Im kinda like Marg. Now my boys just run for the hills screaming when the topic of sex comes up...lol.
I've mentioned before on this site - I also took my kids shopping for condoms. Here they can be bought in the supermarkets, so we were cruising the aisles collecting toothpasge, breakfast cereal, and prophylactics. I wasn't overly loud, but the kids found it VERY off-putting when I told them that it's important to get the right ones, the ribbed ones aren't always as effective at prevention and frankly, it's a part of a woman's anatomy that won't feel the difference at that level. Also, the flavoured ones aern't that crash hot, especially the banana - it's very chemical.
After that, they were with me as we went through the checkout, loading it all into bags.
I think it bought another two years of celibacy in our kids...
Mind you, difficult child 1 had his stash of porn, supplied by a young friend of his (who nicked them from his brother). difficult child 1 was 17 when suspended by his deputy principal (for something unrelated, but they had badly over-reacted and began to make wild accusations about difficult child 1). We had gone back after the three day suspension for the "I hope you're going to behave now" talk, I had brought a letter with me (for the principal, not the deputy, marked personal which the deputy opened in front of me - it was a complaint about the deputy).
So the deputy was determined to switch my anger around so instead of me being angry with her, I would be angry with difficult child 1. She began producing stuff they'd taken from his bag when he'd been searched three days earlier. In his bag had been "some porn". The deputy shoved it onder my nose and said, "This is disgusting!"
I took the very crumpled, crushed pages. I opened them out (carefully - they were crumbling) and noted aloud that tthere had been a great deal of air-brushing of the pictures, the only things you could see were carefully figleafed naked females posing. No full-frontal, no male nudity, all that was visible were average-sized breasts. Now in Australia we have magazines of this calibre available for sale to minors. Heck, even our nespapers sometimes have bare-breasted women on thier pages. Plus I noted that the pages were very crumpled. I said, "These were right at the bottom of his bag, weren't they?"
The deputy agreed this was the case.
I said, "In fact, these pages were there composting, weren't they? He clearly hadn't taken them out to look at them, probably not in years. They could have been there for years." (I later found out this was the case.)
So I went on. "Why are you trying to make me angry with my son for merely expressing his heterosexuality like a normal Aussie male? How is it at all relevant? How many other bags did you search without warning? I bet if you searched the bags and the lockers of the boys in difficult child 1's grade, as well as a few grades below, you will find this sort of stuff and a lot more. And you will also have a lot of very angry parents asking WHY you did this. In difficult child 1's case, you had concerns because of his behaviour - we agree, he was being an idiot. But it had nothing to do with any soft-porn crumpled pages composting in the bottom of his bag. Now, let's get back to the topic."
Do you remember the old jokes about two generations ago, how the only "dirty pictures" boys could get their hands on, was the anthropology stuff in "National Geographic"?
There are some levels of "stuff" for want of a better word, which I do not like and will not have in the house. But not merely because of what it depicts, but because it depicts it in a negative, degrading way. I still will not destroy it, however. Instead, I drag it out to the light of day and DISCUSS it with the kid responsible (and anybody else who happens to wander past). This is far more embarrassing for the kid and also removes the natural outrage of "you trashed my stuff!"
Far better to make the kid trash it himself.
Marg
