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We can protect our homes in a number of ways.
First thing is, we want to have boundaries
around media usage in the home.
Phones or tablets or whatever devices
get placed in a centralized, parent-guarded location.
At night, children don't have devices in their rooms
when they're alone at night.
What you can say to kids is "When you're alone
in your room at night, you're going
to experience some loneliness, and you may not
know what to do with that loneliness.
And your brain's going to want to just numb out
from the feeling of being alone and all
of the emotions of the day.
And if you have a device in front of you
that you can use to just unplug from your feelings,
you'll probably use it.
So if you're feeling lonely and having a hard time going
to sleep, then come talk to me and we'll deal with that."
So we want to manage media usage in the home, but remember,
our children can then walk to the neighbor's house
and have instant access to whatever they want there.
So we can't stop there.
Technology has made it so easy for pornography
and other unsavory things to just
be delivered right into our hands, right into our laps.
And so parents naturally work to control those limits
with their kids.
They may have the kids turn in the phones at night;
they may have certain hours that they keep the computer on;
the computer is in a public place.
And those are all good.
But as kids mature, they need to be
able to learn to set those limits for themselves
so that you have an experience where the parent is
transferring the limiting from themselves when kids are
early and young and learning how to use technology
and different things, to the child or the young adult
themselves so that they can have the tools in their hands
to be successful.
We all need to limit different parts of our lives,
and we have to be able to do it ourselves.
Nobody wants, as an adult, to have somebody else
telling us what to do.
We have our own conscience, and we have the Spirit.
And we need to learn how to set our own limits that
are acceptable before God.
Parents need to counsel together with their children
to set rules and boundaries in a home,
regarding technology, where children have an opportunity
to voice their opinions and maybe set the rules that then
the parents even support.
The more they're involved in that counseling,
the better the chances are that they're going
to want to keep those rules.
Parents don't want to be hard-handed on these things.
It needs to be something that everybody agrees upon,
especially those children.
I think it's a good idea to talk about what
kinds of daily, personal, family habits
will create that wonderful atmosphere that keep
our children close to us and talking to us.
And it's the old standards that we talk about all the time.
But family prayer--when you pray together twice a day
or as often as you can manage it with our busy schedules.
Scripture study--making the time for that,
making that a priority.
Holding regular family home evenings.
Those are going to be the best filters
we have for our children to weed out the evil in the world
and to recognize what's right and true and good,
that iron rod that we need to hold on to.
So let's not forget about those important things that sometimes
are the Sunday School answers, but they keep being mentioned
because they are important and they are what keep us grounded.
One thing we haven't talked about with homes
that has been emphasized by our General Authorities
very strongly for the last three or four years
is the importance of Sabbath day.
And I think we're doing better in church
at making the partaking of the sacrament
a more sacred experience having more meaning in our lives.
I think we can continue to do a better
job to make the Sabbath day a whole day of refuge
in the home, of spirituality, of gospel discussions,
of doing good things like family history work.
The Sabbath day is also a day when we shut the world out
and the things of the world out.
Maybe it's a day when we could ask our youth
to put their phones away and not text their friends
and look at social media, and really
make it a family day where we strengthen families and family
bonds and have good conversations with one another.
I think we've got some room for improvement
there, to make the Sabbath day a time to strengthen families.
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