So, it turns out my nine year old has been using his computer to look at some rather age inappropriate material. My ex-wife has removed the computer to her study, and this weekend I have to have a conversation with him about it. Trouble is I have no idea what to say. Anyone been in a similar position? I really don’t want him growing up thinking porn or sex is wrong or anything to be ashamed of…
Also, I guess it is time for some filtering software, much as I hate the concept. I went to NetNanny’s web site and they look like they are, or have ties to, obnoxiously fundamentalist organizations. Any advice here?
My son is also 9. When he was about 6, I found where he had drawn a couple of naked women. We talked. I told him it is normal to want to look at boobies. I also explained that he was really too young to know why he liked looking at boobies, and that he shouldn’t try to look at them online. I explained that while I didn’t mind him drawing boobies at home, he was not to show them to his friends or do them at school because it is inappropriate. We have recently told him where my husband keeps his Playboys (since they are not the hardcore nasty stuff, I don’t care if he looks at them) and told him to be considerate and put them back if/when he looks at them. Since it’s not taboo, he doesn’t care anymore.
ETA – my way is mine and might not work for you or your family, depending on your religious/political/sexual/whateveral views. We take a very liberal stance on sex at our house. We don’t condone it prior to college graduation, but we don’t criminalize it, either.
That was kind of the approach I was hoping to take. I’m a very liberal person in general, and want him to have an open attitude towards sex. It does seem the sites in question were certainly harder core than the Playboy type stuff.
Well, it works for us. My son knows that if he wants to look at the Playboys, where they are. We talk about boobies (when I see a nice pair, I tend to point them out to my husband as well) and such. We have told him that masturbation is normal, yadda yadda, but private – bathroom door shut (and preferably locked) – and we neither want nor need to know about it unless he has somehow hurt himself doing it.
While we took the same approach with my daughter (who is 16 now), uhm, sometimes she forgets to put the Playboys back (yes, she swings both ways) and that’s a bit uncomfortable when I have to say “hey, could you y’know, put those magazines back?”
Is his computer in his room? Without any sort of monitoring? If so, put it in the family room or your office. I’m a fan of privacy and all that, but the kid is nine. If he’s checking out hardcore stuff right now, what’s going to keep him occupied for the rest of his life (and how will it warp his expectations should he be having sex in a decade or so)?
And while porn is nothing to be ashamed of, there’s nothing like a little bit of embarrassment to keep kids in line (and, hey, to keep it exciting).
Well, the computer was outside his bedroom, which is on the top floor and he is the only one there. It’s my ex-wife’s house. It’s now in her study, and he can only use it when she supervises now.
I kind of agree with the “save some stuff for when you are older, son.” He claims he was bullied into it by kids at school, so I need to talk to him about that side of it. What a fun weekend this is shaping up to be!
Looking at porn online can have effects beyond any psychological effects it might have.
Do a scan (or strongly encourage your ex-wife to do so) of his computer and other computers on your ex-wife’s home network for viruses and other malware. Spybot and Ad-Aware are good tools for this. Something like Zone Alarm might also be helpful, as it will tell you when a program is trying to access the internet. Check his browser for any unusual behavior (like a lot of popup ads). Be sure your son knows to come and tell you or his mother right away if his computer is acting strange.
In addition to the general discussion of porn and sex, have a discussion about online safety with him. Make sure he knows stuff like that he shouldn’t always click Yes to a dialog box that comes up when he’s surfing. Be sure he knows that some porn sites will try to install software on the computer that he may not want.
When a friend found his son surfing porn (I don’t remember the age), the big conversation he felt he had to have was “don’t believe this happens in real life”. They too didn’t want to put him off sex or porn, just be sure he had a clue.
The kid had found some pretty extreme material. Dad discussed the difference between fantasy and reality, and made sure that Son understood that porn is fantasy and women don’t want to be treated as things, so don’t expect that kind of experience in the real world. (Yes, I know that some people do like to be treated that way, but that’s something the kid can find out for himself, much much later.)
They also moved the computer and started monitoring it more closely, both personally and through tracking software. I don’t think they actually blocked sites, just let the kid know that they were watching where he went. I suspect the embarrassment of thinking about your parents finding your freaky wank material was sufficient to curb his wandering.
I think this should be a really important part of the conversation. The thing that worries me about young children getting exposed to this at an early age is that they can fail to develop reality filters about it. For example, if a kid is exposed to tv and commercials, then a good parent will have discussions about the reality/lack of reality in the programs, the persuasive language and images of the commercials, and how to think about them critically. Same should happen in the porn conversation: That these images take one tiny part of the human sexual / relationship experience and treat it as the be-all, end-all; that women are not just there for you to get your ya-yas off, they are real people deserving of respect; that these images don’t reflect what most people look like because of selection criteria, cosmetic surgery & procedures, and Photoshop. I’d also throw in that some things are for grown-ups, and a family can have an open attitude about sex without giving the green light to pre-teens cruising porn.
I dunno about the porn aspect, but I encourage you not to ignore the bullying aspect. Older/ bigger kids coercing younger kids to do something related to sex is opening the door to sexual abuse. It’s not a big step from “click on this” to “touch this” or “show me this.” I’d be prepared to do what it takes to keep those kids away from your son. I don’t know how you could make a 9 year old understand the insidious manipulation that some people just seem to do instinctively. Maybe making sure he understands that kids like that are NOT his friends, and that pressuring people to do stuff related to sex is seriously wrong.
Good point. Make sure he knows that he can and should tell you, his mom, or another trusted adult (such as a teacher) right away if someone is pressuring him to do something related to sex. Make sure he knows that there is nothing that anyone could do to him or that he could be pressured into doing that would make you or his mom not love him any more if you found out. That’s a lie that sexual abusers sometimes use to keep their victims from telling their parents what’s going on.
I haven’t had a chance to talk with him about it yet - I have just come back from an overseas business trip, and I want to do it face to face not over the phone. So it is this weekend. My ex thinks he is making up the bullying part, so I have to see what I feel the truth there is. Fortunately, up to now, he has always been a terrible liar, so we’ll see.
I agree that you should deal with the bullying issue, even though as a parent, I would be inclined to wonder if that were just something he said to take the shame off himself. “I didn’t do it, Little Johnny dared me to!” I’d talk to him about that part as if it were a case of bullying, but also make sure he knows that what he did isn’t shameful, just inappropriate. I also agree about covering online safety/computer safety with him.
You might not have to go with the filtering software. I don’t have kids, but I’d try just talking to him about it and putting the computer in a less private place, if this is the first time he’s done anything like this. That might be enough.
If you go the filtering software route, realize that no filtering software is perfect. Porn sites are always trying to come up with new ways to get around filtering software. Also, filtering software can filter out things that you don’t find objectionable. Maybe you don’t mind if your kid goes to a Wikipedia article on (say) homosexuality, but the people writing the filtering software assumed that parents would want their kids protected from that. Or there’s the example of the filtering software that decided the word “breast” was something that should be filtered, so people using it couldn’t see recipes that use chicken breasts or sites about breast cancer.
How did your ex-wife find out that he was going to these sites?
She told me she went onto his computer to clear up unused icons, and looked at the browser history.
That’s what worries me about filters. I don’t want to prevent curiousity or research. And I really don’t want to give money to an organization that has an agenda I disapprove of. You surprised me re the porn companies - I thought they wanted filtering software to work. Maybe I am just hopelessly naive in my view of smut peddlars.
Nope, they know there are people out there who want to view porn sites but whose employers or schools use filtering software to block those sites. Some of them are even sneakier than that- they’ll put non-porn-related key words on their web sites, so that people who aren’t looking for porn might click on their site.
Some of them might be opposed to that kind of censorship for philosophical reasons, as well. But I think most of them are just interested in getting more traffic.
Personally, I’d talk to him, put the computer so his back or side is toward the door in the study (so that somebody coming in can see what’s on his screen), and check his browser history periodically.
FWIW, in library school we were assigned an article about kids looking at porn on public library computers. I don’t have the cite, but the result of monitoring computer use in the children’s area at one large public library indicated that kids who went to porn sites were doing so more for the sake of being naughty/daring than due to any real interest in porn. The kids would usually only visit the main page of a porno site for a moment or two and not dig deeper into the photos available.
I don’t know what the situation is with the OP’s kid, but there’s certainly a strong possibility that his behavior has nothing to do with sex or porn in and of itself. He may just have felt pressured to be “brave” like the other kids and visit a site he knew he wasn’t supposed to. I’d suggest discussing the bullying/peer pressure issue and also the objective (viruses, spyware, etc.) reasons why looking at porn on the Web is dangerous. If he understands there are real, important reasons to be careful which sites he visits he may be more careful in the future.
The only concern I would have about the kid looking at porn is infecting the computer. How good is your virus protection? Better yet, tell him that if the computer gets infected you’ll make him use Linux. That will solve your virus and spyware problems.
Other than that be sure to explain how fake the porn is and tell him to do it in private. Preferably when no one is home and with the door locked.
I would monitor his computer activities, but for reasons other than porn. He has access to all kinds of weird information and you need to be able to sort it out for him. You don’t want to find out all of the sudden that he as a blog about Satan or whatever it is that kids blog about these days.
What exactly do people think is sooo unrealistic about porn anyway? People say that all the time on this board but I don’t really get it. Bigger than average assets and actors a bit more attractive than average? OK, but they are still very real people, and I’ve seen plenty of porn featuring actors I would not be interested in having sex with, because they weren’t attractive enough. Not every single porn actor has a boob job or a giant cock, either.
Otherwise most of the mainstream stuff it is your fairly standard sex acts, nothing I haven’t done or wouldn’t be able to do if I wanted to.
There’s a good deal of unusual fetish-oriented stuff that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but there are still plenty of real people doing that too. Yes I’m aware there’s stuff out there that really takes things to the extreme, but that’s not the majority of porn on the internet. The bulk of it is fairly vanilla.
