Elder Dositheos warns parents: examine what your children watch before it is too late

Elder Dositheos, abbot of the Holy Monastery of Agia Skepi (Holy Protection) near Serres in Greece, addresses parents about the influences shaping their children's minds and hearts. He says parents are losing their children and may react too late. He urges them to look carefully at the programs their children watch, to examine their messages one by one, and to stop accepting things simply because modern society treats them as normal.

He states that all current programs are of the devil and challenges viewers to find in them any connection to God, faith, homeland, or family. He speaks from experience gained in the forest, not from theory. His advice is blunt: read the programs and throw them in the dirt, because once children are harmed it will be too late to act.

The accompanying text places this warning in the wider context of Orthodox parenting. Children today are surrounded by social media, entertainment, television, and the internet, which shape their sense of right and wrong before they can recognize what is harmful. Parents may provide food, education, and comfort while neglecting spiritual upbringing.

The task of Orthodox parents is to help children become faithful followers of Jesus Christ: teaching them to pray, bringing them to the Divine Liturgy, speaking openly about sin and repentance, and showing them the difference between what is popular and what is good. Children learn from what they see, so parents must themselves pray, forgive, and repent.

Protecting children does not mean raising them in fear of the world but preparing them to face it with wisdom, courage, and a heart rooted in Christ. The text closes with Proverbs 22:6: 'Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.'