gcvmom
Here we go again!
Yesterday afternoon the family went to the open house at the day camp where I had difficult child 2 and easy child/difficult child 3.
difficult child 1 participated for a little while going down the zip line to the mud pit, down the water slide a time or two. Then he said he was cold and tired and wanted to just hang out in the car. He wanted to use my iPhone to listen to some music while he waited for us. I said sure.
I haven't used my phone all day, and in fact I had it charging this morning because difficult child 1 ran the battery down completely using the iPod feature.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the Safari browser to check the board here and my eyes are met with a sex website that is targeted at teens! It has several graphic images of teens posing or doing sex acts. And there are four other pages open on the browser that are also sex-related.
So as I'm trying not to overreact I'm marching to difficult child 1's room to have a talk about this.
I think it went o.k. I said that being curious is normal, and that I'd be happy to buy him whatever age-appropriate books he wants to help him understand more about the topic. But that surfing on the internet is NOT appropriate. That looking at images of people like that reduces them to objects, like a piece of meat. How would he feel if that was his sister there? Or his cousin? Or what if it were me? I think that idea shocked him a bit -- I could sense from his reaction that he'd never thought of it that way and it wasn't pleasant to consider. He said it would make him feel pretty bad if he saw someone he knew. I reminded him that those girls were somebody's daughter, somebody's sister. Sex is a very private thing between two adult people who love eachother, and not something to gawk at online. Didn't even address the legality of underage sex or underage images. I need to have that conversation as well.
Needless to say, he won't have access to my iPhone any more. (The computer is already restricted through parental controls.)
Since he's my oldest, I guess this is where I cut my teeth for the next two! Sheesh, it was SO much easier when they were babies!
difficult child 1 participated for a little while going down the zip line to the mud pit, down the water slide a time or two. Then he said he was cold and tired and wanted to just hang out in the car. He wanted to use my iPhone to listen to some music while he waited for us. I said sure.
I haven't used my phone all day, and in fact I had it charging this morning because difficult child 1 ran the battery down completely using the iPod feature.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the Safari browser to check the board here and my eyes are met with a sex website that is targeted at teens! It has several graphic images of teens posing or doing sex acts. And there are four other pages open on the browser that are also sex-related.
So as I'm trying not to overreact I'm marching to difficult child 1's room to have a talk about this.
I think it went o.k. I said that being curious is normal, and that I'd be happy to buy him whatever age-appropriate books he wants to help him understand more about the topic. But that surfing on the internet is NOT appropriate. That looking at images of people like that reduces them to objects, like a piece of meat. How would he feel if that was his sister there? Or his cousin? Or what if it were me? I think that idea shocked him a bit -- I could sense from his reaction that he'd never thought of it that way and it wasn't pleasant to consider. He said it would make him feel pretty bad if he saw someone he knew. I reminded him that those girls were somebody's daughter, somebody's sister. Sex is a very private thing between two adult people who love eachother, and not something to gawk at online. Didn't even address the legality of underage sex or underage images. I need to have that conversation as well.
Needless to say, he won't have access to my iPhone any more. (The computer is already restricted through parental controls.)
Since he's my oldest, I guess this is where I cut my teeth for the next two! Sheesh, it was SO much easier when they were babies!