Hello,
Thank you for your wonderful site.
I am a teacher in a religious, Jewish school in Germany.
The children in the school often have unfiltered access to the internet (there is little awareness of the dangers here).
There is one 10-year-old boy who, from his speech, jokes, and drawing, appears to be regularly accessing inappropriate material.
We have 2 questions:
1) His Rebbi would like to approach him to discuss this topic. Do you have any suggestions of how to do this successfully?
2) We would like to make an internet awareness event here for the parents of the school and our community. Are there any good speakers you could recommend who could talk (from a professional standpoint) about the dangers of the internet? English speakers are also fine.
GYE Replies:
In general, here is what we would suggest:
1. Have "the talk" with him - what's mutar/asur and harmful. You may use this script for the age-appropriate conversation about the dangers of pornography.
2. Make sure his parents are aware of his issues and restrict his access to the internet.
3. The parents and teachers should keep an eye out for unusual behavior or attempts to access inappropriate sites again.
4. If you discover such attempts, have another talk with him and keep an even more careful eye.
5. If it persists - have a professional speak with the child.
A boy this age who may be already addicted to these things will probably need therapy by a professional.
We are almost finished preparing a booklet of information for children in Hebrew, which we will then translate to English. Perhaps that can be of help as well. Be in touch with us in a month or two to see if it has come out yet.
We are also in touch with a mechanech in the US who has developed a series of talks that he has with children (age 12 or so) to teach them some basics about sexuality and inyanei kedusha. We are developing a series of videos now together with him, be in touch with us about this as well in a few months.
You can also see this article that may be helpful: https://guardyoureyes
Lastly, some of the videos on this page may be helpful for the child to watch: https://gye.vids.io/tag
Regarding your question about speakers, I do not know any in your area but there's an org called thedigitalcitizenship.
Alternatively, you can set up an evening in your school where you show the parents videos on a big screen which will give them a much better understanding of the dangers. You can take videos from our "Parenting in the Digital Age" section.
Hope this helps.
Reply:
Thank you very much for your helpful and thorough response. We are grateful to have this resource to turn to!
I appreciate all the extra information, since perhaps the situation may be more serious.