S5 E15 | Parenting Pro Tips 2

If you have children, I really, really want you to listen to this episode. Brittany is going to give us her professional opinion and advice and experience on how we as parents can protect our children from online predators.

I need to know, and so do our thousands of followers who love broke to woke. When are you giving baby Bear a cell phone?

Oh, man. Good question.

I see kids all the time in, like, restaurants when I'm at Panera Bread, Starbucks, they're all playing on their little iPads while their mom and dad are, you know, they're drinking coffee.

I think that's, that's different. You know, those are kids needing to be entertained so the parents can try to enjoy themselves. And I'm not here to judge anybody for that. I think that's different than a cell phone that has access to the Internet and all these different games.

Okay, fair, fair, fair.

I am not gonna decide that for Bear because he is almost five months old.

What's up, dude?

Tomorrow he will be five months old. And I really believe that in the next 10 years, technology is going to radically change. And so there will probably be even more devices than cell phones that we're just like, look at something and it's a phone.

I don't know.

I don't know how it works. I'll make those decisions a little closer too. But for current day and age, you know your kid, at least you think you know your kid and you know your own, you know, scheduling and how to get ahold of them. What I am seeing is a good device right now is like an Apple watch where kids can communicate with parents without having full access to all these games and things like that. And so I get a lot of requests because my nonprofit does work in the anti trafficking space. I get a lot of requests on how can I protect my child from online predators and what are the kind of tactics that predators are using. And I will tell you that the worst thing you can do is not talk about it at all and to just avoid it and think that your kid at 8 years old does not know. Your 8 year old knows if they're out there in the world whatsoever. They are aware of sexual things. Sadly, kids are telling kids it's too interesting for them to not talk about it. And so I am not telling you to go into detail about all these different sexual things and what an online predator does and what pedophiles do. And I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there are strategies to protect your child and there's strategies to educate yourself, to understand if and how your child is being groomed.

Yeah, I for one is a dad of a 14 year old. Would love to know these.

Yeah. So I'm going to, I've actually got a course that we've created. It's not public just yet but it should be very, very soon. And I will link it on the Broke to woke website.

Oh shoot.

So this course is called protecting your children from online predators and it's specifically geared towards families in America because predators though they might have the same strategies other places they are a little different in some countries, some sadly I've met parents who sell their kids to traffickers or who.

Believe that they're very blessed for having a daughter because it's another stream of income that's a whole different level of economic desperation that I pray we never understand.

But that's how sick the world can be. So one of the top ways that traffickers or groomers or whoever is trying to manipulate your child online is affection. And so I'm going to just read through a couple notes here so that I don't forget something. But this affection is really used especially on young women or many times kids with some special needs like an autism where they're really hungry for attention but might not be getting it from their peer group compliments on their looks or their body. And only if you did this or if you wore this for me, oh my goodness, you'd be the most beautiful this. Download this filter.

Meeting a lot of parents who are having their children or finding out that their children have been using these different filters to morph their body for these weirdos online. And of course the weirdos coming off as if it's another child. Yeah, as if it's another teenager or another whoever. They're not. You know, we've my team's hunted them down before like on the Internet and figured out they're 62 year old men and another country, you know, so there's a lot I'm going to keep going here. One of the affections is referencing to normal discipline twisted to mean caregivers don't love them. And so.

Basically saying your parents don't love you because they're disciplining you.

They offer emotional and physical support. Again, your parents don't understand I'm here for you. So this is a form of affection. They may hide their age or use their age gap as a tool and they work really hard to build trust with the victim.

Next is they many times come off as a teacher to them now showing the child something taboo information did you know you could do this or did you know about that? Offering to teach things parents won't allow them to do, such as vape smoke or do drugs out of the house, steal, give oneself a tattoo, learn to dirty language again. Kids are so curious, they're so hungry, they're dying to learn something. And then like their brain is firing on all cylinders, learning something that their parents won't talk about again. I'm not telling you to teach them all this stuff. I'm telling you that.

One of the best things my mom did is tell me that people do these things because they're wildly insecure and they don't feel like they're worthy without doing it. And you already are enough, Brittany. You don't have to do those things. So I didn't feel like I needed to do those things. So when they were offered to me, I was like, nah. Because obviously my mom's not gonna be with me every day. Sure, your parent. You cannot be there and beat yourself up if your kid happens to do something. But you can do your best to train them, to empower them and protect them. Next thing that these teachers do in their life is really get them to share something in secrecy again. We have a shared secret and it's all that like, don't tell on me, don't tell on me. They can be teaching them things to gain their trust and later use it as a coercion leverage. So super important next thing is an exchange of gifts. So trading objects for actions online, like photos and videos. I'll send you money, I'll mail you a present. Go pick it up at this location. It is used as a coercive leverage for future abuse. For sure. We all heard about that boy that was sending some things on the Internet and it ended up being a Nigerian man who said, if you don't send me, it was like, what was it, $1,300 or something, not a lot of money. I'm gonna send these pictures to your whole family, to your friends. I'm gonna put em all over the Internet. And he killed himself because this. He wasn't able to be coerced because he couldn't find the money, right? And he was like an amazing young teenage boy. He thought it was some beautiful girl he was sending these pictures to. So don't put your stuff on the Internet. Alienation. Part of the affection and teaching is this alienation thing, you know, getting the child to distrust the parents, instilling ideas like parents are old fashioned and unreasonable. Again, planting these seeds of Doubt poison is really dangerous.

Remember, they really want to keep grooming a secret. It's very time consuming. And when parents find out, often all contact is cut off and the predator must move on and start over. So they're doing their best to alienate the parents, to silo the child. And then addiction, if it's in person, a lot of times it's sending them drugs through the mail, introducing porn, things like that. And so top ways that you can protect your kid with a smartphone is number one. Talk about the risks and dangers online. Determine necessary rules and guidelines together with your child. This is really important. Setting up security measures, time limits and safe search and scrolling filters. Remember, your kid is going to be better at technology than you are. And if they aren't yet, they will be. And so don't use a password that you use for everything else.

Right.

They figured it out.

They know.

They know. Always pre screen apps and software prior to downloading and set up child monitoring software. I have a friend whose 11 year old was playing an online game and this other little boy got the girl to go to another app and start talking. He started training her and controlling her. You have to speak to me during these times and you're hurting my feelings by not doing this. You know, appealing to her little girl, since you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, happens to be an app that has disappearing chats. You know, there's other other sad stories I hear all the time in America where these people will get these girls to be doing things within 10 minutes or less is little kids and you think your kid's safe playing these little games. And so it's, you're not. The best thing I have.

Learned that parents can do is really teach their kids, hey, there are some bad people on the Internet and they're gonna come off as if they're another little boy or another little girl trying to play a game. But here's some of the things they'll do and the number one thing they're gonna do is try to teach you to hide from us. We are your best friends. The only reason we even have any rules is to protect you. Because we love you.

Yeah.

And you don't know some of the evils that the world has yet. And we don't want you to have to know them. But if you start seeing messages like this or if you start getting something.

That'S a really good way to put it.

If somebody's going to start talking to you like this or asking you for these kinds of things, let Us know immediately because that's a really bad person. They kill puppies or whatever, whatever you want to tell them that can help them create. I call it a safe tattle line.

Sure.

To where they alert you immediately, mommy, mommy, I found this person. And then you're in a united front. You're a team. You caught them. Good job, baby, Good job. Not that they're trying to lure them in ever, but if you start seeing this kind of language or this kind of talk, let us know and then you can start reporting them immediately. Because again, it's the secrecy and it's the shame. One of the top things that happen when there's ever been child abuse or, you know, kids do dumb things when they're getting through their puberty and all this stuff. But if they've ever been abused or have ever done something stupid like send a nude or something like that, it's this shame. You immediately blame yourself and then you want to hide from your parents because you think that even though you already feel terrible that they're going to attack you even worse. So the worst thing you can do is go off on them, say, how dare you? I can't believe you were talking to somebody like that. I can't believe you even let them talk. Like they don't know. Their brain's just not developed enough. They are trying to figure this out. And you've got to know that these groomers are very, very good at what they do. There's full blown smart degreed adults falling into abusive relationships. You think a kid's not gonna fall prey? Of course they are. So you've got to empower them. That's the best thing you can do as parents is say, if you see these signs or hear these requests, let us know and let's catch bad guys together so that your friends can play on these games in a safer way.

Yeah, yeah, I think you nailed it. I mean, just having that conversation, having the, having the discussion because you mentioned the age 8. My wife and myself started talking to Gabe about this at around 11. I would have been a little bit earlier, but I wasn't in Gabe's life until he was 10. So, you know, a year into it, which was about. Right. About amount of time, right. I was married. Now I'm the dad. So I'm not just the boyfriend kind of thing. So we start having more adult conversations, fully realizing and me telling, you know, my wife like, hey, this is happening in schools.

Yeah.

And her being like, no way, no way.

You don't want to believe.

No I'm like, babe, for sure. By age 11 and 12. And for my parents out there listening, I know it's an uncomfortable subject, but use some of the verbiage that Brittany just kind of outlined for you because that's. That's a really good way to put it. Like, get the person on the team. Don't be like, hey, don't do this. Because if you do this, you're a bad kid.

It's like taking away your phone if you're caught doing this.

Yeah. Bring them into unison to some degree, like, hey, let's do this together. Here's what we need to look for. I'm on your team. You build that level of trust and security. Because my parents, they didn't talk to me about anything ever.

Never pretend like it doesn't exist.

Literally all the time.

Nope, not gonna happen.

Anything from sugar to Santa Claus. Right. Like, they just didn't have a conversation with me, so I had to find it out on my own. And I think most of the listeners here would probably agree that that's the way it was for them. So don't let it be that way for your kids, but just sit down and. And kind of a. Me and my wife had a play conversation about it, like, how I should bring it up. And although I didn't nail it, I was able to have really good conversations with my son Gabriel about everything from intimacy to sex to child reproduction. Like, how that works, like the science behind it, and all the way to safe practices on his phone and his computer. Because, like you said, if. If right now, if it has access to the Internet.

That'S a. That can be a danger tool because it is so fast. Yeah, it is. I mean, for my parents, who may be in the dark on this, you are talking three or four swipes, three or four apps. Like, you can get terrible things on Instagram and YouTube instantly. It is very fast. And the speed, it's just Google images. Google. That's what I'm saying.

Google videos.

Very, very, very quick.

So why, in your perspective, do you feel you should train your son against it? I've heard people say, you know, they're growing. Boys are going to want. They need to explore this. I know we've both talked about the dangers of pornography. I want to hear your. Your perspective on it quickly. And then I have a few thoughts and a few data points myself.

Sure. I mean, in general, they. They do not need to explore that. That's the answer. Like, they don't. That there's nothing natural about that. There's a random stat that might be one that you might share, but the average. The boy, a boy before the age 13 will have seen more naked women than the richest kings in the world in their entire life.

Right.

So by the time. So that's 13. That's sad. So you're talking about 13. It's like your brain is getting rewired. And then you start growing up expecting certain things, visualizing certain things, expecting and thinking certain things or certain ways. And to when you experience that's not the case, you start losing sensitivity. You start losing opportunity to connect with individuals as people. You start losing physical capacities to have actual relationship or have actual intimacy. Like, this is a big problem. And then they're going to solve it with what pills? And then you're going to fall into the big pharma trap, and then you're going to fall into your depression cycle. Like it's not healthy at all.

Well, one of the other dangerous things is what. What it does to your brain. And so for sure, I've had a lot of people ask me, like, how could somebody ever become a trafficker? How could somebody ever become a pedophile? How could they do these things? And the statistics, you know, obviously there's links back to child abuse. And if you choose to not end this cycle in your lifetime, then a lot of times people become child abusers. So that's really sad. You do have the choice.

Oh, yeah.

You are not forced to do this. It is a heavy darkness. But you can set the next generation free. You can. You did not choose for that to happen to you, but you can choose to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Amen.

And I'm sorry that happened to you. For those who have experienced that horrific atrocity in their life. Right.

But the other typical path to these child abusers and traffickers is they started looking at porn at whatever age, and then they started needing it to become weirder and weirder.

Yes.

And younger and younger. And anybody who looks at porn, one of the top ads is teenage girl, young girl, young girl with dad, like, all this weird stuff. Those are like normal ads for videos right now. And so typically, they start looking at regular porn, and then they have to get weirder and weirder and weirder or it doesn't turn them on. And then eventually they have to get the real thing. And so if this is an addiction for you, there is help out there. This is not something you have to die with. Obviously, it's hard to talk about because there's so much shame around it. But don't let yourself die in shame. Like find a path out because you don't want to end up one of those people. And then if you actually understood how many of the people on these porn videos are trafficked. It's a crazy high percentage. As a female, I will tell you. We do not wake up wanting love in those ways. We're not wanting people to do these things to us. We're not wanting to be.

Prostitutes like this. It's very unnatural. And in the event that is somebody's choice, they normally have had so much stuff happen in their life that they're not all necessarily there able to make great choices. And I'm sorry if that offends somebody, but it's the truth. And so help end the cycle. Stop creating a market for pornography to be made by. Stop watching it. And if it's an addiction for you, go get help.

Yeah.

And. And reach out to people that will support you through it. It is possible to make your way out of that. It's an addiction for so many people. Yeah. And so we love you. We say all this without any shame. It is your opportunity to protect your children. Have a plan. If you think that it'll just not happen, you're wrong. It's. It's.

You are wrong.

Sadly more prevalent. Prevalent than you could ever imagine. It's $150 billion a year industry. Just trafficking, let alone incest, let alone cousins and let alone all the other horrible things that are happening. Because you're not having the conversation. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying be willing to have the conversation if you care about your child. $150 billion a year industry. And we found kids as cheap as $7 being sold. $7 for 24 hours. So it's not like this high end expense for people. It's really sad. 25% of the 40/million people trapped in slavery are children. 25%. There's not been an org out there yet that has rescued more than 10,000 people that I know of. It's the top rescue organization in the world. There's only 10,000. When there's 40 million.

Sure.

This is a huge battle and we've got to come together to fight against it. And it starts with you.

Yep.

And ladies, it starts with you. Don't propel the situation with putting yourself out there in ways that you're just looking for attention. That's not love. We're going to talk more about that in the next episode.

Heal the Heroes. It is something that both myself and Brittany are eternally grateful for and extremely passionate about because we know the ultimate prize that lays at the end of these veterans who become truly healed as they transcend into their calling. And they create so much purpose. They save lives. And we would love for you to help us in that mission. Feel free to pop over to broketowoke.com and you'll notice a way to give directly to aerial recovery and the important mission pillar of Healing the heroes so that you and I can continue to do amazing work in the world by helping others grow in their purpose as well.