He tells us that we have to talk to our kids when we are on the road, when we are at home, when we are getting up and we are going to bed. Four key times to create a culture of honest conversation in our home. The Lord is commanding us to create a culture in our homes of open communication where we can talk about anything, where we foster that healthy dialogue between parent and child. It is biblical and it is our first line of defense in protecting our kids, both online and off. But we have to be careful.

Why Conversation Is Biblical Defense

SPEAKER_01 2:01

We can't swing the pendulum so far to the other side where we're about fostering this relationship with our kids that we almost get afraid to give them any rules to follow. Everyone needs boundaries and guidelines, including our kids. What I have found is that when you have a healthy dialogue and you've built the relationship as commanded in Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7, when you do implement rules and explain why you have them, why they're in place, kids actually respect it. They adopt those rules. They become an advocate for themselves. They actually don't even see it as a rule anymore, but actually a boundary or a guardrail to protect themselves. So, yes, we focus a lot at Next Talk on how to build a relationship with your child. We believe that is the solution. It is the key to keeping kids safe in an overexposed digital world. A hundred percent. But part of the next top 10, you hear me talk about this a lot. These are 10 core practices on how to create open communication in your family. Part of the next top 10, one of those principles

Avoiding The No-Rules Pendulum

SPEAKER_01 3:21

is to create guidelines because kids need boundaries. Kids need rules. Today on the show, I want to give you some practical guidelines that I stumbled upon as I was trying to figure out how to keep my kids safe online through all this decade-long of experience of trying to figure this out. Some of these guidelines were developed because of a Holy Spirit moment. For example, one time I was changing in my bathroom, and my young son stumbled in the room. He had our family iPad. Neither of my kids had phones at the time. He had a family iPad, though, that he would play educational games on. And he came stumbling in. I was not dressed. I was changing. Old Mandy, you know, probably would have just shooed him off and said, Give me a minute, I'm trying to get dressed. New Mandy being

A Bathroom iPad Becomes A Teachable Moment

SPEAKER_01 4:20

on this journey of trying to figure out like, how do we keep our kids safe online, right? How do we keep our kids safe in a digital world? When he stumbled in the bathroom with that iPad and I was undressed, you know where my mind went? Nude photos. I had started getting a lot of calls from other parents about nude photos. Like this was a new thing that we had never dealt with before. And also, I worked with students. I served as a camp counselor. I volunteered at my church. And so one time I was engaging with a group of middle school girls. And this sweet little eighth grade girl, we were talking about screens and technology and phones and all of that kind of stuff. And this sweet girl, she said to me, Mrs. Majors, I just want to be real with you. If you haven't been asked for a nude photo by eighth grade, it means you're kind of lame. And you guys, when she said that, it caught me off guard. And I realized, oh my gosh, this is a whole new world that our kids are growing up in. Like our baby girls want to be asked for a nude photo because it validates their beauty. We have to understand their world a little bit better if we're gonna parent it, right? So that day when my son walked in the bathroom with me changing and he had the iPad and I was undressed, he was six years old at the time. There is no way I could have talked to him about nude photos. I would have said too much too fast. It would have been overexposure, not age appropriate. But because of all the research and the learning that I was doing about kids and nudes, my mind went to that conversation about nude photos. And instead of shooing him off like old Mandy would have done, just to get dressed and give me a minute, new Mandy had a Holy Spirit moment. It was like the Lord was like, This is a teachable moment for your son. And so I put my robe on and I said to my son, hey Bubba, that iPad, it takes pictures. What if you accidentally would have taken a picture of mommy without clothes on? Bubba, we never take pictures of people without clothes on. So from now on, we're just not gonna bring the iPad in the bathroom. There's no reason for it. This is a new rule in our home. We're not gonna have screens in our bathrooms. And so that was the day that became a guideline in my home. What I loved that day about what God showed me was

Planting Seeds Without Overexposure

SPEAKER_01 7:05

that I was looking at all this stuff happening in the digital world. Nude photos and cyberbullying and all the stuff was that that was like the first wave of tech dangers that we saw hit our children in the in the generation that I was growing raising my kids in when there was nobody helping us navigate it. We it literally was an experiment. The thing that God showed me was all of that stuff is scary. It is really scary. But He is gonna provide us moments where we can plant foundational seeds in our kids. So that day I was planting a seed in my six-year-old son about sharing nude photos. But I didn't share any bigger scary stories. What I don't want you to do, sometimes when I say talk to your kids, people will hear, you know, say to your six-year-old, okay, in a couple years, people are going to be sharing dick pics and don't do that. You guys, that's not what I'm saying here, right? Six is too young to say that. But we can look for teachable moments where we can plant seeds and then create a boundary around what needs to happen to protect our kids. So from that day on, there were no screens in our bathroom. And I told him it was just because we just don't take pictures of naked people, right? Of anybody, of our private parts. They're private. And so when we're in the bathroom, we're undressing, we're taking a bath, we're going to the bathroom, there's no need for a screen. I get so excited when I get DMs of you guys in our Instagram or our Facebook social media messages, and there's like an iPad waiting out in the bathroom, you know, outside of the hallway because your kid is going to the bathroom and they've shut the door and they've left the iPad outside in the hallway. It's such a next talk kid, right? Like that is key. And I just love that. We're creating a boundary and we're teaching our kids that it's wrong to take nude photos without being mean or judgmental or anything like that. I think a lot of the kids that got swept up in sharing nude photos in the beginning, they just weren't taught boundaries. They were taking phones in locker rooms and bathrooms, and it

No Screens In Bathrooms And Why

SPEAKER_01 9:25

didn't even register in their mind, like I'm changing, maybe I shouldn't have a phone here. So the lines were blurred. It is on us to teach these boundaries. It is on us as parents to create these rules to keep our kids safe. So that is one rule we've always had: no phones in bathrooms. The other thing we had was no phones in bedrooms. We've had this since my kids were six and nine, and I started on this journey. They are now 18 and 21. One day I was presenting at a church with a retired FBI investigator. I remember I told the parents in the room, like, we don't do any screens in bedrooms or bathrooms. And when I say screens, I mean phones, I mean gaming systems, I mean TVs, I mean computers, all of it. Like we don't do it. And he chimed in on this presentation. We were like co-presenting, and I didn't know him before this day. And he said, this is a really good guideline because most of the kids who I see trafficked, the pictures are from a bedroom or bathroom. These are private spaces where we're doing private things, sleeping, changing, taking a shower. Why would we invite the world into those spaces for our kids? And when your kids take any kind of device in there, that's what we're doing. Cameras, they can accidentally go live. It is an easy, practical way to keep our kids safe. The no bedroom guideline, when

Bedrooms, Sleep, And Safety

SPEAKER_01 10:50

I was talking to my kids about it and I said we're going to implement this in our home, one of the reasons that I told them was just science. And the American Academy of Pediatrics says turn off screens 30 minutes before you go to bed. Like your brain needs to rest from screens. We always haven't complied with turning off screens 30 minutes before bedtime, but we've always complied with no screens in the bedroom. Kids need sleep, they're not going to perform their best at school the next day if they don't have sleep. I believe, you know, we're always talking about banning phones in schools, and I'm for it. And we did a show on that previously. But I truly believe that one thing every home in America could do right now to make schools better is if we took the screens out of the rooms at night. Kids would actually get the recommended hours of sleep they need, and there would be less disciplinary issues at school the next day. Kids would be more engaged, more awake, more in learning and in tune to what's going on. But that's not that's not what's happening. Even banning phones in schools, we're seeing amazing positive impacts with that, but we still have disciplinary issues. We still have kids falling asleep in class because they have their phones at night. When I implemented the no screens in bedroom guideline in our home, I used the science of just needing sleep, right? In the back of my mind, though, I was also thinking about pornography. It's much more tempting. And I had already helped families at that point from my church where kids had screens and they found them like underneath beds, watching porn. You know, it's less likely that you're gonna look at that type of material if you're not alone behind a closed door in the dark, especially in the middle of the night. Your guard is just down because it's your your private space, a bedroom or bathroom. So that's been a guideline we've had in our home forever. Recently, though, you guys know the story of Walker Montgomery. And if you don't, if you're new here, I'll link his story so you can hear directly from his dad. Walker, Walker's life was taken by an online predator who DM'd him in the middle

Porn Temptation And Nighttime Risks

SPEAKER_01 13:05

of the night posing to be a cute girl. And that cute girl undressed and manipulated Walker into an encounter, and then somebody else grabbed the phone and demanded money. So these sex, it's called sextortion, these schemes. Um, even the FBI has put out an alert bulletin. There has been an increase of them. And so um Walker's dad has been on our podcast many times to share, to share the story and to talk about ways to keep kids safe. One of the things he said on a most recent podcast was I asked him, like, with your other kids, do they have social media? Like, what have you done differently? And he was like, Yeah, they all have social media, but the one thing I've changed is there's no phones in the bedrooms. And that really got me thinking. And so I called him after we recorded that podcast and I said, Hey, what if we teamed up and did a collaborative effort and create a pledge for parents to take that we're not gonna allow screens in a child's bedroom or bathroom? And we can do this in honor of Walker. And he said yes, and he worked with us on it. It's called Walker's Promise. I'm gonna link it here for you. I would love for you to go

Sextortion And Walker’s Promise

SPEAKER_01 14:20

sign this pledge and agree that you will keep screens out of your child's bedroom or bathroom. There are four key reasons for that. Of course, one is the online predator situation, one is porn, one is sleep, and the other is just creating the boundary of nude photos. It's a private space. We're teaching those boundaries. If you go to our website and click Walker's Promise, it is all right there and you can digitally sign it. I want everyone to hear me when I say this. I have been a mom for 21 years. This rule of no screens in a bedroom or bathroom for my children has been the number one rule that I would say implement in your home. This has protected them from so much. As my kids have gotten older, you know, I don't tuck them in bed anymore. They come say goodnight and they're still on their devices. But you know, I will wake up in the middle of the night, like one or two o'clock. I'll go in the kitchen to get some water or something like that because hello, menopause. It's like hot sweats. These are real. It is real. But anyway, I'll go in the kitchen and I just love seeing my 18-year-old son's phone on the kitchen counter. It is like just standard operating procedure that he puts his phone up at night so that he can get rest, so that he can protect himself. Like I said before, I fully explained the guideline when I implemented it all these years ago. When Walker's story had happened, I talked to my kids about that. And I said, this is another reason we don't have phones in our bedroom, right? And so I'm reiterating this is a guideline. I'm I'm not making this rule up just to make your life miserable. This truly protects you and keeps you safe. So my kids have bought into that. Now, I do want to say this. As your kids grow up, your guidelines need to change. So a lot of people ask me about Walker's Promise. Well, what if my 14-year-old has friends over and they're making funny videos and they want to do it from their room? Is that okay? Yes. You can just say, hey, keep your door open. You know, you've got a phone with you. And then it comes up at night. You, if your kid is complying with all of your guidelines that are in place in your home, work with them. Like you don't, you be flexible. Also, I remember with my oldest when she was 17, I remember looking at my husband one day and saying, uh-oh, she needs to earn her phone in her bedroom before she goes to college. Because she's going to move out in six months. I don't want her being in her dorm. And for the first time in her life, she's laying there with her phone. Because honestly, that may not be good for her. It is my job as a parent to help her navigate and be prepared for the world that she's getting ready to step into. So with our 17-year-old oldest daughter before

Adapting Guidelines As Kids Age

SPEAKER_01 17:20

she left for college, we caught her doing something really amazing. She confided in us, something that happened with her friend group that I wouldn't have known. No app would have caught it, no monitoring device would have caught it, but it was something, you know, significant. And I said, Hey, thanks so much for telling me. You're so trustworthy. So because you told me, you know, you're gonna, you've earned your phone at night in your room. And I want you to practice because for six months before you go to college, I want you to understand what it's like to have a phone right beside of you. I want to make sure that you have a healthy balance with this. So as you're teaching your kids these tech guidelines, make sure they're age appropriate. Now, I don't recommend any screens in a child's bedroom if they're less than 17, okay? And also, you don't give a child a phone or any other type of screen in their bedroom at 17 if they're lying to you or if they're not being honest with you. These are only for the kids that are being trustworthy and they've earned it, but you have to get them ready and prepare them for the world. I say this to you because sometimes we think the guidelines that we have in our home at 11 are going to be the same at 17. They should not be. They should evolve with your kids' age. We kind of call them aging out. They'll age out of some of these guidelines. We have a whole show on that, which I will also link for you. But this is also just a reminder to you if you have different ages of kids, they should not have the same screen freedom. I had a pastor one time and he used a kite analogy. And he basically used this with all rules, but it's really good for screen guidelines. He said, you know, as they get older, you're letting that string out. And they're they're on their own. They're flying, they're out in the world, right? Just like I did with my daughter at 17 when she earned her phone for her bedroom. But then she made a mistake. Uh-oh. She wasn't ready. So I had to reel this back in. I had to teach, have the conversation, make sure she learned that lesson. I saw her taking responsibility and dealing with it on her own. She realized that it was, she was up scrolling, and that's why she missed that test. She wasn't going to do that again. And so once that trust and that freedom is restored, the line goes out again. And then they fly, right? Because we are we have to be raising adults. We can't be helicoptering our 18 year olds. By 18 years old, our kids should be flying solo. For the most part, on social media and their phone. That's why I

Earning Privileges Before College

SPEAKER_01 20:05

want to I want you to be careful. Like, I don't want you to give your kid a phone too early. Of course not. But I also don't want you to miss your window to teach it. It is an important skill. And you can teach them healthy guidelines and boundaries around this device so that it serves them well for the rest of their lives. Okay, so that's just a couple of like practical rules we had. We had no screens in bathrooms. We had no screens in bedrooms. We also had no screens at meals. No screens at meals. And this was just standard operating procedure in our home. And it went for all of us, parents included. We had no downloading of new apps without parent approval. Now, this lasted probably till middle school. This is a guideline that they will age out of and that they will earn the privilege of downloading apps when you know they are responsible. But when they are little, if you have a family iPad or your kid just plays on your phone some, your kids should not be going to the app store and downloading whatever. It should be a conversation first. Can I have this? And we just have to intentionally teach these guidelines to keep our kids safe. We also have a free resource for you, a cell phone contract. So when the kids do earn a phone, and I say earn, I'll link a show that just signs on if your kid is ready for a phone. When they do earn a phone, you need to create a cell phone contract. This is one of the times that I kind of sat down with my kids, had it all written out, and it was like they were signing a mortgage. And it was my expectations and rules for this phone, for this device that they had earned, but it was a big responsibility. You can also use this phone guideline. It's in a Word document. Um, it's on our website under free guides, but you could also just edit it slightly to make it a media guideline. So it, you know, it it's kind of the same rules that you would have for a family iPad if your kids don't have phones yet. I do want to clarify one thing,

Different Ages, Different Freedoms

SPEAKER_01 22:15

you know, the kite example and your guidelines evolving as your kids get older. I almost miss this. And I just want to give you this example. I had a list when my kids were little of like things that I wanted them to report to me. And we call them now um red flag reporting. We've done a show on that, I'll link that as well. And when they were really little, one of the general things on there, if you ever hear a new word and you don't know what it means, you need to come home and ask me. Well, that would catch cuss words, right? And so I was really proud of my kids. They would come home when they heard like the F-word for the first time and they would say, I heard this word today, what does it mean? And then I would not go crazy parent, and you know, we would have a conversation about it. As my kids got older, I had to switch from that red flag reporting to more of a conversational piece. And what I mean by that is cussing, right? When they were little, they would come home and tell me those words. The F word, these words they would hear on the playground. Then they got into middle school, and I remember what was happening was they were hearing the F-word all day long and they knew what it meant because we had already had the conversation. So they just weren't asking me anymore. They weren't telling me. And so one of the switches that I made when they were older, I recognized my kids are aging out of this red flag reporting, right? Those guidelines that I had created, those reporting guidelines. And so what I needed to do was switch the conversation. And so what I said to them was, hey, I know you're hearing the F-word all day long now. You know what it means. You don't have to tell me every time you hear that word. But what I do want you to tell me is if you slip and say it or you feel tempted to say it. Because a lot of times that's what happens with our kids. They'll hear something, we'll educate them about it. But then as they get older, they may be tempted to go into that sin,

From Reporting Words To Handling Temptation

SPEAKER_01 24:10

right? It could be alcohol, it could be drinking, it could be sex, it could be watching porn, it could be whatever. And so what we want to do is when they're younger, we're educating them about what it is. And as they get older, the conversation then shifts. We don't want to just say, don't look at porn, don't drink alcohol. We want to say, hey, if you fall into that peer pressure, I understand you're curious, that's a conversation. If you feel tempted, let's talk about that and don't shame your kid. If your kid comes to you and says, Hey, I was tempted to look at pornography, I looked at it. I mean, I know that feels horrible, but that's actually such a win that your kid told you, right? It is so good. And so I'm I'm covering this on the create guidelines thing because guidelines are important. Rules are important. But if you get so hung up on them and you did not evolve with your child and their age, it's going to lead to that rebellion piece that we talked about. You have to understand that when your kids are little, you're the authority in their life and you're giving these them these guidelines. But as they get older, you are moving into more of an advocate phase. Yes, you're still teaching. Yes, you're still learning, but they can get access to things without you. They can sneak now more. And so you have to evolve with your rules. Don't get stuck there. I almost missed this and I almost started pushing my kids away in middle school because I didn't let go of the rules a little bit and evolve more into the conversations on temptation and sin, and I'm here for you if you're curious, kind of thing. I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did. Another guideline that we've always had in our home since day one, you get no privacy on your screen. I don't care if that's an Xbox, a phone, an iPad, whatever it is, your phone, your screen, your tech, it's not a diary. Anything you post, type, text, share on technology, I want you to be okay

No Privacy On Screens And Checks

SPEAKER_01 26:15

with your pastor, your parent, or your principal seeing that information, right? It's not a diary. Anything can be uncovered, even snaps that supposedly disappear with technology. Random phone checks is something that we always did. And before, you know, they had phones. Of course, we would randomly check the iPad. They weren't playing games that we didn't approve because we had the no download guideline. But as they got older and they had a phone, and then we they aged out of the downloading of the new apps, we would say, no privacy at all. At any time, we can pick up your device and check it. Okay, random phone checks were big in our home. When they first earned a phone, lots of random phone checks. And I would go in there and check text. I would check, um, they didn't have social media at first. If you know us at Next Talk, it's a tiered approach. We'd step by step. So it's one social media platform at a time. But when they first earn phones, there's no social media. And so when they finally did earn social media, I would also go in and check the social media on their phone. I would check um their algorithm. It's a good gives you a good clue of what is what they're clicking on a lot of the videos that are popping up. And so random phone checks, that's just a guideline in our home. I do not believe kids have privacy on their phones. Again, your kids are gonna age out of this, right? My kid is 18 now. Like, I don't check his phone. He's flying solo now. If there were problems, if there were red flags in his behavior, or I was worried about him, I would check his phone, but he's fine. So I'm not gonna check his phone. He he has earned the right to some privacy because we've never had an issue with things. And so you

Letting Go As Teens Prove Trust

SPEAKER_01 28:10

have to evolve again with your child's age, is with these rules. You cannot parent an 18-year-old like you're parenting your 10-year-old. That's not gonna fly. It's gonna hurt the relationship with your kid. And then we're gonna go back to the beginning of this podcast where relationship is greater than rules, but guidelines and rules are important. And it's our duty as a parent to make sure that we put these boundaries in place for our kids. I want to end with one more talking point. We've been discussing screen guidelines for kids, right? No screens in bedrooms or bathrooms, no screens at meals, no downloading of new apps when they first start out, no privacy, get random phone checks all the time. These are like some of our core principal guidelines that we want you to implement in your home to keep your kids safe in a digital world, right? But now I want to talk about guidelines for us as parents. When I was implementing all of these years ago in my home, one night I was in the kitchen and I was making dinner. My kids were at our kitchen island doing their homework. And I had a lot going. My phone was going off. I was making dinner, you know, I'm trying to help with homework and that kind of stuff. And my son, he was very young at the time, probably elementary school, and he was asking me something about his homework. I think

Core Household Tech Rules Recap

SPEAKER_01 29:35

it was like, how do you spell something, or or something about his homework? And you guys, I in the middle of it, he was just asking me a question about his homework. I screamed in a horrible tone, Baba, will you give me a minute? And you guys, I will never forget the look on his face. And I felt like the most horrible mother because he was just asking a question about his homework, but I was so overwhelmed because I was on my phone, I was trying to do all this stuff, and I was not fully present. I saw his face and I teared up, and I remember just thinking, I was embarrassed. Like I was embarrassed for myself. I remember grabbing the dog leashes and taking the dogs on a walk because I just needed to process what just happened, and I was crying and I was embarrassed and shameful that I thought my phone came before my kids. Like, what is happening here? So then I got back in, put the dogs up, took them off their leashes, I marched back in to my kitchen. I looked at my son, I apologized to him, told him how sorry I was. And I said, from now on, when I'm helping you with your homework, I will not have my phone out. That is my promise to you. I am so sorry.

Parent Guidelines And Presence

SPEAKER_01 31:05

And honestly, we even took this one step farther once I talked to my husband about what happened and how embarrassed I was, and how, you know, I was short with my kid because I was on my phone. We even made a rule that, like for a couple hours every night, I think it was like five to seven or six to eight, it would vary depending on our activities, but we would have no phones or no screens present in our home. And that would allow us to do dinner, that would allow us to do homework, get situated for the next day. And it was just really being intentional about that hour or two that we have with our kids after school and with our families every night. And so I end this show with that story because a lot of times when we're thinking about creating guidelines, we do go to the rules that we need to create to keep our kids safe. And we 100% do. It is our job as a parent. But I think we need to create rules for ourselves to protect this precious time that we have with our kids. You know, at the age of my kids now, looking back, I wasted so much time when I could have been playing with them, being intentional. Like, I'll never get asked again by my children to come play Legos. How many times did I say no because I was on my phone? Don't have regrets like I do. Manage these screens, create guidelines for yourself and your children.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Next Talk is a 501c3 nonprofit keeping kids safe online. To support our work, make a donation at next talk.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.