Sexting and advice on what parents can do about it

Watch Video: Sexting and advice on what parents can do about it by Wendy Walsh, PhD, ...
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Sexting and advice on what parents can do about it

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Parents worry about sexting, and I think they should. Sometimes sexting start as early as middle school, and that means sending text with very salacious material or worse, sending a nude picture. The first thing parents need to do is educate their child about the laws. If you're under 18, you cannot digitally send a nude picture of anybody under the age of 18. That means you're distributing child pornography and you can serve hard jail time. It's very serious. These are big laws that are kept very strong because they don't want adults to use any lax areas of the law to get into child porn business. So that's the important thing, educate them about the law. Secondly, talk to them about their texting relationships. So many adolescents, as their learning period appear, communication, are afraid to talk. They're afraid to talk about their feelings so they end up texting instead of talking. If you tell your child that you'd like to see them build healthy relationships to a friend of both genders, then you want to encourage them to text less. And of course you can also control the hours they're using the phone, maybe not too much with teenagers but certainly with middle schoolers. That phone should be fully off by 8:30 at night. Okay, this is no to anything that goes on, late at night is not good on a phone, okay? Especially for a kid. So you want to control the use of the technology. You want to educate them about the laws, and you want to try to talk to them about learning to have emotional relationships that involve real language and less texting.

Watch Video: Sexting and advice on what parents can do about it by Wendy Walsh, PhD, ...

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Wendy Walsh, PhD

Relationship & Parenting Expert

Dr. Wendy Walsh was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work as co-host on The Dr. Phil spinoff, The Doctors TV show. She also hosts Investigation Discovery Network’s “Happily NEVER After,” as well as being part of Dr. Drew’s Behavior Bureau on HLN Network. On CNN and 9 Network, Australia, she breaks down the psychology of sex, love, gender roles, divorce, parenting and other human behaviors. Dr. Wendy is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at California State University, Channel Islands. She holds a B.A. in Journalism, a Masters degree in Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and is the author of three books and numerous publications, including The 30-Day Love Detox. She appears regularly on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, The Steve Harvey Show, The O’Reilly Factor, Inside Edition, The Katie Couric Show, Jane Velez-Mitchell, and The View.

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