All of the NBC Dateline coverage of sexual predators using the internet and chat rooms to contact children and adolescents has made parents much more aware of the dangers of the internet. What parents may not realize is that many gaming consoles allow children to access the internet. Even if parents are aware that children can access the internet through gaming consoles, savvy children can bypass parental controls.

Police officers are now going undercover to to catch predators playing interactive games and they are making arrests. For example, a man in Utah was arrested after he enticed a 12-year-old boy into having sex through an online game. A similar situation occurred in Michigan and involved a 12-year-old girl.

Xbox, Playstation, and Wii all allow children to access the internet directly, but all of the have ways for parents to turn off the access to the internet or to track the content. We can’t cut off all the contact our children have with others, but we need to monitor internet contact as vigilantly as we monitor personal contact.

As a parent, it is important to recognize that any way children can communicate with others becomes a way that sexual predators can target your children. Technology invites sexual predators into the lives of our children. We have to be sure that we are keeping the door closed to cyberspace solicitations aimed at our children.

A recent movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman tells the story of two men who have been diagnosed with cancer and been given a year or less to live. They create a list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”

For the premise of the movie to work, the cancer patients have to have a doctor who is willing to be honest and tell his patients that they have a terminal illness and a limited time to live. Interestingly, research shows that most cancer doctors avoid telling their patients that the end is near. Only one third of doctors discussed end-of-life care with their patients, while two-thirds avoided the discussion.

The patients who knew they were nearing the end of their lives spent less time in the hospital during their final days and their loved ones were more at peace after they died.

Doctors seem to mistakenly believe that talking about death will make you die quicker. Yet patients crave these conversations because they want to know what they are up against. Without honest conversations about the end-of-life, patients feel abandoned because they have to face death alone because no one will discuss it.

Based on this research, it is apparent that talking about death has benefits for patients with cancer. There may be benefits for the rest of us as well. None of us know how long we are going to live. We all of the gift of only today. If we all acknowledged today is the only day we know we have, how would it change our day . . . our hours . . . our minutes?

We might all need to pay a little more attention to our “bucket list”.

I recently read articles about a father in Houston, Dennis Ray Driver, who fell asleep with his 8-month-old son lying on his chest. When the Driver woke up, his son wasn’t breathing. Before Driver fell asleep, he had been chopping up cocaine. His son apparently sucked Driver’s thumb and overdosed on the cocaine. Even a trace amount of cocaine can can be lethal for infants. Driver’s son died the next day.

The rest of the story is that Driver had six previous convictions related to cocaine and was free on bail on a cocaine possession charge. Driver never intentionally hurt his son, but he couldn’t create a safe environment for himself much less take care of his son. Driver maintained that he was innocent throughout the trial for his son’s death, but was sentenced to life in prison.

In my counseling practice, I work with children who have been removed from their parents’ care because their parents cannot keep them safe and meet their needs. Frequently, I have to describe for children the characteristics of a safe family because they have not ever lived in a family that is safe. In a safe family, the adults protect the children and meet their needs. In a safe family, no one hits, says ugly things, or engages in sexual activities with children. In a safe family, the grownups love and nurture their children and recognize that their children are fragile in many ways.

Many of us have grown up in safe families and take it for granted that children today are growing up in similar safe environments. Regrettably, many children live in homes with parents like Dennis Driver–parents who need help managing their own lives before they can provide a safe home for children.

I pray that God will provide safety for those children who are fragile and living in dangerous situations and that he will open my eyes to see the needs around me and help me find ways to make the world a safer place for children.