A Google World in the Garden of Eden: Five Family-Safe Strategies for Texting and Social Media

By Joanna Jullien

This book addresses the fundamental ways in which parents can govern their homes to engage children as learning executives who make good decisions on and off line.

In this networked environment, there are three realms of security:

1. Physical (our person and belongings, home and car)
2. Cyber (smart phones/social media and other applications)
3. Hearts and minds (beliefs, values, emotions)

Most parents implement some form of security in the physical and cyber realms. They include locking and alarming doors in our homes and cars, and installing Internet security software and parental control settings on devices and applications. A focus on these two realms will provide some measure of safety for children, but the security children require to thrive in the network is cultivated in their hearts and minds.

This guide will help you:

* Implement house rules to express family values such as: God’s love, liberty, safety, forgiveness, peace and honesty

*Avoid the modern parenting pitfalls including: abdication, friend parenting, helicopter parenting, and confusion between trust and faith

*Maintain ongoing parent-child dialogue about on and off line happenings

*Set age-appropriate boundaries for use of mobile devices and social media

*Edifying ways to track the applications family members are using

*Strengthen healthy parent-child bonds into adolescence and adulthood

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joanna Jullien
• Release date: Aug 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780615866819

Joanna Jullien

Joanna Jullien and her husband have raised two sons in Northern, CA. She has a degree from U.C. Berkeley in Social Anthropology (corporate culture). Her honors thesis on corporate culture was awarded the Kroeber Prize and was supported a National Science Foundation grant. Since graduating from college she has had a 20-year career as a manager and she writes on parenting in the network culture.In April 2007 she created Banana Moments (www.bananamoments.com) a quarterly PDF publication issued to subscribers (parents, educators, law enforcement, and health professionals) who also contribute their perspectives and voices of wisdom. She writes for Gold Country Media and produces the Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column for Examiner.com (http://www.examiner.com/cyber-safety-in-sacramento/joanna-jullien)A working mom who stopped full time employment outside the home in response to the impact of the Internet and mobile phones on families, Ms. Jullien seeks to inform and inspire parents in the cyber-powered world that tries to convince us and our children that we are not enough.

Book preview

A Google World in the Garden of Eden:

Five Family-Safe Strategies for Texting and Social Media

By Joanna Marie Jullien

Cover Photo by Christi Benz

Copyright 2013

ISBN 978-0-615-86681-9

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook many not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to:

My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ whose authority in heaven and on earth frees us from the manipulations of our time.

Michael Berry and all the children whose precious lives are cut short in the wake of unchecked social network bully pressure. May we honor their memory and acknowledge the agony of their suffering by creating a peaceful society with the hope for a future, starting at home.

And Dr. Angela Chanter whose intelligent heart of hope governs her practice to restore children and families.

Preface

So what does God have to do with it?

Family and friends who have reviewed this manuscript expressed concern that the references to God could be off-putting to people who would benefit from the message and applications of this book. So this is to address my understanding of the role of God in the governance of individuals and family in a free society.

Consider the mustard seeds of faith that made the founding of the republic of the United States possible in the first place: 1) God is sovereign; 2) He grants individuals intelligent life and free will; and 3) the people grant government limited power to protect this civil liberty.

A simple truth which is considered self-evident.

The founding of the United States of America was therefore an act of faith and in this regard, parenting is a divine appointment. Whether you choose to worship God, or acknowledge his role in your family life is a personal decision. Nevertheless, our children have free will, which is a God-given liberty that must be defended or it will be surrendered, as expressed by George Washington:

"I am sure there never was a people, who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe, that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God, who is alone able to protect them." -- George Washington, from The Writings of George Washington, by John C. Fitzpatrick, GPO, 1931-44. Vol. 32:2

In order to create a home that has some measure of peace and help children mature into secure, responsible cyber citizens of the world, we must teach them the value of self-governance which requires responsible use of free will, or personal power.

So while I understand people are not receptive to religious dogma, and I am not a theologian, the freedom to worship, or not worship God is central to this civil liberty of our free society. It is freedom of religion, not freedom from religion that makes individual liberty possible. (See Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, 1944). God does not make us worship him. It is a choice granted by Him. This free will also gives us and our children the realization that we can think for ourselves and improve our own lots (one family, neighborhood, and community at a time) because God’s grace is endless and His mercy is abundant for those who fix their minds on even just one mustard seed of faith.

For anyone who might be offended, I leave it in God’s hands. I am just speaking truth as I know it, have experienced it with my own family and community, and hope this application of faith in the form of civil liberty (which I label as Aa) helps others strengthen family bonds at a critical time in our history when technological advancement of communications distracts us from the primary relationships that are the source of prosperity.

Contents

Forward: Peggy Harper Lee

Prologue

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Strategy 1 - Correct thinking

Start with the end in mind

What you believe matters

Impact of character and identity

Role clarification for imparting wisdom

Parenting tip: How to listen and influence

Chapter 3: Strategy 2 - House rules as love language

House rules fundamentals

Cyber Power Rites of Passage

User Level 1 - Tiny Tot (Non-User)

User Level 2 - Early Ranger

User Level 3- Ranger

User Level 4 - Junior Explorer

User Level 5 - Explorer

Contributing to the Family

Chapter 4: Strategy 3 - Demonstrate forgiveness as empowerment

The liberated live where forgiveness is possible

Secret is not the same as private

Good Shepherd Parenting Model

Clean slate

Chapter 5: Strategy 4 - Understand and disable the bully

Individuals and the weight of network pressure

Individual resiliency in the network

Overcoming adversity

Mustard seeds of faith and civil liberty

How stand-alone behavior matters

Confronting the bully culture

Hero-logic of the republic

Your child, the law and civil liberty

Chapter 6: Strategy 5 - Taming emotion

Step 1 - Shed fear (prayer)

Step 2 - Set attention priorities

Step 3 - Promote stand-alone behavior

Step 4 - Emotional intelligence

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Discussion Questions

About the author

Forward by Peggy Lee

Author of Spoiled: Fresh Ideas for Parenting the Entitled Child at Any Age

We did not grow up in the same world our children are growing up in. Change is happening with increasing speed, making it a challenge to keep up with our cyber-powered children. Once you figure out your child’s technology, he is on to the next new thing.

Given the difficulty to keep up with the popular trends with texting and social media, it’s hard to know what your child is doing and whether he is safe and making age-appropriate choices. Feeling overwhelmed, many parents take one of two approaches. The first is what I call hope for the best. This involves trusting that your child is behaving responsibly. This works until your child makes a mistake that is discovered, in some cases with disastrous and sometimes life-altering consequences. The iron curtain approach is the exact opposite, where parents attempt to block or severely restrict technology or social media access. Often, the result is the same as the hope for the best approach, as many children rebel and go underground with their activity.

The trick is to establish trust and set limits. Kids expect to