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Home › Articles › Parenting Strategies › Managing the Media

Managing the Media

Limiting Exposure to Adult Issues in Preteen Lives

By Teri Brown

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Listen to any music lately? Watched a movie marketed for teens and preteens? If you were shocked by the language, themes and sexuality, you're not alone. Parents everywhere are concerned by the sexy, sleek and aggressive marketing aimed at increasingly younger markets. But what's a parent to do? How do we know when our preteens are ready for a teen culture that is more sophisticated and knowledgeable than most of us were even in college?

Constance Coward of Knoxville, Tenn., has kept a watchful eye on her preteen. "Today's music and movies contain so much violence and sexually explicit material, I'd be crazy not to monitor what my kids watch and listen to," she says. "I've had to lay down a lot of ground rules about what is and isn't appropriate to listen to and watch, but they seem to understand. When they question something, I'm careful to explain exactly why it isn't allowed rather than fall back on the old 'Because I said so' line that so many parents tend to use."

Taking the First Steps
Diane Levin, Ph.D., professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, Mass., says the first step in being an aware parent is to realize that children will be exposed to movies, music and language parents won't necessarily approve of. "Parents need to get out of denial mode," she says. "Their children will see and hear things they wished they hadn't. The first step is to realize that is going to happen."

Once parents understand that exposure will happen, they can be prepared for it. "A parent's job is twofold," says Levin. "They need to work to keep exposure to a minimum, and they need to lay a foundation of connectedness that will help their child feel free to come to them with what they have heard or seen. Kids want their parents to help them process that which they don't understand. It's a parent's job to create a relationship where that is possible."

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