Most of us bloggers are also readers. We know the power of words. They can be used as a tool or become a weapon. We can be transformed forever by a powerful story. Books were our friends as children and still are today if we can find the time. I don’t know the stats, but my hunch is that women especially like to read stories that take them away from the real world and into a more interesting and exciting story. And a two second look at Google confirms this hunch. Why? Because women and men are different, but that’s another topic.

When we were young and impressionable, many of us enjoyed reading books that told us about the mysterious adult world of sex and relationships and we didn’t stick to books meant for our age group. We sought out books FOR ANSWERS to our questions. That has not changed! Kids today still like to read for that reason and to experience the world of adventures in every imaginable setting. People love stories and stories are very important to passing down culture and traditions. But of course things are changing. People are reading less and looking at videos more. But there are still stories in those videos. Stories help us learn and they form our worldviews.

The problem comes when immature children are given access to mature subjects with explicit and implicit messages that they are unprepared to analyze, process, and question. When this happens, very few of them will go ask an adult for help. They will either choose to assimilate the information and accept it as true, or they will be emotionally disturbed by the ideas. Some of them will have the skills to do some homework and learn more and some will be able to recognize that this is something they are not ready for and simply forget about it.

How can we help children read books of all kinds without risking long-term damage as has happened in the past?

I believe that we must intentionally;

1. Explain to children that books are powerful and can change their thoughts and lives
2. Provide them with plenty of truthful explanations about adult subjects at developmentally appropriate times, depending on the individual child>
3. Monitor the books that our children read and DISCUSS the ones that are controversial.
4. Share our beliefs and worldview with them regularly and explicitly. This means that we must reject the woke notion that parents should let children ‘make up their own minds’ about worldview. This leaves them unprepared to debate those who want to influence them. They WILL question our beliefs at a certain point. But they need something to compare to the world.
5. Should children should have free reign in the library? Not until and unless they demonstrate the thinking skills and maturity to handle that freedom.

Let me give you an example. I found a book on Kindle Unlimited that is intended for ages 12 and up. It calls itself a sci-fi dystopian survival book, a genre that I like to read. By the way, there are a million of them available right now. I wonder why? Ha! Anyway, within the first 56 pages of this book the female teenaged main character had discussed her trans and gay friends, how all of her friends where different races, vegetarianism in depth, animal rights, animals causing pandemics, climate change, and death, saying ‘if there is no heaven’. I’m wondering if the whole book is like that or were they just getting the woke quota in at the beginning.

I think authors are now required to insert every woke perspective in a book these days to get it published. And that is my point. If we do not teach our children the opposite of the woke worldview, they will easily be influenced by the books they get in their school and public libraries or even be told to read them by their teachers. We must arm our children with the truth, teach them to think critically at a young age, and have conversations with them before they turn against us in their teens. After that, it’s much harder to fight the peer and social pressure to believe what is in those books. Ideally we should all homeschool because that eliminates very early exposure to these woke and identity politics missionaries. But most people don’t homeschool so we have the responsibility of giving our children the truth to combat the lies they will be taught in school and in books.

Notice I didn’t mention book-banning or burning. We all know that forbidden fruit is that much more desirable. Instead, be honest with your child about how you felt when you were younger, that you were also curious. Then help your child see the dangers of certain behaviors and choices and treat them like the self-interested and responsible future-adults that you want them be. They must learn to discern truth from lies! Good luck.