Today we continue our conversation about building tech trust with our children. Last week we discussed how to ensure tech is a good fit for our family, child, and season of life. In today’s conversation we look at ten ways to gauge tech trust, as well as what to do when tech trust is broken.
Today’s verse: Luke 16:10-12
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?”
There are three ways to listen:
🔗 click the link in the profile
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🌎 copy this link into your browser: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/51314352/download.mp3
Today’s Gospel Tech Partner: Lome, the platform for creating intentional family life rhythms. Check them out for free at withlome.com
Timeline:
0:00 – Introduction
2:15 – Thank You
4:20 – New Partner: Lome!
5:12 – Family Tech Framework (Goseptechworkshop.com)
6:40 – Intro to: 10 Ways to Check for Trust (use three)
8:15 – verse for today
10 Ways to Check for Trust
10:00 – #1
11:00 – #2
12:20 – #3
13:20 – #4
16:30 – #5
17:30 – #6
19:10 – #7
20:10 – #8
21:45 – #9
23:10 – #10
26:30 – What if I have to take tech back?
29:00 – Amazing resource: Bark!
31:30 – Review of the Big Picture
Resources:
Lome: go to withlome.com to use Lome for free!
Bark: A fantastic resource to help make the internet a more loving place for our kiddos. We’re such big fans of this resource that we’ve partnered with Bark: You can enter GospelTech10 at checkout for 10% off!
Gryphon Internet Routers are running a sale! Check out gryphonconnect.com to help build your family’s network hedge.
Transcription:
Purposely. Your life. God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today it is part two of the building tech trust conversation. Last week, we talked through how we can have safe tech and make sure that when we’re building tech trust, that we’re establishing a solid foundation for that.
So we’re gonna make sure our tech is safe. We’re gonna make sure it lines up with family expectations. We’re gonna make sure it lines up with our child’s goals and purpose. This week we’re going into, all right, what areas can I look to to see if my child is trustworthy? We were building off of Luke 16 10 through 12, where Jesus says, one who’s faithful very little, is also faithful with much. Even goes to the point where he says you who have been faithful with someone else’s stuff, then you’re going to be trusted with your own stuff. And he’s speaking of spiritual matters in this, but the application is absolutely connected because our spiritual matters impact our physical choices, right?
When we believe we have a purpose in Christ and that we are new creations, no longer our own. That drives like how we use the internet and how we treat other people. We recognize our need for grace, and that extends grace to others because we realize that we’ve received something we didn’t deserve. So how could we withhold that from others?
So that’s the premise of our beginning, of our conversation in today’s that second part. Tech trust, where are some areas we can look and then we’re actually gonna go as well into, all right, if it’s been breached trust. I touched on that the last end of last episode, I touched on that idea of I have to rescind tech that I’ve already given.
I made a mistake. I just realized it’s either not safe or it doesn’t match family expectations, or it isn’t okay for my child and their purpose and goals. So I have to go and say, Hey, I’m sorry I’ve made a mistake. This needs to come away for these reasons. Let’s, let’s make this right. Let’s add something new.
Let’s make something exciting. This isn’t punishment. This is your mother or father making a mistake, and this is what happens. I’m doing this is repentance is making it right. So we, we talked about that on the other side though. What, what happens when. It’s, it’s safe, family expectations, child goals, and then your child makes a poor choice using it.
How do we manage that? That’s kind of what we’ll wrap up at the end of today’s conversation. So I, I am excited. I did choose the two episode format because 40 minutes of this was just a lot and I was worried that people wouldn’t get it, both have, the conversation are so important. I really wanted to take time to do it justice.
So with no further a. Let’s get this conversation started.
Welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast, a resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth in a tech world. As an educator, parent and tech user, I want to equip parents with the tools, resources, and confidence they need to raise kids who love God and use tech.
Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible. Thank you to those who are listening, who are sharing, who are reviewing. For listeners, thank you for listening on Spotify or the Purposely podcast network or gospel tech.net/podcast. Thanks for joining us wherever you are, listening through your favorite podcast streaming.
Thanks for sharing and telling your friends. Shout out to Texas we have seen an amazing number of listeners joining up in Texas and we are so grateful that someone there has told their friends. And that’s awesome. And thank you for sharing us with your churches, with your communities, with your schools.
We are getting invited out and I am having the opportunity to both travel and do it locally here in the Northwest. And that’s amazing because the gospel’s going forward. It’s getting an opportunity to help families see that this conversation about technology isn’t some entirely third conversation we’re having where we’re trying to raise our kids up and help them love and follow Jesus, and then technology is like another conversation. It’s simply an extension of how do we trust and follow Jesus? What does that look like implemented into our technology? So thank you for sharing that with others so that we can help more people love God and use tech. And thank you for rating, reviewing so more people can find us.
For the first time ever, I’m excited to thank our partners. I’ve been really selective in this process. In fact, it’s taken me years to get to this point because I wanna make sure that I’m only suggesting organizations are gonna help you love God and use tech to raise healthy youth in a tech world.
Which is why I’m excited to introduce you to Lome. Lome is designed to help you create healthy family rhythms. It takes your family calendar and all the activities you’ve got and mashes them into one digital space that ties in with your Google Calendar, or even just available via text message or your web browser. And it lets you build your family plan based on your family priorities. You can set up chores in there, you can set up meal planning, you can even look for activities drawn from organizations like Gospel Tech. So you can go to withlome.com, W I T H L O M E .com and begin intentionally planning your family’s calendar today.
Today’s conversation, as I mentioned, is an extension of last episode. You will wanna listen to that. Part one is, starting this conversation about tech trust being all the trust in the world, the most trustworthy human on the planet should not be given intentionally, unhealthy tech tech, excuse me, Or they shouldn’t be put in intentionally unhealthy situations or they shouldn’t be given things that work directly against who they’re called to be or what they’re called to do. So in that we’re talking about building tech trust. This is where the relationship comes in, is those conversation pieces. Then we get to look at, all right, I’ve confirmed that this tech is safe. It fits our family’s expectations for things like the time it takes to use the places we can use it, the content we’re going to engage this idea of a family tech framework. And I mentioned briefly in the last one, Gospel Tech workshop.com is a resource that I’ve made. If you feel like you need help making that kind of a thing. It’s a two hour course. You can take it in the little 10 minute videos. You can do it all at once.
There’s a workbook that goes with it, a PDF you can download right from the workshop itself and it will walk you through all of that. How to talk about technology, tool and drill, tech reset, those kinds of resources and how to walk it out, how to actually implement the time place content piece. So you can check that [email protected].
Today’s conversation is when we’re looking at tech trust, how do we know if our child is responsible? How do I, like, I love my child. Are they ready for this? So I actually came up with a, I thought I was gonna come up with like three . This is a big reason this was a two part episode or a two part conversation was.
There’s actually 10 areas, and I, I want to preempt this by saying, do not use all 10 at once. Don’t like get a clipboard out and start like walking around the house and like, mm, demerit. Like this is a mental checklist. I’d say grab three. As I read through this list, you can go through it too and go, you know what, like these are the three areas where my child is really shining. Or, you know what? As I’m listening to this, this one area is a deep concern to me. That’s an area not to go, Ha, I found it. You don’t get that smartphone child. Instead, it’s spot to go oh, that is concerning. I wonder what’s going on there. Like, let’s be humble enough to be kind and then curious enough to wonder what’s going on in our child’s heart.
What is making that thing happen? Is it an unhealthy invasion of technology into their life, Is that something’s out of control or is that symptomatic of something else happening? Because that, until we know the answer to that, we won’t be able to find a good solution. We might be able to keep bad tech away for a while, but we won’t actually be helping the heart of the issue, which is what we want to do.
We want our children’s hearts to love and follow Jesus. So here we go. There’s 10 of ’em. When we’re talking about these, we’re saying, all right, our child is trustworthy because Luke 16:10-12, Jesus says, “one who is faithful is in very little. Excuse me, let me start over. One who is faithful and very little, is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you with true riches? If you’ve not been faithful in that, which is another’s who will give you that which is your own?”
And in this conversation, Jesus is saying effectively that we have to trust and follow of Jesus in all of our life, that we need to pursue God with all of our things, and that even the way we use our wealth is going to show how we’re going to use the greater riches, that this is something God uses in and trusting us. He asks us to do small things and then trusts us with more, not on our strength, not because we’ve earned the opportunity, but because we are showing faith in him. And that’s the only way things get done. We see this with Jesus as well. He says, I only do what the Father shows me to do. I only go as the Spirit leads me to go.
And that is what we are attempting to do here, being faithful in things that we don’t see a purpose in. Being faithful in relationships God’s given us that we don’t see fruit in. And man, I could, I could go on that for a while, but, this is what I wanna lay on, us. That’s our foundational verse, because when we talk about technology, we don’t just have to say, well, child of mine, I’m giving you this potentially dangerous technology. Prove to me that you can earn it. That’s not the way of it. I go, no, you’ve shown yourself faithful, son or daughter. You’ve shown yourself faithful in these little things.
And Jesus says it goes all the way down to like how we use our money can be an example of how we are doing spiritually. And I think that that’s a wonderful picture for us as parents to have in mind, cuz when I just say, well, is your child trustworthy? Every parent wants to say yes unless there’s some grievous breach of trust and confidence, and at that point we don’t ever know how to know if they’re trustworthy. Again, how do I know if this child is trustworthy? Like they really blew it last time and I’m really concerned about the damage that they do to themselves and others.
How do I know? This is how we know there’s 10 areas. Let’s look at ’em. The first family time. Is your child engaged in your family? Are they engaged in the conversations? Are they sharing? Are they listening? Do they join in on family dinners? Are they participating in family activities and games? Are they engaged in the relationship?
This is our number one, because relationship is gonna be the key to trust, and if your child is open and sharing and listening, they’re treating others mutual respect and relationship then that’s awesome. We are probably in a good spot there. And you’re gonna be able to catch when something diverts. If this child suddenly becomes more sullen or isolated or moody or anyway, any of those things where you start to notice something’s off and we want to trace it out and we, we could now have the relationship to approach that rather than it feeling like it’s an interrogation because we never had this conversation before. And all of a sudden now you care and you’re asking a thousand questions and you’re really just treating it more like you’re, you’re the police and they’re , they’re the criminal that’s not relational.
We wanna make sure that this is a relational piece. Family time is a great spot to start. The other one is the actual relationships they have. Yes, relationship between you and child. That’s gonna be an important one. But watch their other relationships. How do they treat their siblings? How do they treat their friends?
Philippians 24 were called to look to others’ interests over our own right. Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others. Is that being done in relationship? If your child is doing an amazing job at that, that’s a really big deal cuz now we have a family interaction that we can look to and we can look to how are they treating others.
Are they being humble of heart? Are they being gentle in spirit? Are they going out and, and loving others on the playground and in their classes and in their sports? Or is there something concern in those relationships that we need to address? Again, not as a preamble for, well, if you’re nice, then you get a phone, but well, I love you.
And I want you to reflect Jesus to the people around you. So if I put you in a digital space, you’re gonna be able to make a lot of mean choices very quickly, or you’re gonna be able to be very kind in a much greater scope than you were before. And we wanna make sure that you are prepared for that.
Third, content. The Bible does give us a biblical con biblical standard, excuse me, for our content specifically, Philippians 4:8. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever’s, just whatever is pure, whatever is lovely. Whatever’s commendable, if there’s anything of excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
When we look at our child, what are they getting joy from? What are the bands they love? What posters are up in their rooms, right? What, what jokes do they tell? What movies do they love? It’s not just like, was there a crass joke in that one movie? It’s where do their heart pivot? Where do they trend? What are they celebrating and setting their hearts and minds on?
And because that’s where they’re gonna go, when you put ’em in a digital space, they’re going to trend towards those groups, towards those ideas. They’re going to gravitate towards that content. And we want to know like, great, are they on track ? Like, are they celebrating things that God would celebrate for them?
Or are they celebrating things that are gonna be distractions to who they should be in Christ? That’s the content piece. Then we can also look at their academics. Academics can be tricky, and obviously as a former teacher, I, I have a bias here that I’m aware of. But I would say this, I believe that in true learning, all learning points us back towards God.
God is the creator of the universe. He’s a creator of everything. He is the inventor and sustainer of math and science, of literature and language of everything amazing that humans do are a gift that’s been extended from God. It’s. It’s a common grace because you don’t have to believe in God to receive these gifts.
And academics done earnestly honestly show us God. It shows us both our growth, our ability to overcome obstacles and our ability to understand creation that God has made. And we are made in God’s image as people who create. We have a passion for creating and making. And that is something that I believe reflects God .
That the more you study science and space. The more you study biology and natural history, the more you study mathematics and language, which is just our little puzzle symbols we put together to understand this reality that we’ve been put in. The more that we study that stuff, the more impressed with God we get and the more awe we can experience.
So academics done right are absolutely powerful, therefore, given the opportunity. Let’s dive in. We live in a really cool spot in history where many of us get the opportunity to study for at least portions of our lives. So, is our child studying? Are they working? Are they going to school and doing their work like they’re doing it for the Lord? Not cuz they like it, not cuz they quote unquote, see the point, but because they’ve been given a chance to see who the Lord is. I’m not by the way, saying that you need to participate in a system that is an education and citizen indoctrination. That meaning that the questions are stymied, that the information is slanted towards one narrative and it’s not allowing you to ask big questions.
And I would actually argue that both private and Christian school or private schools and public schools can do this. Public schools, at least in my area of the Northwest, are trending in this direction. Where many of them are only allowing certain questions to be asked, and I think that’s really dangerous in education.
It’s also been done in religious institutions, Christian schools being one example where big questions are not allowed to be asked. We have to be able to ask those big questions. God can handle our big questions cuz doubt isn’t a question, doubt is a choice. Judas doubted Jesus when he refused to believe, and walked away and betrayed him. That’s, that’s doubt. Doubt is not, Peter doesn’t know the right answer, and doesn’t have the strength in that moment and fails Jesus. Jesus didn’t fail him though. And this is what second Timothy talks about. When if we deny Christ, God will deny us. If we fail him, he never fails us.
And so I, I say that because academics can be touchy. I’m not trying to say academics will fix your kid. I’m saying academics are one more way to see the Lord in amazing ways. Do not turn away from the learning the Lord’s allowed us in this season of life. It hasn’t been a possibility for much of history to learn the way we can learn.
Is your child investing in their learning? Are they making the most of that opportunity? If they are, that’s an amazing thing to point to for something they’re doing well and right, and it takes a lot of different skills to do that. So look at it .
In that learning, they might be number five. Learning friendships. How are they playing, learning, listening? Are they practicing those relational opportunities that Jesus calls us into? Like forgiving, respecting others, treating them like equals, recognizing they have boundaries, and even other friends, correcting friends or encouraging them. Real true friends are going to call each other out and say, hey like many of us have done for our loving friends growing up, like, I don’t think the person you’re dating actually likes you.
That’s a loving thing to say. It’s loving to encourage and strengthen your friend, to exhort them and remind them of their identity in Christ. Say, hey, I don’t think this choice or this event, or this thing you’re participating in is good for you and letting our children grow in that. How are they doing with their friendships?
Are those friends encouraging and exhorting? Or is it a mutually destructive situation where we go, man, you can’t be trusted with these friends. Like these friends are not leading you on a path. The last thing I wanna do is now empower you digitally to go even further and faster with this friend group that you’ve got.
That would not end up well. It’s, it can be a way for us to begin that conversation with our kids. Six Faith, are they invested in their faith? Not necessarily are they believers right now because not all of our children are at all times. There is a process where God calls their heart and they bend their knee and it isn’t always at a certain age.
But are they, are they processing it? I run into a lot of kids that are kind of intentional agnostics. They’re like, Yeah, God. Like he’s probably out there. He, there’s probably some kind of a power I don’t really know. Hey, are you like praying about that? No. Are you reading your Bible? No. Are you having these conversations with anyone who’s informed on the subject? No. But I watched this YouTuber and he says he doesn’t think God’s real. I’m like, whoa. Like that’s not . That’s not great. That actual conversation, By the way, that wasn’t hypothetical. That’s a conversation I’ve had in the last month. So actually the last two weeks.
So that being said, we have to be intentional with this. Let’s read our scriptures. Let’s memorize some. Let’s ask big questions. Let’s see how the gospel applies to real life. God’s not scared of us asking questions in this way because he wants to show himself as real and alive. He’s not just a theory that we keep.
If he is, we are, we are way off base as Christians cuz the entire premise of being a Christian is believing that Jesus is God, died for our sins and rose, is alive right now sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. That’s a big difference from he was a good dude who wants us to like treat others well in our own strength.
Two very different premises because in one, we rely on ourselves. And in the former, we rely on a God who gives us strength through Spirit. So is our child growing in their faith? Are they working it out with fear and trembling?
Seventh is watching as they grow, are they willing to try something, fail at it miserably and recognize how to ask for help and grow again. That kind of humility is gonna be relational. That kind of growth is gonna mean that they’re not as likely to use technology. This is a big, this is a big claim, but I, I hope you understand for today’s conversation, I’m gonna be succinct with it. They’re going to be more willing to recognize when they’ve made a mistake because growth requires lots of mistakes.
And so the, the hope here is if your child is out there recognizing their weaknesses, growing in their strengths, and they’re recognizing that technology’s part of their journey, not the point of their journey, that they’re not just getting back to tech every time, that’s gonna be big. And that when they make mistakes, they can come to you cuz it’s part of growth.
And mistakes might happen, but we’re not okay with them. We’re not excusing them. We recognize them as mistakes and we, we do the work it’s required to make them right to repent and to bring it to light and to get the help we need. So that’s what the growth idea number eight is our money because it’s brought up in Luke 16. But our money, can we manage it? Can we save it?
Do we spend it in intentional and mature ways? So that might look like having a saving account. Right. Do we have a savings account? Excuse me. Do we tithe our money? Are we giving the Lord our first fruits? I’m not even tell you what the tithe needs to be, but it needs to be something. The Lord requires us to give of our money cuz it’s not ours.
The same way he requires us to give of our time and of our talents because it’s not ours. All that stuff is borrowed. So are we modeling that for our kids or we encourage our children to go about that process? Whatever the percent might be. The, the Old Testament model given by Abraham is 10%. Okay. That’s followed for a lot of the Bible into Jesus’ time, where they’re tithing even off their mint and dill from their garden.
But Jesus is very clear that that doesn’t save anybody. It’s just a heart attitude. And he says, hey, I see that you’re tithing, but your hearts are terrible cuz you’re not loving the relational part. Your friendships, those aren’t based on the love of God. They’re based on you believing, you’re being righteous enough to tell other people how to live their lives.
So money doesn’t prove that we love God. But it’s one more area where we can work on the humility required to give up something we feel we really need. And there’s nothing worse than making 10 bucks as a kid mowing a lawn and having to give a dollar or two or three to a tithe and be like, Yeah, but I’d be so much closer to buying that new thing I want if I just kept it.
And don’t worry, it doesn’t get easier when you get more money, kid. I know it seems like it should, but just because, just cuz you made thousands of dollars doesn’t mean that you want to give them up any more than before. So it is a good, hard exercise too.
Number nine is our time. Is your child making time for what is important? By this I mean are they making time to be with the Lord? It it’s a priority thing. We all have the same 24 hours. Is that a time? I won’t even set an amount of time, it could be five minutes to read a psalm for the day and a proverb for the day. But are they making time to give themselves that space to be quiet and to reflect and to be with the Lord?
Are they making time to eat, to be active and exercise? Are they making time for their studies? If they’re in school or their personal development, whatever that might look like if they’re not in school? Are they making time for sleep? Are they making time to be socially connected, both to serve and to love others, but also to be fed and to be encouraged, both in the faith and individually just as people, right?
The David and Jonathan relationship of just two people that care for one another and wanna see each other look more like God. And so they’re willing to go to bat for one another and be in each other’s lives. Do they have that? Opportunity or at least making the opportunity to have that kind of a friend.
I would argue you can’t make that kind of friend on your own will. The Lord has to provide those friends, and I believe in prayerfully, he does. He brings them out of the woodwork. People that you never would’ve picked for yourself, he picks for you. If you humbly go into that and really seek that person’s what good.
For their goods sake, not just for your own. I actually cover this in the How to Make Friends episode. Ooh, I wanna say it was the back to school number four. So you can check that one out if you want more on that. The last one to look for for your kiddo is their focus. Can they focus? Is your child trustworthy in the area of being able to shift from task to task?
Can they self regulate their attention, meaning If they’re supposed to do math, they can do math. If they’re supposed to care for their sister, they can care for their sister and they can do it without having to be reminded a dozen times. Can they prioritize activities? So when they’re given three things to do, they know the ones they have to tackle first.
Like, Well, first I have to tackle my stuff with God, right? Like that comes if I have to wash the dishes and read my Bible and practice my piano. Like, do I know which three to do and can I regulate that? The reason that matters is as soon as you go into the digital world, specifically in these areas of drool tech, video games, social media movies and streaming shows, and music driven by algorithms.
So not just one CD you put in or in one record you put on in each of those areas, your child is going to be encouraged to come more often than they want to stay longer than they intended and to spend their money or be worth money with their attention. So your time, you’re focusing your money are the entire point of drool tech.
It has a goal for you that you don’t have for yourself. When we send our kid there, we’re gonna need to know that they have the ability to moderate, and this is oftentimes a brain development thing. The orbital frontal cortex in your brain is part of what inhibits choices and decisions. It allows you that second of pause to go, wait, should I, should I do this?
That doesn’t come around in young elementary or even middle school kids. It’s something that doesn’t show up actually, it doesn’t fully develop until mid twenties in boys or men by that point. So focus, then we wanna look, this is both for our child’s temperament, but also for just physical development. Is our child ready for the kind of technology we’re giving in for the way that technology is set up?
We know how the brain develops, we know how drool tech is designed. Neither of those are mysteries. Let’s use them to our advantage. So we have 10. When looking for trust, Jesus says, When you’re faithful, little things you can be trusted with bigger things. These are the little critical things, not because they don’t matter little, but because everyone can do them.
Everyone’s got family time, everyone’s got relationships. Everyone engages content in some format, even if it’s the books they read or the music they listen to. Everyone has some kind of study available before them, maybe formally through school, maybe not. But everyone in a job, has an area they can improve and a way they can go about that.
Are we investing in that? Friendships, faith, growth, our treatment of money our use of time, and our ability to focus all of these 10 areas. I asked you to pick three. Look at three of those, which three of those really stand out for how your kid is just crushing it and which three might be concerning and be like, you know, that that needs to be a conversation point for our family.
Let’s talk this out, especially when we’re talking about tech, that we know it’s intrinsically safe in the way we’ve set it up. We know it’s our family expectations, or it hits our family expectations, and we know that it lines up with our child’s goals. Then we look at our kid themself. Then we look at this final piece of all, what if there’s been a breach of trust?
In our former former episode last week, we talked briefly about, all right, I gave my kid unhealthy tech. How do I handle that? So you gave your kid a smartphone and you just realized, you know what, it doesn’t line up with family expectations. Just know that you go to your child and you say that exact same thing, You say, son or daughter of mine, we gave you a smartphone.
We’ve recognized that that’s not a safe option. It’s connected to the internet. It’s drool tech. It has a web browser, it has an app store. There’s strangers on there. It’s hard to hold you accountable cuz it was an iPhone. So I need to, give you this gab phone. Please use this gab phone. It will help you.
It’s a, it’s a, it doesn’t have the internet. It doesn’t have an app store. You can’t send or receive images. You can still make phone calls. You can still get GPS directions. You can still receive text from us. Like you can do those things you need to do, but it doesn’t have all of the dangerous side avenues on it.
So I’m sorry that we made that mistake. I’m sorry that you’ve already invested in this and I know the heartache that causes you, and I love you too much to allow this to continue. So if you’re in that situation, that’s what that conversation sounds like.
However, that’s not the same conversation as breaches of trust. Breaches of trust mean you did it. You agreed this is safe. You agreed that it’s family expectations. You agreed that your child is ready for it, that you looked at the trust, or my child is trustworthy in three of these 10 areas, there’s not any major glaring red flags in these areas.
Give them the smartphone and then the mistake comes. Might be an accidental mistake, like a friend was over and they made the mistake for your child. Maybe might have just been you know, they were on something and it popped up and it kind of got curious and they ran after it. Possibly. And sometimes a child intentionally, deliberately makes mistakes over time, repeatedly without confessing it, without without making amends or seeking help.
And they hide what they’re doing so that they can do it more often and more extensively. In mending that we remove. We’re gonna replace it with something healthier because our child cell has needs staring at a wall and paint drying isn’t going to help them. And we are going to lovingly look back to this trust premise.
We’re not just going to say, Well we’re gonna give you your smartphone in a week or whatever. Like we, everyone’s got a different timeline. It depends on how bad the trust, trust was broken, because we need to prove tru faithfulness with the little things. And we need to reassess were we being safe?
And this is what I said I was gonna come back to. Were we being safe? Like sometimes the mistake was, we said it was safe and we misunderstood it. This is where something we, we build a hedge. Building a hedge is so important for our technology where we have a hedge around our phones. We have a hedge around our personal devices.
Or excuse me, we have a hedge around our network and our personal devices. So anything connected to our wifi at our house, our smart TVs, our laptops, our old iPhonesthat don’t have internet connection anymore on tablets. And then our personal devices or anything that has internet. And so we need to have something like bark.
So we’ve partnered with Bark as an affiliate. We believe in Bark and in the show notes you can go find little link. You can go to Bark and get a gospel tech discount. Because we believe strongly in the resource they’re providing. They provide you opportunities to have conversations with your kids.
It works on smartphones, it works on tablets and PCs. It works when they’re away from your house and when they come home. So it works on your personal network and on personal devices. And that is such an important tool because they look for phrases key phrases like, Hey, don’t tell anyone that we had this conversation, or Can you keep a secret?
Or, Hey, let’s meet on another app so that we could talk more privately. All that stuff’s gonna come up and you will then be notified not of every aspect of their conversation, but just of that concerning line. And that’s your talking point because remember, this is tech trust. By the time your child is on that app or using that device, I’m assuming that you’ve already confirmed that it’s safe and family expectations and good for their goals.
And that your child is trustworthy. And now this is a concern. It’s ringing a bell. It’s, well, it’s barking I guess to use the name as the metaphor. And now alerting you that something might be off, would you go check And that’s your job, right? It’s just barking. You go and check cuz you’re still the parent.
And I love bark for that. And I also mentioned maybe it’s. Take away a smartphone and, and get something like a gab device. So it’s just fewer ways for those mistakes to find you and for you to make those mistakes because those can be very loving interventions.
So when, when trust is breached, absolutely parents, those hard things might have to happen. I know parents want to hear like, no, just. Put these two things in place and then your kid can’t make a mistake. That’s not our goal. That is not helping your child. That’s not discipling your child. That’s actually very selfish of, of us when we do that.
When we just go, You know what? I just, you know, I’m not gonna allow you the opportunity to prove trustworthiness because I don’t wanna have the conversation. Don’t do that. You need to have the conversation. It’s possible your child’s not mature enough. It’s possible it’s not safe enough. Those are good reasons, but when we just shut it off and we don’t actually talk it out, we don’t have that relationship.
We’re hurting the trust side with our kiddo, and we’re losing that opportunity to disciple them. Quick review of the big picture. The first thing where we’re gonna make sure. We do is make sure the tech is safe. That’s the first conversation we have. Is this tech safe? When we’re building tech trust, we’re doing the legwork.
If we’re not willing to do this legwork, we’re not willing to have the tech. So is it safe? Listen to episode one for how we can know that there’s five areas to look. Does it line up with our expectations in these five areas, another five areas, and does it line up with our child’s goals? Three of those.
Then we look for the 10 areas for trustworthiness, and I said pick three. Go through the family time, relationships, content, academics, friendship, faith, growth, money, time and focus. Are they really nailing it to the point where you’re like, You know what? They’re so exceptional in this area, like, I believe that they’re ready for the next step.
Maybe they can use my phone. Now they’re using the public device, right? We’re progressing to the next level. And then they can use a private device and that’s gonna be done with accountability. And you don’t graduate past accountability cuz we need to lovingly remove the lie of anonymity. We need to make this tech public because that’s loving to our child.
And when and if a breach of trust comes, we remove the offending device and we progress through whatever help they might need. There’s possibilities that they were actually the ones making the problems for others. That someone’s kid out there is doing it. So it might be ours. And we are going, going to lovingly reintroduce this tech only after we’ve reconfirmed that it’s safe.
We have things like bark, we have gab phones, we have resources to help this conversation remain open and accountable and that it’s going to still line up with their growing levels of trust and maturity. In this conversation, we now have a really clear roadmap for how we can begin really tricky conversations on our own, with our own kids and our own families, with our friends and kids excuse me, kids, friends who come over.
We can now have that conversation with them because they’re at our house using our internet. They’re around our kids with that technology. Like, let’s talk through what this expectation is because it is gonna be so key and so important for us to raise up healthy kids in a tech world to have them be the ones who can actually help make these decisions themselves as well.
So hope this was encouraging to you. I hope that you can hear something in here that you can use today as well as something you could share with others who might be in this conversation of raising kiddos. And I hope you join us next week as we continue to have this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.
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