How long ago were you 14? There’s stuff your snooping hasn’t found yet that will alarm you much more.
Good luck with that.
If you’re really concerned, you should make sure that the computer is in a public location in the house. Fourteen seems a little young to be online without any supervision at all.
I was just going to post the same question. The two of them have only talked to him and seen a picture? No face to face meeting?
This, btw, is classic hebophile behaviour. If he’s asking her about sexual acts, that should be setting off your spidey sense even more. Until you meet the boy in person, you cannot know for sure he isn’t a 40 something male.
And yes, teens are weird, but no gentleman of any age asks a girl if she flicks her bean before they’ve even met in person. Actually, just my opinion, no gentleman of any age asks a 14 year old girl that question under any circumstances.
Wedging?
scribbles down “flicks her bean” next to “wedging”
I’m really just here to pick up new slang, but I think Qadgop gave good advice.
…no camping, no bunny jumping, no griefing, no illicit cheat codes or trainers…
hahahaha
I didn’t know it either.
??
Can someone really have a boyfriend that they only interact with online?
I’ll echo the concerns about the legitimacy of the 15 year old status of the alleged boyfriend.
No giving out real information to people you do not know in real life - first name ok, no last name, no address, no phone number. If you hit it off with someone online and want to meet them, set something up, with Mom or Dad, in a public place.
(way back when email and usenet were obscure, I was in college far away. I needed a ride home and got a number and name off the bulletin board in the student union - a physical one with posters with the little tags you can tear off now used for lost cats - for someone who lived near my parents. I called him. And made him meet me at the student union without him known anything other than my first name. He understood, brought along another woman who had been riding with him the previous year, and we carpooled for the rest of the year. This is not new advice, its just been updated for the way people meet)
Anyway, cats out of the bag on this one. If they are only online friends, I really wouldn’t worry at all about internet or phone sex. If they do meet in real life, its time to have the birds and bees conversation and the responsible sex conversation, take her to the doctor for the birth control conversation and to drive home the STD conversation.
I really like the book “Its Perfectly Normal” for youngish teens (and tweens).
Masturbating and talking about masturbating can’t get you pregnant, and can’t make you get a sexually transmitted disease. There are other, related, activities that can, of course. If she’s got a boyfriend who she’s thinking of discussing masturbation with, you should have “the talk” with her, if you haven’t already. You’re running out of time.
It also wouldn’t hurt to have a talk with her about what to do if someone says something to her that makes her uncomfortable (online or in real life). You want her to be willing to come to you if this guy does turn out to be a 40-year-old ephebophile. Do you think she’s likely to do that if the consequence of telling you what happened is that she’ll lose her internet privileges? I wouldn’t have talked to my mother about something like this at that age, because she would probably have freaked out and punished me for it. Fortunately, it never came up, for us. Don’t make her feel like she’ll be punished if she talks to you about something like that, or she’ll get around that by not talking to you about those kind of things.
Wow, you would have hated the 15 year old version of me. I cybersexed everyone I could get away with, and a few I didn’t get away with. My parents set a parental controls password on our windows 95 machine after seeing my browsing history. I paid a nerd 15 bucks to show me how to hack it and change the password to “fuckyou”.
Every parent gets freaked out as their child develops sexually. It’s normal. I turned out to be a responsible father in a nuclear family with a mortgage and a real job. One of the people I cybersexed I actually ended up falling in love with, spending ridiculous amounts of time and energy crossing the American Southwest to see whenever I could, marrying, and having a son with. We’ve been a happy and successful family for 8 years, despite how much of a jackass I was as a teenager.
You’re doing the right thing by setting boundaries and trying to keep her safe from predators, but you should know that your daughter (and the kid she’s talking to) sound like they’re pretty much where they’re supposed to be developmentally. It sounds like you’re doing something right.
“Should you be embarrassed to tell your boyfriend you masturbate?” is a curiously prolix question to be asking Google. Most searches are more like “britney spears nude” or “tot mom nude” or “estelle getty nude,” or whatever you people have in your history.
Does she have access to any webcams? Tablets with build-in cameras? If she does, tell her any cam viewing/broadcasting must be done with you around. It’s one thing to talk about intimate details. It’s another to broadcast video of those details.
Plus, you have no idea if he really is 15-years-old. How long would it take some pervert to find a picture of a 15-year-old on the web and send it to your daughter saying it’s him.
As someone who was 14 12 years ago, this remark is full of utter shit. In the online gaming community, at least. I know more about my wow guildmate’s sexual proclivities than I know about their real lives.
They are already having cybersex. We’re not Kansas or the '50s anymore, Charlie Brown.
Yes, if that’s how thy choose to define the relationship.
The OP says she’s spoken to the guy, I assumed that meant in such a way as to know he was in fact 15. If not, it’s a definite concern.
Agreed. If she has a computer in her room or a cell phone, then this sort of stuff is inevitable.
I don’t blame you for wanting to keep tabs on her google searches. I will probably end up doing the same thing to my kids someday, honestly.
However, I definitely WOULD NOT say anything to her about finding the masturbation question. That can only backfire.
Instead, I think you should have a general talk with her about the “birds and bees” stuff, how to say no to a boy if he is putting pressure on her to do something she is uncomfortable with, and how to get birth control in the future. Don’t let on that it is specifically because of the google search. It’s stuff you two need to talk about by this age anyway.
There are much worse things she could be doing than talking about masturbation or having cybersex. Cybersex doesn’t result in pregnancy or STDs.
My relationship with my mother got so much better when she realized that there were far worse things that I could have been doing and didn’t do. We got along poorly from when I was 13 to my second year of college. I felt like I was a disappointment to her. Things got so much better when she acknowledged that, while I wasn’t perfect, I could have been worse. I wish that had happened earlier.