A thousand screens are competing for your kid’s heart, and many parents are afraid they can’t compete. Robby Baehr, CEO of Movieguide®, the family guide to movies and entertainment, says they can. His new book, The Discerning Family, will be available on Amazon beginning Oct. 6, 2026.
Written from experience growing up inside the entertainment industry and in the screening rooms where the attention machine was built, The Discerning Family pairs an insider’s eye with Scripture and what studies keep finding: the strongest protection a child can have is not a filter. It’s a discerning heart. And training hearts is what ordinary, faithful families do best.
“Parents tell me all the time that they feel outmatched,” Baehr said. “They’re up against companies that spend enormous sums studying how to hold their children’s attention. I’ve been in the rooms where entertainment gets made and marketed, and I can tell you that no filter or parental control can do what a mom or dad can do. A filter can block a screen for an afternoon. A discerning heart goes with your child everywhere, for the rest of their life.”
Rather than handing parents another list of rules, Baehr offers a framework families can practice together: building a home culture of conversation instead of interrogation, watching alongside their children and viewing entertainment through a reflective Christian lens.
“Media discernment isn’t about saying no to everything,” Baehr said. “It’s about teaching our kids to ask what a story is really saying, who it wants them to become, and whether that lines up with what God says is true, good and beautiful. When children learn to ask those questions for themselves, they don’t just avoid harm. They can enjoy and benefit from the best of what entertainment offers.”
The book closes with two practical tools. The first appendix organizes three questions every parent should ask children at different ages while co-viewing or after viewing media. The second provides a family media contract households can adopt together.
Dr. Linda Labbo, Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia and an educational consultant on projects with Disney Jr., Disney Nature, Hasbro and Makematic: Untold History, praised the book’s research-grounded approach.
“Robby Baehr’s book, The Discerning Family, hits at the heart of key issues by embedding research that targets how media not only shapes how children think and how they feel about themselves – for better or worse (think social comparing or cyberbullying), but even who they become,” Labbo said. “His easy-to-read style throws an urgent lifeline to parents for building a home culture rhythm of inviting conversation, not interrogation, and viewing entertainment with a reflective Christian lens.”
Baehr hopes the book replaces fear with confidence. “My prayer is that parents close this book feeling equipped instead of overwhelmed,” he said. “I want families talking about what they watch at the dinner table, in the car and on the couch. If, years from now, there are kids who can look at a screen and think for themselves, and think biblically, this book will have done its job.”
The Discerning Family will be available on Amazon beginning Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. Baehr is available for interviews and speaks across the country to parents navigating faith and media.
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