Chrystal Hurst shares her family's digital parenting rules: passwords required, no clearing browser history, devices in shared spaces only, no TVs in bedrooms. She uses a bowling-bumpers analogy to explain how parents should start with restrictions and gradually build kids' self-control.
Okay, y'all, um, I'm back, but give me a second so that I can get back on the other things. Y'all, I told y'all my computer is like, I cannot, I cannot, and I think I opened one one too many tabs in my browser. That's what happened. So give me a second. Let me get Instagram back on. Ugh. I'm saying, y'all think I've been playing. Y'all think I've been making this up about my computer not being able to function. Y'all think I've been making this up. I'm telling you. So now I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. Okay. Ugh. Hold on a minute. Lord Jesus, I told y'all, I tried to tell y'all, my computer is, is not— it is not it. Okay, so I'm back. Who said I need to switch over to a PC? No, I don't. I refuse. Okay, getting it back, getting it back. Slowly but surely, slowly but surely. Okay, let me fix this, turn this back on. Allow. Hopefully that'll work, cuz all of my settings— I had to redo all of my settings. It's always something though. Whoops. Okay, because every time I get online, there are like a series of things I have to open. Not just the program I'm in, but a certain web page to make sure it goes everywhere. And now I have to open another web page to make it work on— oh gosh, am I stuck now? You got me, T. Hey, Tawanda Kelly, I got a raggedy computer. Actually, my computer is actually great. It's just 5 years old. That's, that's the only problem. It's 5 years old and was not designed then to livestream and have 3 different feeds running into each other all at the same time. So, okay, hi. So I'm— bear with me, y'all. So if y'all are tuning in and you're like, what is happening? I'm Chrystal Hurst. I was on live, all my feeds dropped, and I had to get back on. So now I am desperately trying to get Instagram back on because I lost them. And I'm always trying to be nice to my Instagram people as well. All right. So let me turn this on. Allow that. There we go. All right. Push go live for Instagram. Okay. Okay. So, um, let's see, make sure Instagram is going. Should be coming shortly. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So y'all, what I was talking about is rules for my kids. Let's see, Instagram, are you back? Yay, Instagram, you're back. Sorry about that. My whole computer just froze. It just said no. Like it wasn't like my internet froze. The whole computer froze. Like the mouse wouldn't move, like nothing. It wouldn't do anything. So I had to turn it off and turn it back on. Okay. All right, y'all. So anyway, we were talking about, okay, we were talking about rules for kids and I was saying that they can't, Um, I have to have their passwords. They also can't clear their history in their devices. Um, and then usually it, and there's no devices in the room like that. TVs have never been a part of our family culture, uh, like having them in your room. So when they, like my oldest son has a laptop and a couple of times he's wanted to work in his room and I'm like, No, not allowed. Sorry. If you can't have a TV in your room, what makes you think I'm gonna let you have your computer in your room? Devices stay in public areas. I just, it's not a matter of controlling them. It's a matter of accountability. And unfortunately in this day and age, y'all, there's so much horrible stuff. It's horrible. It's horrible. And when they are teenage boys who are greatly influenced and impacted by what they see and may not have developed the discipline, the strength, and the, I mean, I just think that in general, it's, I'm gonna recommend to my boys that when they leave home, that they put some accountability software on their devices to help them. Because the world, y'all, the— I mean, you can't even Google some websites without seeing at least soft porn, you know what I mean? Just women that are half naked. And my son the other day was looking up something, he was Googling something, and you know, when he clicked through, he like— I heard him, he said, oh Mom, can you get this off the computer? There's inappropriate stuff on the computer. And just, you know, I mean, even we have the, the things to avoid the pop-ups, like we have all that. But I'm just saying, like, my, um, I know one of my brothers for sure, he has a program on his phone that won't allow his phone to go to certain sites. Now the reality is that you, um, there's always a backdoor. So for those of you who have taken off, like taken off Safari off the phone, or you need to know that your kids can still get to the internet. Like there's all kinds of backdoors, you know, I mean, these kids, grow up with the technology, you know what I mean? And then we are, we have it and we may love it. We may even be slightly geeky, but the reality is they have more time to figure out more, more, um, cracks in the, in the wall and more breaks in the fence than you probably have time to do. So I think that you, while you want to, um, educate your kids, you want to hold your kids accountable. Ultimately, the goal is not to control. The goal is to support. It's almost like going bowling. When you go bowling with kids, they put these bumpers up so that your kids can win. Because if you don't have the bumpers up, they don't have the strength. They don't have the strength, right, to, um, to get the ball down to all the way to the end. At a certain point they do, you know, at a certain point they do. And at that certain point you can decide, um, to let them loose. But I still want to encourage my kids to have their own bumpers. And I want to teach them what those bumpers are. But here's the deal, you know, my boys are going to go off to college and they're going to have their laptop and their phone in college. And so my goal is not to control everything that they do. My goal is to teach them how to put up bumpers for themselves. You know, hey, I want to encourage you when you're studying and you know, you're going to be on your laptop a ton, you know, go to the library. But I mean, come on, he's going to have a final and he's going to be in his room with his laptop studying. And it is what it is, you know. Yeah, I, I have a TV. Let's see if I can show you this without showing you too much.
