Protecting Your Child from Harmful Books

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Really, what really gave us this idea is I was looking at reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

00:07

People were kind of censoring what they were saying when they were giving one star reviews and they wanted to let other people know what they didn't like about the book, but they were a little bit nervous because their name was attached to the review.

00:26

And so we wanted to give an anonymous platform for people to just show what's in a book without opinions, just take a picture, show other people what's in the book.

00:39

But it's the sexualization of children and it starts at a very early age and it's in subtle ways and so what happens as a parent, you're going to end up with a 12 -year -old and you're like, well, what happened?

00:52

I didn't raise them this way. Well, no, you didn't. You didn't intend to, but these things slipped in.

00:58

They came in under the radar because you made the assumption, perhaps, that all books are good and it's only the

01:03

YA books that start getting bad. Welcome once again to the

01:22

Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Well, we've talked a lot about virtue and about the influences that can come into your home that honestly attack virtue.

01:34

It's a problem, especially in entertainment mediums. And it's not just television or internet stuff.

01:40

It's also books. I don't think people sometimes realize that there used to be a time when that's all we had was books, but reading is important.

01:48

And what I've noticed is, especially in the homeschool world, reading is very, very encouraged as an alternative and rightly so to television and media alternatives.

01:58

But the thing is, we can't get into the mindset of thinking that it's wholesome just because it's reading.

02:04

It depends what kind of content you're reading, right? So with that, I want to introduce some folks who are doing really good work on helping us discover what good books are versus what bad books are.

02:16

For those who, honestly, as a parent, sometimes you don't have all the time to put into screening every single book.

02:22

And that's where ScreenItFirst .com comes in. I'm going to show you a screenshot in a moment.

02:27

Before I do, though, I want to introduce you to the McCabes. They are a wonderful homeschool family that had the idea to get this ball in motion.

02:36

So I'm going to let them, as I'm showing you some screenshots of their website, explain kind of what their intention is behind this and how you can use it.

02:45

So thanks for coming on the podcast, guys. Yeah, thanks for having us, Sean. This is my wife, Jessica.

02:50

I'm Mac. We started this, what, about four years ago? Yeah. So if you don't mind, let

02:55

Jessica kind of take it because this is really, I'm more the tech behind the operation, but this is all inspired by her and her pre -reading of all the children's books.

03:05

If you can kind of tell her what your inspiration was and how you got started, Jess. Well, about four years ago,

03:14

I was running across a problem of pre -reading all these books. And I was thinking there has to be a lot of other families that are pre -reading as much as we are.

03:26

And if we could combine our efforts, we could do a lot less work and get a lot more books pre -screened and out there for other parents to see.

03:40

And what really gave us this idea is I was looking at reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and I started to realize that people were kind of censoring what they were saying when they were giving one -star reviews.

04:02

And they wanted to let other people know what they didn't like about the book, but they were a little bit nervous because their name was attached to the review.

04:15

And so we wanted to give an anonymous platform for people to just show what's in a book without opinions.

04:24

Just take a picture, show other people what's in the book, and allow people to decide for themselves.

04:31

Yeah. Just so you know, part of what Jessica didn't add there is we have six kids.

04:37

And so having six kids and pre -reading, you know, dozens of books, they're all avid readers like their mom. I mean, she's read pretty much every book on all the shelves around the house.

04:46

We have kids that are avid readers. It's really hard just to keep up, especially as they get older into young adult fiction and things like this.

04:53

And there's a lot, there's an increase in questionable content in these books. And so this poor woman by herself was just cranking through these books, started talking to my sister, her sister -in -law as well.

05:05

And they kind of came to the conclusion that maybe they can share what they found in books. And so that was kind of the baseline start of it.

05:11

And to what you were saying is, yeah, so people on Amazon, a lot of times, one process that she was doing at the start was basically going to Amazon, looking at one star reviews.

05:21

And because that's, you know, typically where people complain the most. And so like, okay, what did people find? And what she found is that sometimes people were saying like, oh, this book was, it was riddled with agenda.

05:31

And it's like, well, what does that mean? Like, they're trying to speak in code. And I understand that, you know, we get that after doing this for a few years.

05:38

But at first it was like, well, okay, I guess it's fine. Just somebody who's complaining. And so that was kind of the inspiration.

05:44

It's like, okay, clearly people need to want to share, but they didn't really have a place that they could do it beyond what

05:51

Amazon does in people being afraid of putting their name on there. But also, you know, other users can flag those reviews and get them removed.

05:58

And so it really is, there's a lot hidden. And so we're trying to just bring to light information that's in books.

06:05

And it's not just a single agenda. And it's not just about the real nefarious bad stuff, if you will. A lot of it just has to do with, you know, what doesn't work for your family, or perhaps you have a child who's sensitive, maybe there's death issues in the family, you just don't want to address those right now.

06:20

Or you want to address it in a more methodical way, you want to be prepared to have those kind of tough conversations with your children.

06:27

Yeah, that's great. And this is the website for those who want to go there. It's called screenitfirst .com.

06:34

And you have your reading list, so you have a positive vision here. Actually, I'm curious, I'm going to click on that.

06:39

These are all books that I'm assuming, so you've read all of these, Jessica? Yeah. Wow. So, I mean, it seems like it's a good idea for, instead of every parent going through every single book that their kids potentially could read, doing some of this curating helps us,

07:01

I think, sift it down to what the positive books are that our kids should be reading. So you have it, it looks like arranged according to learning level.

07:10

So you have young adult books here I'm coming into. I don't actually recognize most of these, which is, well,

07:17

I do recognize, like Anna Green Gables, I think everyone knows, and like, you know, Lord of the Rings and so forth. But Prince and the

07:23

Pauper, some of these are classic. But then, and then it looks like, so you can order these books from the website.

07:30

It looks like I get a pop -up, or how do you get a hold of them? No, we don't sell any books on our website.

07:40

You could click the Amazon link and get over to Amazon. But our goal is just to take snapshots of any sensitive content so you can check and see if that's okay for your child.

07:54

Because everybody, you know, we have a line in society of things that are just bad, just plain out, should not be in front of a child.

08:04

And a lot of people are fighting that fight. They're going to try to remove these books from schools, things like that.

08:12

But we know that families each have their own lines. And we want to help those families because maybe they don't, they don't want a book that's terrible.

08:24

And everybody knows it's terrible. But what about the things that you just don't want to expose your child to?

08:30

For example, like, we know that divorce is a thing in society, but maybe we don't want our children seeing divorced families.

08:45

That's a normalized thing. Yeah, normalizing divorced families. Or even glorifying it. I mean, not to interrupt, but a lot of times these books will actually glorify it.

08:53

It's like, oh, it's great. I get to go see mom and dad. And it's, you know, it is a reality. We're not saying to just, you know, ignore it like it doesn't exist.

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But to be more prepared to make sure these books aren't glorifying this type of, you know, we want to glorify a nuclear family because it's good.

09:09

It's right. It's healthy. We have a mental health crisis in this country. And I would contend that a lot of it does stem from the normalization of nefarious activities and nefarious lifestyles.

09:19

But for some families, it's a reality. And they would be okay with that.

09:26

And they want their child to accept that because it's a reality in their home. But maybe in somebody else's home, they don't want to normalize that.

09:35

And so the thing is, we want to demystify books so that each family gets to choose for themselves what they're going to bring into their home.

09:45

Yeah, you're putting that power back in the control of the parents, in this case.

09:52

And you have a tab here. I just clicked it on the website to start screening.

09:58

And then it brings up these books. Are these books that still—I want people to understand how they could also be involved in this process.

10:04

So are these books that need to be screened or are these books that have been screened? Need to.

10:10

These are books that we allow people to also that don't have the time to screen a book, but they're interested in a book.

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And so they've shown interest. They say, hey, this is a popular book. These are books that people are reading in libraries or they just want other people to help screen them.

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And so the idea is, since this is a community platform open to anybody to anonymously screen, share whatever they find, we also want to give people the opportunity to say, hey,

10:33

I'd like this book screened. So if you have somebody who's willing to add some snapshots, these are ones that people are interested in.

10:39

I think we have about 500 books on there right now that we're hoping other people would click in.

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And again, not screen it cover to cover. That's always helpful. But if you just happen to have read that book or any book and you're just like, oh, that seems like something

10:53

I'd like to share with other parents, literally like one snapshot in one book is enough because you're just you're you're shining a light.

11:00

Even one little bit of light on one bit of content is a huge help to some parents somewhere. Yeah, because there's a little tab here for those who are listening and can't see.

11:09

So you click on a book and it has an upload a snapshot. So I'm assuming so on your cell phone, you can just highlight an area and say, you know, this area talks about a heavy topic or this area is there's some immoral behavior or whatever it is.

11:22

And it just lets parents know, hey, this is in the book your kid might read. So is there so there's a place to go to find the books that have already been screened, right?

11:33

Would that be right here on the front page? Explore recently screened books. So, yeah, you could either go to the front page, which has the most recently screened books, or you could search for a book you're looking for.

11:49

Oh, very nice. OK, so if I wanted to go up here, let's say I'm going to type in the

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Fellowship of the Ring, which I'm assuming is here.

12:00

So Lord of the Rings trilogy, you click on it and then it has. So it's categorized in these.

12:07

What are all the categories you use? I see five of them here. Are there additional ones that aren't listed here?

12:13

Yeah, I couldn't say off the top of my head. But if you go to the hamburger now and you click on about all the categories are listed there.

12:23

Oh, I see. OK, so let's see. Oh, maybe that's not. Maybe I'm in the wrong spot here. Where did you say to go?

12:30

Oh, right where you're at and click on about us. About us. Oh, OK. Got it.

12:36

And then just scroll down a little bit. You'll see all the icons listed there.

12:41

Yeah, and a brief description of what they are just for what it's worth. You're bringing up the categories we did.

12:49

We went through a lot of refining process on this. And these are the categories that are most requested that most people needed.

12:56

We actually removed a couple categories at one point. One was doofus dad, because that's another thing that's been promoted in the culture for about 40 years.

13:03

Like dads are dumb and goofy. And I'm a little bit of a goofball myself, but it's like it just wasn't that prevalent.

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And so what we did was just create a catch all called miscellaneous. And so doofus dad and actually divorce was the other one, even though it is an important topic and until it reaches a certain threshold.

13:21

We don't want to overwhelm users with like every category because we could essentially end up with 100. And we said, well, let's let's take about 10 or 12, because that seems the most important.

13:30

Yeah, no, that's wise. So I'll just read them off to people who are listening and can't see this. But you have sexual content,

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LGBTQIA, alcohol, drugs, racism, lying, stealing, dark content, potty humor, nothing found.

13:45

So that's these are books, I guess, that there weren't any objectionable elements, potentially objectionable elements. Correct.

13:50

And and then other miscellaneous and then explicit content. So graphic stuff. So you could with so going back to Fellowship of the

13:59

Ring here, you have let's see, the highest category is dark content. So if I click on that immediately,

14:06

I am met with screenshots from pages in the book. Where there's scary things like trolls and orcs and that kind of thing.

14:15

So so yeah, that's helpful. So a parent doesn't need to go read the whole book. They can look at your website, find out just a few pages to understand what's in there from someone who's already gone through it.

14:28

Have you seen this be a successful or helpful tool? Have parents come to you and said, thank you so much. This is helping us.

14:34

We're using it. Oh, yeah, we get emails of people saying thank you or or you save me from having my child read this, things like that.

14:46

That's great. And so and I know you want to probably scale this up and make this something that's more parents are using.

14:54

Is there a way that parents can get involved? I mean, obviously, we already talked about they can screen a book and volunteer some of their time and maybe the camera on their cell phone.

15:04

Are there other things that they can do? Yeah, so there since this is a crowdsourced platform, we're relying on everybody else to participate.

15:15

So there are three ways mostly that people can participate. One is, like you said, they could screen a book themselves.

15:23

It would be helpful if you grab a book off our requested book list and read through it, screen the parts or you could donate to have somebody else screen a book.

15:37

We have about a handful of people that we pay to screen books and they they screen our most requested books.

15:46

But that is money that, you know, is coming out of our pocket. So if you donate to screen a book, that would be helpful or share, share the site, share the book that you see.

16:00

Yeah, to back up on that, John, a little bit, the the program she's talking about, we we tried it, we floated a kind of a trial balloon about a pilot program about about a year ago, and we called it our book bounty hunter program.

16:12

And we we gauged interest, got it, like she said, about I think it's about 10 people that we didn't want to overmanage too many people.

16:20

But we're self -funding this. This is fully coming out of our pockets. And so we basically pay a very small stipend to these people who have,

16:27

I mean, really cranked through, I think, close to 3000 books over the course of a year. It's a lot of reading.

16:34

And and they're not just I want to go a little deeper. It's not just the snapshots on the page. Some of it comes down to reading a little bit between the lines.

16:42

Our bounty hunter folks, including ourselves, also do a little bit of background research on the authors to to try to understand intent.

16:49

This gets into just, you know, if you're into theology, it's kind of the same thing, right? You have to understand the cultural intent, what was going on at the time.

16:57

And so the same thing with an author, understanding their background and if they might be promoting a specific agenda and you see it peppered in any in small, subtle ways that they're leading to something.

17:09

A lot of times that comes out in a later book. So it gets you hooked on a series. And then on book 9 .5,

17:14

all of a sudden we start seeing characters, LGBTQ characters or again, other nefarious lifestyles.

17:22

But they kind of set the tone early in subtle ways that most people wouldn't pick up on. Yeah, I was thinking about that in regards to artificial intelligence, because you could probably upload a

17:33

I don't know how you would do it on Amazon, but if you got ahold of a PDF somehow, and you could upload it to Grok or something and say, hey, find me explicit content, just to search it.

17:45

But some of these things are so contextual that I don't think AI is going to pick up on, maybe it'll find some things, but it's not going to find everything.

17:54

And I've noticed, especially in the work that I do, that so much of the needle is pushed so much of the time, many of the times that the needle is pushed in a bad direction.

18:07

It's with subtle shifts and framing. And it's not in your face.

18:14

And so that's where I think what you're doing and having humans actually go through these things is important.

18:21

And so is this and I this is a Christian podcast, obviously, in the sense of I'm a

18:27

Christian and it's my stuff. So I guess you could call it Christian. But I mean, you guys, homeschool family,

18:32

Christian family, this is for Christians, but this is a tool that everyone can use, right?

18:39

100 percent. I mean, we are we are Christians. We're Lutherans. We're very serious about our beliefs, our faith.

18:46

We do wear it on our sleeves. However, we understand that what we believe is probably different than what you believe,

18:51

John. We have some slight, subtle differences in our theology and just our faith and maybe our day to day lives.

18:57

And what's what's important to our family is not important to everybody else's. And so we're not trying to thrust our beliefs on anybody else.

19:04

We do want this to be, again, it's an it's an illumination platform. Highlight what what is important to you.

19:11

Don't try to predict what's important to me because I don't really care. Right. I want you to tell me what's important to you because there's somebody else just like John.

19:18

There's somebody else just like Jessica. But, you know, I mean, again, we cannot be the arbiters of everybody's truth.

19:24

Not that there's relative truth, to be clear. But, you know, we do need to if we share this knowledge, like,

19:30

OK, so it's not, you know, that there's a potty humor. It's not important to you. That's fine. Move on.

19:35

You know, like go to the next one. It's interesting to me. This hasn't been something that was picked up on years ago, like there that you guys are the first ones that I've even heard of thinking, hey, we could do something like this.

19:49

We could screen our books. I know with films, that's a big thing. You could go to like kids in mind dot com or there's plugged in and I don't even know all the websites, but there's a lot of them that will tell you what's in a film, but not a book.

20:06

And that is a curious thing to me. And I don't know if that is what inspired you to do this was just because no one else seems to be doing anything similar or I mean, did you have personal experiences that kind of put you in this direction and thought, wow, this is really an important need?

20:21

Yeah, I think that the difficulty with books is that it could take 10 hours or more to read a book, whereas a movie you watch for two hours, an hour and a half, maybe.

20:35

And so it's much harder to screen a book. But for me, I feel like in a lot of ways, it's more important because a child can put a movie on while you're in the house and you could walk in and out of it and see what they're watching.

20:50

But with a book, you don't see what's going on in their minds. You don't see what's going into them with the words on the page.

20:59

And so you really have to read the whole thing to know what's going on. But like I said, it's harder.

21:07

There's more of an investment. So we really need to work together with this this type of a medium.

21:16

I think it goes back to what you started with at the beginning, too, John, is a lot of people just assume and I'm one of these.

21:23

She kind of converted me into this this mindset. I was one of these people who just kind of thought that, well, books are good as long as a kid is reading any any reading is good reading.

21:31

And and we've we've, you know, TV and other mediums are evil.

21:37

Music is evil. Movies are evil. TV is evil. And sure, those are a little bit easier to see. But the in what we found over the last five or so years is that books have kind of been the they've flown on there under the radar for a long time.

21:53

And so this has been the medium that again, these other agendas have been able to slip in kind of easily.

22:00

And so I think that's a lot of it. But also my wife here, she was known in childhood as Wormaleddy.

22:06

Like this lady would get up and read books like that's all. And she's trained all of her kids. I mean, these kids have their noses in books all the time.

22:12

And so I think it's it's just kind of her passion. Like, I think this really is her calling in life. Her second calling other than being an awesome mom and and wife.

22:22

But she's just a bookie like she's a legit like this is this woman has so much knowledge in her head when it comes to books.

22:29

And so I wanted to make sure that she had a platform to share that on, too. So yeah, thank you for using that knowledge and wisdom to do this to help people.

22:37

I it's interesting to me that the I don't know if you've you probably have, but in your community, you know how they had like a drag queen story hour or anything like that.

22:49

I know. It's like everywhere, right? They've tried to do these kinds of things. And it's interesting to me.

22:56

It's not a movie, right? Obviously, kids are absorbing things through television and Internet mediums.

23:02

But the controversy was about library hour. It was literally reading books in libraries.

23:09

And if you go to a library, I don't know if it's this way in your community. I know you're in an Idaho. You're in Idaho. And maybe it's a little more conservative where you are.

23:17

But where I am in New York, you go to a library. The left owns those libraries.

23:22

And when I say the left, I'm not just talking about someone who's got some liberal, mildly liberal sentiments or something.

23:28

I'm talking about like they want to deconstruct gender. They're the BLM narrative, all of that.

23:34

And libraries are like one of the prime institutions for propagating that stuff.

23:40

It's not just the schools. It's not just entertainment mediums. It is your local library, which

23:46

I think for most Christians and most conservative people in general or just your normal, decent, average

23:53

American, they don't think of the library as a threat. But yet they're curating books.

23:58

They only have a limited space in there. And they are getting rid of books constantly. I don't remember who

24:03

I talked to. This was not long ago. Maybe you know more about this than I do and can comment on it. But that libraries are getting rid of really good books, even classics at an alarming rate and replacing them with trash.

24:18

And so you send your kid to the library thinking like, oh, it's better than the movie theater. Maybe not.

24:24

Maybe not. So I want to share my quick anecdote and then you can chime in.

24:31

So one of my big aha moments, I kind of started this, the tech side of it for her because she needed the platform.

24:38

And so we started building it out. And I was mostly on board. I support anything she wants to do. But my big aha moment was a few years back here in Coeur d 'Alene,

24:46

Coeur d 'Alene, Idaho, went to the library to go pick up books because she checks out roughly 100 books at a time to churn through them, screen them, separate them, and let kids read them.

24:55

And I just decided I would run a quick test. And I think that all of your listeners should try this, especially in June.

25:02

I guarantee you, you will see the same results I found. I went and just picked 20 random books, but only the ones that were on the end caps that were on display.

25:10

So what are the ones, like you say, what are they curating? Not just what's on the shelves, but what are they putting front and center?

25:16

And when I did this, it was not like March two or three years back. And I just picked up 20 random books.

25:23

And out of those 20 random books, a little over 25, between 25 % and 30 % had

25:28

LGBTQ agenda in them. And again, it was in March. It wasn't even the Pride Month promotional thing.

25:35

And it was just, it was shocking, right? So these are, like you say, it's not just the library is curating them, but the individuals who work at the library, they're promoting a certain agenda or whatever they,

25:45

I mean, an individual can put whatever they want out there and kind of put that front and center in front of all the children. So that was my big aha moment.

25:51

I don't know, what did you want to add to what he was asking? Oh, yeah. I had the experience of what you're talking about, about the older books.

26:00

So at our library, our library is great as far as interlibrary loans.

26:07

I can check out, I mean, I can check out hundreds of books. And if they don't have it, they go hunt it down in other book, other libraries.

26:17

And all of the libraries up in our area are connected where they work together.

26:24

So I decided I'm going to check out The Little Princess. I wanted to read that to my children.

26:30

In all of the libraries up here in our conservative red area, they did not have

26:38

The Little Princess by Frances Burnett. And I was thinking that,

26:45

I mean, that is a classic. And out of all those libraries, they don't have those, but they have like every new book out imaginable for kids.

26:56

And they're just getting rid of the classics, the old books, like you said.

27:01

Yeah, it's a problem. And I wonder if reading, taking something in through that particular medium is in a way more effective at indoctrinating someone just because with images, they do subversively come into your mind.

27:18

Sometimes you don't notice what's being communicated, which is a big threat. But with books, you are sitting there and you are contemplating.

27:25

And for a child who has not developed a firm view of the world, when they are, they're being shaped in their actual thinking, not just their emotions and their sentiments, but in how they rationally perceive the world, probably more so through a book.

27:41

Oh, yes. So yeah, I see this as a huge thing that is a problem.

27:47

I have a little girl who's, she's going to turn one next month, or actually this month now, it's June. So she's obviously little, but we already have these little bitty books that we give her to look through that have

28:00

Bible stories and things like that. And I'm already noticing things in some of them that aren't quite accurate or are not quite maybe helpful.

28:08

And I mean, kids enjoy those. Kids, they sit there and they will contemplate something in front of them, even if it's just images on a page, for a longer time than a flash on a screen.

28:22

It just embeds itself. So anyway, I don't know if you have any comments on that or thoughts on the medium, but I am concerned about that particular medium being in some ways more effective upon your thinking and maybe even your imagination, because you have to try to make in your mind what the author is saying.

28:43

Absolutely. You're creating a picture in your head. I mean, it's coming out of your own head, the picture you're creating, whereas movies, you're just seeing it, kind of passively watching it.

28:56

And so I feel like it's more effective with books. Well, I mean, studies show that, right? Like that your brain is essentially in a state of stasis when you're watching a movie.

29:05

You're almost just a little bit above sleeping. But when you're reading a book, like the synapses are going off like crazy.

29:10

Like you are very engaged. Your brain is active and it's cutting new lines. So I think that the medium is a huge impact.

29:18

If you don't mind, I don't know if you want to share your screen again. Yeah, sure. We can do something that would be within, like, not quite your daughter's age at one.

29:28

But what's that? I think it's called Have You Seen Gordon? Go ahead and just look up Have You Seen Gordon. This is one of the books that I show a lot of people that, and this is not necessarily you, but we get a lot of people that say, well, we understand there's really, really bad books, but that's mostly, you know, just young adult fiction.

29:47

So this book is like a spin off of the Where's Waldo, you know, classic thing of like, find the pictures.

29:54

And so if you click on, I don't know, any one of those, you just kind of scroll through them. So this is just a picture book. It's like, find the character on the page, whatever.

30:02

So as you go through this story, you know, you'll see little weird images of odd characters and just kind of scroll through them.

30:10

I think on the very last one, like, this one looks like it has a mastectomy, this character. Is this the one?

30:17

No, this just looks like a quasi pride parade. So this last one here. So this is kind of the epitome of the whole book, right?

30:25

So it's leading you to find something. And then on this last page, it says, find the couple that's holding hands or something like that, right?

30:33

And so of course we see a same sex couple. And so here's a child who's maybe what, five looking at this book, six, seven.

30:41

And like, you're not just, it's not just, it's not even subtle, but I will admit this, even though my wife is awesome and amazing, she missed this and this book the first time.

30:52

And, you know, she kind of thumbs through it like, okay, it's fine. Cause she didn't get that deep into it. And this was one of the things that inspired us to say, well, we need to read between the lines.

30:59

We need to look a little deeper. And it was our daughter, right? Yeah. Yeah. Our daughter found this in the book.

31:05

And she's like, mom, you missed one. She's our 16 year old daughter. And she says, is this okay? And so, you know, our kids have been really, honestly, like extremely helpful.

31:15

We have another, Murray Christmas. We actually have it right here. This was another one. It seems like a pretty innocent, totally like nothing book.

31:23

And if you look that one up too, and there, I can't even remember. The words are fine. It's about a dog and his family and all.

31:31

And I was just reading the words, not paying attention too much. And my son, he said, this is a, this is a man on man couple.

31:42

And it's, it's throughout the book, but you're following the dog.

31:48

And as a parent, I wasn't paying attention because I was just reading the story and looking at the dog.

31:56

And the child, of course, caught that this is a two man couple in this household.

32:06

So they're trying to make it pretty subtle where the parents don't exactly catch it.

32:13

But I mean, maybe that's the intention, but that's what's happening. It's the parents, they don't catch everything because they're not the one pouring over these picture books.

32:23

And really letting it soak in. But the child is catching it, especially like that.

32:31

Have you seen Gordon? The child is actually looking for the pictures. And then when they find it, they're happy that they found it.

32:39

But the book is telling them something. It's creating an association in their minds that would not have been created otherwise.

32:47

And yeah, kids just, they soak in everything in ways that as adults, we just don't, it maybe doesn't affect us as much.

32:58

But I mean, there's a pride mural down the street from me where I live. Or at least it includes some elements of like pride month on this mural.

33:08

And when I drive past it, it's become so routine. To me, it doesn't register really most of the time.

33:17

But to my child, we're getting into that age where I know it's gonna cause questions.

33:25

She's gonna notice things about it. And they just suck in their environment in ways that as an adult, perhaps we don't as much.

33:34

So I think it's important what you're doing. And I would encourage people out there to support the effort. If you don't have the time, maybe donate to screenitfirst .com.

33:44

And if you do have the time though, it's a great opportunity to be used in a positive way.

33:50

If anything, you can also tell the parents in your life who have children about this so that they can use it for their kids.

33:58

Even if you're past that time and you're not really raising kids or whatever, there are people who can use it.

34:06

So anything else you'd like to add or say to the audience that maybe they could glean from?

34:12

Yeah, I just wanna stress what we were going there. So many people just have this assumption that there's nothing wrong with under 10, whatever, pick an age.

34:22

And so that's why you're bringing up your daughter. You did say daughter, right? Sorry. Yes, yes. I just split my mind.

34:27

I got a six. I can't even keep them all straight. But it's in board books.

34:34

It's in like letter books. A is for whatever. It's in every book.

34:40

And it's not just the LGBTQ agenda. We're not just trying to attack this one segment, but it's the sexualization of children.

34:47

And it starts at a very early age. And it's in subtle ways. And so what happens as a parent, you're gonna end up with a 12 year old.

34:56

And you're like, well, what happened? I didn't raise them this way. Well, no, you didn't. You didn't intend to.

35:02

But these things slipped in. They came in under the radar because you made the assumption perhaps that all books are good.

35:08

And it's only the YA books that start getting bad. And so we really wanna draw awareness to like, and honestly, get more parents engaged in their child's education.

35:18

As a homeschooling family, like we're just used to this. But maybe public school families, I'd like them to be a little more aware.

35:24

And not just in the way of fighting in board meetings and library meetings. That's a good effort. But I'll also argue that that's downstream.

35:32

Once the books are on the shelf, fighting to get them removed, I'm not saying that's locking the barn if the horse is out, but it is kind of, right?

35:41

And so I think it needs to start a lot higher upstream in being aware and being engaged.

35:46

And that's kind of, I think the heart of what we're after. Anything else you wanna add? Yeah, the parents are forming the child.

35:54

And so this'll give them a chance to actually form their own children and be involved and aware of what's going on.

36:03

With their values. Yeah, instill the right values they want. So, and again, John, I really appreciate you having us on.

36:09

I mean, it was nice working with you and talking to you over the last, gosh, it's been like 18 months or so we met,

36:15

I think about a year and a half ago. Yeah, yeah. Of course, yeah. People who regularly listen will realize this was a sponsor.

36:22

You guys sponsored the podcast, which I really appreciate. And it's good to have you on to talk about this more deeply so people can really understand what you're doing.

36:31

But yeah, I would just, again, recommend people go to screenitfirst .com, support what Mac and Jessica, McCabe are doing here.

36:38

And really think about what you're putting into your kids' minds, whether that's books or television or whatever it is.

36:46

There's so much out there that wants to get your children at a very early stage. And they're not waiting for them to be in college.

36:54

I think it was, who was Bono? The rock star Bono the other day. I saw he was on Joe Rogan. And I don't listen to Joe Rogan, but it was a clip on X that had him saying, you know,

37:05

I raise my kids to do whatever they want. Like I don't force religion down their throat. I said to our kids, and they were all, none of them were baptized

37:16

Protestant or Catholic because my father was Catholic, my mother was. I just said, you want to be Christian, you want to be

37:21

Christian, but you decide. So, you know, I never got religion rammed down my throat. I'm certainly not going to put it down yours.

37:27

But you didn't raise your kids. Yeah, we didn't teach our kids. Yeah, exactly. You know, because my parents didn't force religion down my throat.

37:33

I'm not forcing religion down my children's throat. I let them make the decision when they're able to make it.

37:39

And the flaw of that is thinking that your children are just these blank slates who are going to come into this rational way of evaluating the world apart from all these other influences.

37:51

And that's not true. You are born into a context and there are other people with bad motives who would love to get a hold of your children and they're doing it.

37:59

Surprise, surprise. They're already doing it. So this is a good shield to put up to say, no, we're not going to let our kids look at A, B and C.

38:08

And also circumstantially, sometimes they're not ready for certain things. I've never verified it, but Jewish kids weren't allowed to read

38:16

Song of Solomon until they were a certain age, right? It's like, it's a good book, but it's not for you yet. So anyway, appreciate what you're doing.