I have scrolled on the way down to the last post. Sorry, I have not read any posts in between, because, why?
Shit. Do not let you kid go out with someone on the internet. Period. Shit. Just do not do it. You have no idea who these kids mmay be. How do you know they are not 45 year old cheeto eating gut baring assholes. Just don’t do it.
Your kid wants to date? Great. Make him/her bring the unholy one in the house. Do it. Make them introduce you. You are fucking nuts if you don’t.
Are you by chance acquainted with FriarTed?
Well I dug through the trash and found the IMs she had printed out last night. I was able to read them more closely. His name is “Chris.” He’s supposedly in Washington, as in 2,000 miles away. I find this a little odd because the characters in her favorite book, “Twilight,” are from Washington. But whatever.
The marriage proposal was for a “Gaian wedding.” I asked my younger daughter was that was all about. Apparently GaiaOnline is an avatar website. Avatars are where you create characters. After his proposal in the IM, she said, “I thought you were already married to xxx (some other avatar.” He replied, “I was, but that was before she burned out and got banned.”
So the marriage proposal was for this alternate reality. That’s a relief. However, the conversation definitely turned sexual later with him prodding her for more details of her fantasies about him. So I don’t know what to make of all this.
She’s been gone all day, as has been my husband. I’m going to let him read the IMs and see what he thinks. She apparently didn’t print out all the conversations between the two of them because there are unexplained refererences. But apparently they’ve been talking since at least April.
I would love to know more about him so that I could know if there was any reason for concern, but I don’t know how I could do that without causing a huge rift in our relationship. She’s always been extremely private, which I don’t have a problem with, and she’d be understandably MORTIFIED that her father and I have read some of these things.
Argh!
I have no first term experience, I have no children. I do have some internet experience and I beg you parents to not let your kids date anyone from online until you meet them. Even then, be vigilent. My take on this, be careful.
I realize the laws affecting this vary by jurisdiction, but here in Spain (hi, Sapo!) and I’m quoting a lawyer regarding a similar situation:
“minors have NO right to privacy from their parents. Not only do parents have no obligation to respect their children’s privacy so long as the child is under 18, they have the DUTY to know what the fuck the kid’s doing in order to keep him safe. Any questions?”
There weren’t any questions.
PS: is the necklace real, or virtual like the wedding?
PPS: a friend of mine from WoW is “getting married” on Monday. His rl girlfriend is celebrating. Don’t ask me how come he’s “marrying” the whinny bitch he is and not the rl girlfriend… then again, I don’t understand why everybody in the Alliance gets married in Stormwind either, bunch of unoriginal asses…
She wants to be a grown up, and grown ups get to have some privacy about their romantic lives. But she also broke her word, and that’s not okay for anyone to do, no matter how old they are. You need to make sure it’s clear that you’re punishing her for the latter, and not the former. Don’t take away the laptop or try to prevent her from talking to the guy. It won’t stop her from talking to him, but it will keep her from coming to you if she needs help. You might want to consider offering to respect her privacy with the guy, if she promises to tell you about any non-online contact. But only make the offer after you’ve punished her for lying. Let her know that you’re not going to stand in the way of her growing up, but remind her that she’s not grown up yet.
We told our daughter from day one on the computer–ANYWHERE and ANYTHING she writes on the computer is fair game for us reading it. She wants privacy–get a diary.
She has a MySpace account–I go in and randomly read who is writing to her. I had a discussion with one of her friends about some language she used there. So all her friends also know that there is no privacy online in our house. I check out sites she has been to and let me tell you that is some exciting stuff 12 year old girls go to 
But it is random, and I don’t do it everyday (I don’t have that kind of time), but she knows I might do it, and I guess if she is willing to take a risk she might get away with it. I can deal with those chances, because I feel I check often enough to keep her honest.
I would NOT read her diary though–if she wants privacy that is where she should go and we have stressed that to her.
I have told her upfront to NOT expect any right of privacy on computers in our house. I have not installed it yet, but I have software that will track what sites she goes to, etc.
Personally I have no qualms about this issue at all. She was aware from day one and if she violates that, she will pay the price. No privacy online period. Maybe a bit of a hardass attitude–but the internet is a scary place and I am careful with her.
Good luck–I am sure you will have fireworks over this. But I think if/when you allow her access back online you let her know that there is no privacy. Just the few trainwrecks we have seen here on this site should make more people more cautious as to what they put out there.
Call me a bastard but I’d have an older male friend (preferably fat and balding one) come over and knock LOUDLY on the door claiming “Surprise! It’s me baby! I’m the internet loverboy you’ve been talking to.”
I’d also do this while no parents were at home.
If that doesn’t put the fear of God into her nothing will.
And hey, you still get to keep the trust of your daughter as well.
Evil but effective.
Oh sure, and of course he’d knock on the door just while she’s talking to the real online boyfriend.
Darnit, SHAKES, if you’re going to be evil, do it right!
Hah. I love Shake’s idea.
But assuming that you don’t want to take that kind of step, I definitely think (speaking as a childless 25-year old, so my view is from my memories of that age) that it would be best to approach it from a non-confrontational and concerned perspective, not a punitive one.
Talk about how people on the internet are not always what they seem, and see how much she knows about him. Talk about how to handle guys who might try to pressure her for more sexual content than she’s ready for. That kind of thing. I don’t think it would be productive to punish her over this. That will just make her work harder at hiding it next time, and less likely to come to you for help if it gets out of hand.
Can I ask how old you are? Because in my experience, 14 year old kids who’ve grown up with the Internet their whole lives do do this. To a kid who’s never not been online, talking to someone on the computer is meeting them.
I also think that knowing this whole “marriage proposal” thing was just for some online chat room it should prove this is no big deal.
Y’all have put many great suggestions out there - from a parent’s point of view, which is great for the OP.
But I’m here to give the daughter’s POV. This is gonna get LJish and a bit TLDR, so you can just ignore me if you want.
A bit of background - I spent most of my teen years online, because (unlike your daughter) I didn’t have a great social circle or lots of extra-curriculars. At 15 I was working, at 16 - which it sounds like your daughter nearly is - I had left school and was working full-time in the adult world and at 17 I’d moved halfway across the country with some guy my family didn’t know. So this information is relevant from my experience, which is of an “old” 15 year old as my mother called me. If your daughter is a bit more naivé or a “younger” 15 year old then it’s probably not going to apply.
To start, yeah there’s a chance that the guy she’s talking to is some weirdo grooming her for nefarious purposes. But there’s an equally good chance he’s not. During my online years, I had about four or five online boyfriends including the man I eventually married. My (now) husband is three years older than me, one was four or five years older than me. The rest were all about my age, which at the various times made them anywhere between about fourteen and eighteen. I established this in various ways. Talking on the phone, video chat online, talking to family and getting friends to go and meet them by proxy when I couldn’t meet them myself. I only found one person who ever lied directly about who they were online, and that was someone who pretended to be a female friend, who then was “murdered”.
Because this was before online grooming became a big issue, I didn’t have the level of restrictions you’ve given your daughter, so I did give out our home phone number and our address. And yes, fourteen and sixteen year old guys do buy and send jewellery. In my case, it was nice but clearly Wal-Mart quality jewellery. And that’s the first thing I’d be looking at. Has he sent her a trashy silver-plated cubic diamondium necklace? Or has he really sent her a white gold and pure diamond necklace handcrafted by christian dior? One is not like the other, the latter is not what you could reasonably expect a schoolkid to afford, and would set off warning bells. The former could just be he works a paper route and spent $15 buying something “nice” for his GF.
Also, the “kinky” thing? At fourteen, I was a rampant cybersex bunny. I’d already done the physical deed with my ex, so with my online boyfriends it was only logical that because we couldn’t express our love physically we’d cyber like mad things. So yeah, mid-teen boys will talk about “kinky” dreams and press to hear about the fantasies the girl’s had. Again, slightly creepy factor when you understand that he is masturbating to this stuff but not necessarily an indication that he’s a paedophile looking to steal your daughter away.
The marriage proposal. I’m glad you’ve established this is an online wedding. But again, I received proposals from two of my cyber boys before I met hubby. Because we thought our love was TRUE and ABIDING and would NEVER DIE so we’d be TOGETHER FOREVER!!!one!!!eleventy. These went out the window as soon as we broke up. The other thing to remember is that if he is a real boy, there’s every chance he’s going to find another girl either at home or closer to home. Computer love just ain’t the same as necking in the back seat when you’re fourteen or fifteen.
Forbidding your daughter will achieve nothing. The other suggestions made here have been the spot-on ones from the daughter POV in my opinion. Sit your daughter down and explain why these rules have been made, and why you’re upset that she broke them (ie for her personal safety). She will roll her eyes and think you’re just oppressing her, but it’s something that will come back to her when she’s older and this is all over. Explain to her why you’re upset that she’s broken your trust, and whilst you’re not going to forbid her to “see” this boy you need to know about him, his name, his address, see a photo, talk to him in a video chat and/or his parents on the phone - again, to make sure he’s on the up and up and won’t try to hurt her.
Personally, I’d even go so far as to give tacit approval to her meeting him in person - if you are there to meet him too. If he’s really fourteen, the meeting will probably never materialise. But if you give the appearance of more or less approving of things, she’s more likely to be open to saying “Chris said he’ll be visiting our town/somewhere nearby can we go and meet him mom?” rather than sneaking out one day. The other thing is that if he’s really fourteen and she says “Mom will be coming to meet you with me” then he’ll probably go “Uh, cool”. If his response is any different (and you’ve further been unable to establish his real age), then you’ve got a better indicator that he’s maybe not on the level and can then make the decision about whether to take this further with the authorities.
But this is just my 2c as a kid of the 'net age, and I don’t envy you this task. I’m conflicted myself. I don’t have kids yet, but I dread if we ever do. Because my times online, whilst sometimes filled with conflict and stupid people, were pretty great. I took some risks that would have some parents clutching their hearts and fainting, but I met some great people and even my husband out of it. But then I also know that online predation is becoming a greater and greater threat and I would do anything to stop my (potential) kids from being victimised by it.
Good luck.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but just to play devil’s advocate, does your child ever go to school? And if so, logically, isn’t it possible she could have a relationship with a kid at school you’ve never met?
I hope you don’t think you’re going to meet every guy she ever has romantic activity with, because you almost certainly won’t. some kid on IM seems to me to be even less of a threat.
I’m not minimizing the fact that she broke your rules, though.
I’m not going to say you’re over-reacting. You gave clear rules for internet usage, and she did violate them. I believe that she needs to know that you will enforce those rules when you find them violated.
I do think that you’re probably reading far more into the marriage proposal than there was. Internet marriages between avatars have been a staple with certain crowds for at least ten years that I’ve heard about. (I see that’s what this one was.) I’d also ask whether the necklace was a physical gift, or something for her avatar. If it was a physical gift, I’d be even more concerned about the personal information she gave out - and should be punished as a clear violation of the rules you’d established.
I’m not a parent, but I am concered, too, by the idea that this person she is in contact with had been kicked out of his house by his parents. That just doesn’t sound good, no matter how I look at it.
I can’t offer advice for how to deal with her relationship with this boy, but I do think you should make sure that she knows the punishment she gets is for the rules she broke, not for talking to this boy. He is why she broke the rules, but that shouldn’t be what you’re punishing her for, I don’t think.
Except that no crime has been committed here and cops have better things to do than hunt down her daughters 14 year old IM buddy several states away.
I would suggest that PunditLisa get more information. Turn on IM logging and install a keystroke recorder on the laptop. Don’t tell your daughter, but over the next several days or weeks, start compiling detailed profiles of the people your daughter interacts with:
-names
-ages
-locations
-school or jobs
-interests & hobbies
-web sites visited - MySpace, Facebook, etc
soon you will know if you have cause for concern. Or at the very least, you have a new hobby.
These people are being too nice to you, in my opinion. If I was your daughter, I would expect as a human being on this planet to at least have a modicum of privacy, and you violating my privacy would infuriate and betray me. If I was your daughter and you came to me, waving a printout of my IM conversations, I would first scream at you and then walk out the door and spend a week at my friend’s. Perhaps your daughter is more reasonable, I don’t know.
However, this boy (if he is a boy, and I’m leaning toward “definitely”) can’t even touch her, and isn’t even talking to her on the phone. A lot of teenagers at the age of 15 are very sexually active (that goes for pretty much all of my friends at that age). If all your daughter is doing is talking online, and not even cybering with him, you should hug her instead of confronting her and consider yourself lucky.
And as for keystroke logging, what a crappy thing to do to anyone.
Stop snooping in your daughter’s things. You should know that when you snoop you almost invariably find something to get upset about, no matter how baseless it is. Learn your lesson from this and don’t repeat it.
A few years ago, I was in almost exactly the same situation as your daughter.
For years, I played an online roleplaying game with a fervor that amounted to an obsession, or an addiction. During the years that I played the game, I fell in love with a large number of random guys that I met online, through the game. As I got older, the relationships became more serious. Although I was always a little too realistic for the “oh, my one true love, I’m going to marry you!” it was not unknown among my friends. As far as I know, no one was ever hurt by any of this. None of the guys were ever secretly sexual predators. None of them tried to entice me to visit them. The last one I was in love with, before I quit the game, was almost 10 years older than me. He was probably somewhat fucked up for continuing a relationship with a 15 year old, but he was not creepy. He never tried to meet me in real life and I think he knew that his situation was a bit sketchy. I didn’t have cybersex with any of them, and for the most part my relationships were nonsexual–more about romance than sex. Not that I didn’t think about sex all the time at that age…
One of my friends (female and whom I visited numerous times in real life) was in a relationship with a boy who lived near me, and he came and visited the two of us once when she was visiting me. He was just who he said he was and we spent an awkward day together (without our parents, but with their permission.) The most scandalous thing to happen was a hug.
What I am trying to say here is that girls and boys having online relationships is pretty normal these days. If you specifically asked her not to give out personal information and she did, I guess you should punish her for that, but I personally don’t think it is a particularly big deal. I personally think checking up on your daughter is a bit sad, but if you feel you must, at least warn her about it. She is her own person, after all–not just a little bit of you that happens to be able to walk and talk on her own.
My advice (if you’ve read this far)–sit down and talk about it with your daughter. Ask her about the necklace–I would be most concerned about her giving out her real life address, as it would be a blatant violation of the rules you gave her. See what her reaction is, and ask her about the boy. Do not be judgmental or hysterical. He is almost certainly not a child molester of any sort. Give her a small punishment for breaking the rules, and tell her you’d like to get to know the guy. Ask her if you can talk to his parents on the phone. If everything is on the up and up, that should be fine (unless his parents are hysterical technophobes, of course…)
Something that no one has mentioned–do you know for sure that the necklace is a real life necklace? Wouldn’t you have noticed a package? Gaia Online appears to be an internet chat room/game of some sort, and it seems to me quite possible that he gave her a necklace in the game.
from wikipedia
If your concern is that your daughter may run off with this guy, or be abducted by him, then you need to approach your daughter in a way that makes it clear that that is the issue. Yeah, she broke your rules. Punish her for that in a way that doesn’t affect her relationship. Taking away her laptop, restricting her time with the boyfriend, snooping, installing keyloggers, etc. will just result in her clinging to her privacy even more. This is the opposite of what you want-- you want her talking to you about him and using you as a sounding board so that if some major development does happen, she’s comfortable bringing it to you.
Talk to her, make her aware of your concerns. Yes, you’re not comfortable with the idea of a boyfriend you don’t know and can’t meet and the sexual aspects of the relationship, but IMO the point that you should voice opposition to is the possibility he is not who he says he is. If you come down against the whole thing-- the relationship, the intimacy, as well as the safety of the arrangement-- she is much more likely to reject everything you tell her and ignore your warnings. She’ll only get better at hiding it.
I’m not saying you and your husband should be thrilled about this relationship, just that the relationship in and of itself is not your biggest concern right now. Tell her you’re happy she met someone she likes and who likes her back. This might be the first time it’s happened to her, and would therefore be a very big deal. Say that although you understand she has feelings for this guy, her feelings may blind her to the trustworthiness of the guy. She’ll get defensive, to be sure, but emphasize that your aim is to not discourage her from the relationship. She just needs to know if she ever feels unsure or uncomfortable or has doubts about him, that that is perfectly normal and totally okay and she should listen to those doubts. Let her develop her own trustworthiness sense for people (specifically, men).
Basically, you want to come across as supportive yet concerned enough so that if ever any steps toward meeting in real life are taken, that she will tell you about it. That is where you will have control over what happens. You could have input on the terms of the meeting-- the duration, the setting, venue, etc. If you drive her away, she will keep these things from you. Remember, she only needs an internet connection to talk to him on IM; she doesn’t need to be on that particular laptop or at home.
In the interest of full disclosure, I met a guy online who lived thousands of miles away. We fell in love, even did the online marriage proposal thing. We live together now, so clearly it all was kosher and worked out. (The only difference is I was 27 at the time.) So I think it’s possible that Chris is who he says he is. If Chris and your daughter are lucky, maybe they’ll continue to be blissfully in love and find a way to keep the relationship going long-term and meet someday (under terms acceptable to everyone, if they are still minors when it happens). My advice is to be a buzzkill just enough so that she understands your concerns. I do not see the circumstances as they presently are as something that warrants punishment or police intervention.
This all makes me wonder what people did in pre-Internet days when their kids signed up to be pen pals with people who lived someplace else. My mom got a pen pal when she was a teenager (and continued to exchange letters with this person for a few decades). And golly, in order to send all these letters back and forth, she had to provide her real! name and real! home address. I don’t think anybody was worried that her pen pal was actually a sexual predator.
Of course, at that time “mail” had been around for centuries. It wasn’t some newfangled thing to be afraid of, like teh Intrawebs is.
Oh dear. (((PunditLisa)))
When I was that age, I felt absolutely compelled to get into some trouble. 
Mine was pretty small time, but enough to scare my parents thoroughly.
I agree with your concerns about her secrecy, and with your observation that forbidding the relationship is futile.
How about a total shocker - would you consider having her invite him to your place for Thanksgiving or something? Send him bus fare (assuming she’s got the money to pay part of it); if he’s willing to ride Greyhound for 24 hrs that will at least show he’s got some tenacity. Wouldn’t that blow her mind? And put yours at ease.