Woman shares her mom's 'genius' parenting hack to foster imagination and preserve kids' innocence

Parents on TikTok never shy away from sharing a range of new parenting styles and hacks that might help fellow parents looking for solutions to deal with their kids. One creator named Caroline Lefebvre—who goes by @carolinefev on the platform—made an interesting video discussing a topic that is hardly addressed. She shared some of the rules at her house set by her mom when she was growing up and wondered if those rules could still be implemented in households today.

In her video, Lefebvre opened up about her tween years when she wanted to watch a movie or a TV show with some adult themes. Her mom used to prohibit her from watching it, but with an interesting twist: Lefebvre was allowed to read about the visual material if it was available in a written format. She isn't sure if children would still follow these rules if she sets them out and sought some opinions from the TikTok community.

"When we were like 11, 12, 13, we started to really push the buttons on what we wanted to be able to see, like consume on film or TV. My mom was very strict about film ratings when I was a tween. She really put the PG in PG-13. And certainly, no R, forget about it. But her one rule was, you can't watch anything that's for adults, but you can read whatever you want," she began. Lefebvre recalled how her mom would provide her an alternative to watching a popular movie by bringing her the source material or the book instead of letting her watch the adult-rated film.

"You see a book in the house? It's a novel for adults, maybe even a romance novel. By all means, take a crack at it. This world is your oyster," Lefebvre continued. "When you're being shown adult content in a film, especially sexual content, there could be violence, whatever it is, you have no choice when you're that age on how it's being shown to you." She further explains that reading will bring a teen or tween's imagination into play much more than watching something on TV or in theaters.

"And you're being shown things that you have never been able to compute before and potentially before you're ready to see it. So if you're watching a sexual scene, like you're now seeing people making love and you're seeing body parts that you've never seen before, but in this book where it's being described like it's almost like a dream. It's kind of hazy... like, you understand the concept of it," she added. Lefebvre admitted that she never felt the need to go behind her mom's back and defy her rules.

"And I never felt the need to go behind her back. I rarely betrayed her in that way because I was kind of given access to be able to take a crack at whatever reading material I wanted," she further added. "Like, let your kid's imagination do what it is capable of doing at the age that they're at as opposed to having them see something that they have never yet imagined before." Fellow TikTok users loved the idea shared by Lefebvre.

Some moms in the community recalled how they faced similar situations with their kids when they got exposed to adult-themed visual materials at a young age. @bailiwick_ wrote: "I always found my reading was limited by my desire and ability to process it versus someone else who may be more mature or more than I wanted to focus." @ineffablewibblywobbly recalled: "My parents let me watch 'A Clockwork Orange' because I enjoyed the book at like 15. I paused it, came back and asked if they were sure."

@bethy8s noted: "Reading is like walking while watching a movie is like being strapped into a roller coaster. You can stop walking and take breaks, or even stop and go home. But on a roller coaster, you are at the mercy of whatever is being shown to you. You can close your eyes, but you can’t actually stop it."