Garbage In = Garbage Out

It’s an age old adage, but has a very relevant teaching point for us in this season of parenting.

We don’t let our kids watch a ton of tv and most of what they do watch is filtered through the lens of age appropriateness, content, and representation of our values. We don’t do video games, but they do have iPads which have educational apps, and even the books they read we try to put through a similar filter. This is, by no means, an “our way is better than your way” statement, just a fact of how we’ve chosen to operate within our home.

I suspect some know this about us, some may speculate but few probably really know because it’s not something we make general conversation. Why would we? Why would anyone, right? I’m making an exception for the topic of this blog, even though I’m sure it will get as many eye rolls as it will high fives, if not more. I don’t mind. Roll away, lol! Our kids will continue to not know the Simpson’s, Sponge Bob and Captain Underpants, so long as they are young children in our house. There is plenty of time in their adult lives to make these decisions for themselves which may or may not reflect our choices, and we’re also ok with that. They are not in a bubble, we are not hiding them away from the world, nor are we perfect in our judgement calls about what we do, or don’t, allow, we just don’t feel they need garbage in their growing and developing hearts and minds.

The boys

Recently, our boys have gotten into reading a certain series of books I’ll leave unnamed. Somewhat of a comic novel that they thought was just hilarious. They love reading and read a lot of different kinds of books, so these, we only gave it a quick once over and loved that they were enjoying them so much. But then we began to notice something… Our three boys, who are three years apart in age and have plenty of scuffles, but also get along, make up quick and know that ugly words are not our jam, began calling each other ‘pinhead’, trash talking, attempting ‘Yo Mama’ jokes, and the like. At first we chalked it up to the boys attempt at humor, but as it became more and more ugly, it dawned on me to check the books. Sadly, I learned that so much of what they were laughing at as they were reading, were these types of remarks and jokes. I took the books away.

Dramatic? I don’t think so. I don’t expect that our boys will never trash talk or call names (I’d like to think they won’t, but most likely they will), but when I observe the garbage in = garbage out happening with a given media, it goes. “Garbage out”, literally.

So here’s how that talk looks with our kids:

When you build a fire, you feed it with logs, sticks, kindling. Good dry wood, so it will burn. If you start a fire with nothing but trash, it will likely burn, but it will burn black, quick and die out without more trash quickly thrown on, heaping nasty on top of nasty. If you have a nice clean fire built with good dry wood, and begin throwing trash on it, the smoke goes from fresh and clean, to dark, trash blows out from the flames, and depending what you throw in, it goes from a nice woodsy smell to stink, pretty quick. What was a pleasant place to sit, relax and enjoy, has become a foul smelling, dirty smoggy smoke, trash throwing, heap you try to avoid being down wind of.

This is exactly what ‘garbage in’ does to us. Matthew 15:18 says, But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. What goes in, comes out. Fill your heart with positive, something positive generally comes out. Fill it with negativity, or filth, negative fifth will find its way out. Garbage in = garbage out. Typically, they role their eyes and say it’s not the book’s fault, they are saying those things, and they’re right….the book didn’t make my kids speak that way, but when they filled their minds with trash talk that was funny to them to read, it then came out of their mouths directed to hurt each other and became not so funny. It’s true of our kids lives, and it’s true of ours.

I realize the point is not always to keep things away from the kids, but to teach them right from wrong, which we do, but parents, mommas, you only have them in your home for a short time. We are NOT perfect in our efforts, nor are we standing in judgement of anyone who binge watches Sponge Bob with their kids! This is just how we have chosen to operate within our walls, with our kids. My concern comes with this parental idea that children should be free to make their own choices, that it doesn’t matter because they will be exposed to it elsewhere, that setting these boundaries and restrictions will cause them to rebel later, that sheltering is wrong, that their friends are doing it, so they won’t ‘fit in’ if they aren’t also…….. listen, this is where I’m sharing my $.02….. all of that is crap!

They have the rest of their lives to make decisions for themselves (some of which will cause us to cringe), to determine their personal values, to make their own choices about what they will, or won’t, allow to influence their lives, to develop their peer group (hopefully not comprised of people who expect them to ‘fit in’ to some arbitrary social mold of “cool”), and to develop their own set of filters. Until that time, we will do these things for them. We have shelves filled with wonderful literature that expose their learning minds to great things this world has to offer, but as we do with music, and tv, occasionally we toss something that promotes values that clash with our own.

So, garbage in = garbage out. Our attempt to train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it (Prov 22:6)!

Be blessed friends!

~Jules