What have you done successfully to shield your family from unwanted influences?

This is hard!!! There are so many people and things trying to influence me and my family every day!! It is so hard to escape it!!

There are some especially bad things we've tried hard to keep away from the family. None of our attempts are guaranteed to succeed, but I think that everything we do helps. Here are a few things we've done

INTERNET ACCESS
The Internet is a great blessing in our lives. It brings us knowledge and let's us do things faster than anybody ever imagined. However, it has made the worst filth and poison equally available to us. To help protect our family from pornography and other internet poison, we have done several things
1. We have a firewall which filters out web sites that contain various bad words before they even come to the computer.
2. We have filtering software on each computer to block out web sites which are of unwanted natures, or which contain key bad words or subjects.
3. We only have two computers in the house, and they are both in public locations.
4. We have removed web access from any of our children's internet-capable personal devices such as iPods, hand-held game devices, etc.
5. We talk to our children about things they should avoid when they are at friends' houses, and we ask them about whether their friends have computers in their bedrooms, etc.

TELEVISION/CABLE
We finally got rid of all of our cable channels except for the very VERY basic few network stations. We initially did this to save money, but discovered that it removed a huge negative from our house. Our older children had become increasingly interested in shows whose quality wasn't "questionable"...it was just plain bad!! We have many "dad-approved" TV shows recorded for the kids to watch. We borrow MANY movies from the library...although those are mostly old. We rent new movies that we think might be good no R-rated though, and then we purchase the very best movies. Getting rid of the cable channels was the smartest thing I've ever done for the peace in our home!!...and I don't mind that it saves me $100 per month!!

CELL PHONES
These are tricky things! We have two kids with cell phones. The older child has internet access on her phone, but we have told her not to use it to manage costs, and we watch the bill each month to ensure that she's complying. So far, so good. Our kids send thousands of text messages each month. It's amazing to watch them go. We have chosen not to attempt to monitor their messages. We tried at first, but decided that it was impossible to be thorough about it. We have had to take phones away about a zillion times in the past few years for various reasons. On the whole though, our children have respected them very well, and they are a blessing in our lives because we can reach our children when we need them.

MUSIC
I feel VERY strongly about the power of music to influence. I grew up in the 70's and 80's, and loved the music of that era. Now that I'm older, I can see much more clearly that so much of that music was negative in the core message. So much of it was focused on sex, drugs, and rock and roll! Somehow, our generation was actually proud of that fact. I have music nearly constantly playing at home. When it's homework time, the music is classical and baroque...not necessarily because it's anybody's favorite, but because it is proven to be the best to help the mind focus. Although, I am loving the fact that my younger three children have grown up with this practice and now have many of these era songs memorized. They settle right down when the music comes on, and it really does help them focus. At other times, I'll have other contemporary positive-influence music on. There is so much more high-quality contemporary gospel music out now than when I was growing up!! I do my best to influence my two older children in their music choice. Both of them choose to listen to music which I'd rather they not, but we have an agreement that they won't make ME listen to it...which means that they won't play it loud enough in their rooms that I have to suffer through it elsewhere in the house. I'll tell you what though...wow! Some of it is so deeply negative. It's deeper than just being a style of music that I don't like. So much of it is just plain bad...evil. I can't force my older kids to stop listening to this type of music, but I do all I can to show them a better option when they are at home.

VIDEO GAMES
We still struggle with this. Between computer games, console game units, handheld game devices, smart phones, and iPods, our children have the opportunity to spend countless hours playing games. We try to limit their time and keep them focused more on intellectually challenging games and keep them away from violent or mind-wasting games, but we haven't been totally successful, especially with our boys.