Just how safe is your home? Does your family have good practices to develop a healthy and safe environment for your children? Do you have a game plan and if so, is it good enough? What will you do if one of your children is exposed to pornography?
A new confidential survey is available online with the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph, My House Initiative. Participants who complete the survey will have their input reviewed confidentially and the results will be returned with personalized recommendations.
What are your waiting for? The spiritual health of your family may depend on this.
Take the survey here.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Disclosure
Many couples come to me presenting the classic, now frequent case, of a wife finding out about her husband's pornography use. A 'dance' starts between the couple, and the inner, or sometimes quite vocal, dialogue might look like this:
Wife: "I knew something was going on. I could feel it, he was checked out. I confronted him several times but he denied, defended and almost blamed it on me. I started to feel crazy, like I had the problem. Something was missing in the relationship, I was protesting, trying to figure it out but he always put me off. Now I know. Here's what I don't know: how often did he look, was there an affair, was he in chat rooms on the internet, how often did he think about it, what was he thinking about in the restaurant that one time when he was staring at the waitress...I have so many questions I don't know where to begin."
Husband: "I can't lose her, I'll do anything. It didn't have much to do with her, I brought this into the marriage. She takes it so personally but I just looked at porn to get a high. My wife is still attractive to me. It wasn't that I was looking for someone more attractive, I just needed to relieve stress. Now when she looks at me I see the hurt, the betrayal. I can't bare it. And all the questions! How do I answer them. She has way too many. We just need to move forward and let this go. It won't happen again."
Professional help is needed at this point. The first step is disclosure. A quality therapist will prepare the husband to answer her questions while working with the wife to take in the 'waves' of pain that will inevitably come with the truth. She needs to prepare her questions ahead of time, work on coping skills to manage feelings and have the goal of forgiveness, as hard as that word can be. The husband cannot engage in 'dribble' disclosure or giving pieces and parts of his problem in a several week span. It needs to be a concise, one time owning up.
Then he can become the hero to win her back, it's in his hands. The next step is working on triggers...to be continued.
References: "Shattered Vows," Laaser (2008); "Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction," Laaser (2004)
Wife: "I knew something was going on. I could feel it, he was checked out. I confronted him several times but he denied, defended and almost blamed it on me. I started to feel crazy, like I had the problem. Something was missing in the relationship, I was protesting, trying to figure it out but he always put me off. Now I know. Here's what I don't know: how often did he look, was there an affair, was he in chat rooms on the internet, how often did he think about it, what was he thinking about in the restaurant that one time when he was staring at the waitress...I have so many questions I don't know where to begin."
Husband: "I can't lose her, I'll do anything. It didn't have much to do with her, I brought this into the marriage. She takes it so personally but I just looked at porn to get a high. My wife is still attractive to me. It wasn't that I was looking for someone more attractive, I just needed to relieve stress. Now when she looks at me I see the hurt, the betrayal. I can't bare it. And all the questions! How do I answer them. She has way too many. We just need to move forward and let this go. It won't happen again."
Professional help is needed at this point. The first step is disclosure. A quality therapist will prepare the husband to answer her questions while working with the wife to take in the 'waves' of pain that will inevitably come with the truth. She needs to prepare her questions ahead of time, work on coping skills to manage feelings and have the goal of forgiveness, as hard as that word can be. The husband cannot engage in 'dribble' disclosure or giving pieces and parts of his problem in a several week span. It needs to be a concise, one time owning up.
Then he can become the hero to win her back, it's in his hands. The next step is working on triggers...to be continued.
References: "Shattered Vows," Laaser (2008); "Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction," Laaser (2004)
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Wake up call for parents... what is it doing to kids?
If you ask people who work in crime prevention and law enforcement if there is a connection between the increase in availability, use, and hardcore nature of pornography to the increase in sexual abuse of children and sex crimes they will almost unanimously say that the link is obvious. Serious peer-review research has been done on the subject and you might read it here along with a host of other research articles on the subject of the harms of pornography.
The simple fact is kids (or anyone) exposed to pornography are more inclined to act out in a way that mimics what they have seen. Today, the majority of the pornography readily available for free on the internet contains violent content. Should parents be concerned about what their kids could be seeing on their own phone or ipod? What about a friend's device?
A news story out of Wichita, KS serves as a wake up call for parents who are not yet concerned about this issue. In the news story about a 13 year old suspected of abusing younger children they draw the connection (from law enforcement) and they also outline signs of possible abuse that parents should watch for. Parents: are you on high alert yet?
Unfortunately we don't yet have anyone in politics talking like the Prime Minister of the U.K. did almost 2 years ago about this subject. Let us pray for our leaders, for those who protect us in law enforcement, and get to work protecting our own kids and speaking out to protect all of the children in our society.
If you don't have software on your computer to help keep your kids safe I recommend that you check out Covenant Eyes or another monitoring and blocking service.
The simple fact is kids (or anyone) exposed to pornography are more inclined to act out in a way that mimics what they have seen. Today, the majority of the pornography readily available for free on the internet contains violent content. Should parents be concerned about what their kids could be seeing on their own phone or ipod? What about a friend's device?
A news story out of Wichita, KS serves as a wake up call for parents who are not yet concerned about this issue. In the news story about a 13 year old suspected of abusing younger children they draw the connection (from law enforcement) and they also outline signs of possible abuse that parents should watch for. Parents: are you on high alert yet?
Unfortunately we don't yet have anyone in politics talking like the Prime Minister of the U.K. did almost 2 years ago about this subject. Let us pray for our leaders, for those who protect us in law enforcement, and get to work protecting our own kids and speaking out to protect all of the children in our society.
If you don't have software on your computer to help keep your kids safe I recommend that you check out Covenant Eyes or another monitoring and blocking service.
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