What to do? Daughter is involved in an online relationship

In My Humble Opinion
121

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Because we learn to not make mistakes by making tiny mistakes that don’t hurt us, and hopefully extrapolate big lessons from those tiny consequences. There’s a whole theory of parenting that revolves around this idea, popularized in the series of books called Parenting With Love and Logic.
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I’m perhaps old fashioned, but early romantic entanglements should be chaperoned, because they can mean not so tiny mistakes that can hurt our kids. And it isn’t just the street smarts of “what if this guy is 40” - its also just the “I’m fifteen years old and this is my SOULMATE mom, and he’s been kicked out of his house, and he has to come live here or YOU DON’T LOVE ME, and if you don’t let that happen, I at least HAVE TO SUPPORT MY TRUE LOVE, by running away and getting a job at McDonalds.”

Maybe not “every minute” chaperoned - but at least “mom should have a clue what is going on chaperoned.”

(I remember my first SOULMATE relationship - I was seventeen and its a good thing he dumped me for someone with bigger boobs, cause that was a BAD SPOT for me. Nice guy, still see him - but NOT my soulmate).

122

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Because we learn to not make mistakes by making tiny mistakes that don’t hurt us, and hopefully extrapolate big lessons from those tiny consequences. There’s a whole theory of parenting that revolves around this idea, popularized in the series of books called Parenting With Love and Logic.
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Okay. So even sven is then, I guess, assuming that protecting the kid from making the mistake prevents this learning. Fair enough.

However, I think the parent has the responsibility to determine whether the mistake is small or not. I’ll let my kids do things where they can fall down, but not where the fall would injure them.

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[QUOTE=Brainiac4]
Okay. So even sven is then, I guess, assuming that protecting the kid from making the mistake prevents this learning. Fair enough.

However, I think the parent has the responsibility to determine whether the mistake is small or not. I’ll let my kids do things where they can fall down, but not where the fall would injure them.
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Oh, I agree (with you and with Dangerosa. I can’t speak for even sven, but I interpreted her (his?) remark as meaning that online is a safe(ish) place for the child to learn how to speak with, test and question and learn to form safe boundaries in her relationships with men. After all, if a guy is being weird in chat, it’s easier than real life to say, “Please stop doing that, you’re making me uncomfortable.” And if he doesn’t, the negative consequence (feeling icky in your gut) is less damaging than the negative consequence might be in meatspace - physical invasion of your space or body. So then she learns to say, “Stop it right now or I’m leaving!” in her chatroom. Again, easier to do (and enforce) than in real life. Eventually, one hopes, she learns techniques that work for her, based on relatively safe negative reinforcement, and then she can take those skills with her into real life encounters where more than her emotions are at risk.

I’m not sure that’s exactly germane to the OP’s situation - after all, it appears as if the girl is welcoming the advances. But it does seem like an interesting perspective on internet relationships as a self-teaching tool.

124

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Oh, I agree (with you and with Dangerosa. I can’t speak for even sven, but I interpreted her (his?) remark as meaning that online is a safe(ish) place for the child to learn how to speak with, test and question and learn to form safe boundaries in her relationships with men. After all, if a guy is being weird in chat, it’s easier than real life to say, “Please stop doing that, you’re making me uncomfortable.” And if he doesn’t, the negative consequence (feeling icky in your gut) is less damaging than the negative consequence might be in meatspace - physical invasion of your space or body. So then she learns to say, “Stop it right now or I’m leaving!” in her chatroom. Again, easier to do (and enforce) than in real life. Eventually, one hopes, she learns techniques that work for her, based on relatively safe negative reinforcement, and then she can take those skills with her into real life encounters where more than her emotions are at risk.

I’m not sure that’s exactly germane to the OP’s situation - after all, it appears as if the girl is welcoming the advances. But it does seem like an interesting perspective on internet relationships as a self-teaching tool.
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I’m not sure I agree. I think that the anoniminity of the internet allows people to allow things they wouldn’t allow in real life - to ‘be’ someone else. For instance, at fourteen in meatspace, she might think sex talk offputting, but on the internet, its removed, safe and cool - and allows her to play a different role.

Two problems with this - the first is that some virutal relationships move to real life - and the role you’ve played online becomes one you may feel obligated to maintain. The second is that I think it sets habits for behavior - you might not originally have tolerated it in real life, but having tolerated it on line, what’s the big deal in meat space.

Particularly at this sort of age, where you are really starting to figure out who you are as an individual.

(Just so you know Brainiac4 and I are married and share our children - he isn’t often in these sorts of threads with me so you may not have picked up on that - he, in fact knows my former SOULMATE and knows exactly what I’m talking about - he was there when it all happened).

125

Former child here, albeit from, if not the stone age of the Internet, at least the late Bronze. I spent a lot of time chatting and e-mailing with all sorts of people when I was a kid (ages 15 and up), in particular trying to deal with being queer (WOE ANGST DRAMA) and with my bad relationship to my dad.

I had a few online romances that culminated with my parents meeting the young man. It’s interesting what other folks have said about the eldest-child syndrome - that really rankled when I was younger, and there were a few screaming fits about how I never stayed out or smoke or drank or did anything and they were POLICING MY LIFE OMG.

There were a few half-hearted attempts to inspect my e-mail, but I told Dad where to get off, not because I was abnormally secretive but because half the time on e-mail I was complaining about him, and besides that I didn’t feel like I had any safe space at all, which is a really gross feeling.

I’ve never been a parent, so I’m interested to see how your approach works. It’s heavier than I would have put up with (or would have been justified by the reality) when I was younger. For me it’s not a question of ZOMG I HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING versus ZOMG I HAVE A RIGHT TO PRIVACY – it seems more about how to preserve the relationship with your daughter and make sure you communicate effectively what she needs to know, rather than clamping down and alienating her so she does exactly what you don’t want. But as I say I’m not a parent, and I seek to learn, so please keep us updated about the reaction.

126

[QUOTE=kambuckta]
This ‘boy’ is guilty until proven innocent. Young boys do not send gifts to internet girls 2000 miles away. Something is very wrong here.
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You’re positive about that? You’ve never heard of someone doing something nice for the sake of being nice?

If he really is a 14 y/o guy, he was born in 1993. He doesn’t remember a time when the internet was this big scary thing. To him, chatting online is one way to meet people. If he’s 14, and he could very well be, he wouldn’t be taking the distance of 2000 miles into account*. He wouldn’t think of her as being from Ohio; he would think of her as being from GaiaOnline. To him, and to her, that’s being close. The necklace is a non-indicator of his age. In fact, I think it works in his favor that it was not lingerie or a sex toy or a photo of his penis. (I watch To Catch a Predator too.)

And no offense, but the example you cited is pretty darned extreme. It’s not going to happen to everyone. Look at the McDonald’s strip-search case. Should parents refuse to let their daughters work at McD’s, or any minimum-wage job, because that might happen?

*I know this is not what you’re getting at, but the way you phrase it, you make it sound as if 200 miles might be okay. What about 20 miles? 2 miles, across town?

127

I haven’t posted since Mr. Pundit and I left Wednesday for a 5 day trip to Phoenix. Since my daughter was too busy to be on the computer in our absence (because of the school play), we let it go until we returned. We’ll talk to her tonight and let you know how it went.

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[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
your parents monitoring your public LJ posts seems like a good place to start teaching it. I really can’t blame parents for reading their kids’ LJs. Again, if you don’t want the whole damn world to know about it, don’t post it on the worldwide web.
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Exactly. And the world includes:

Your parents
Your grandparents and other relatives
Your boss
Your teachers and school administrators
Law enforcement personnel

There’s nothing inherent in LiveJournal or MySpace or Facebook that will keep them from seeing what you post, and you shouldn’t post as if they can’t see it. A diary or paper journal, or a file on your computer that is not shared with others, is (or should be) private, so you do have some safe space to express yourself. But things posted on the Web are not private. Getting into trouble with your parents for something you posted is a decent lesson- it might keep you from posting something later on that could get you suspended/expelled from school, fired from your job, or in trouble with the law.

Posting anonymously isn’t necessarily going to save you if you’re posting about illegal activities- police can and do find out who’s behind those posts (such as in the recent case of the pedophile who was posting images of himself with a swirled-out face). Why should parents pretend that posting anonymously will shield you from all consequences of what you post online? The real world just doesn’t work that way. Teaching a kid that it does is doing them a disservice.

As for “what to do to earn privacy”- I would say showing that you can follow some rules, such as not giving out personal information to people you meet online, is a reasonable thing to expect (as long as the rules themselves are reasonable, and IMO this one certainly is).

129

Presumably you have this kid’s contact information, yes? Go make a honeypot account and see if you can get him to talk to you. Or online stalk him for a while and see how he behaves. It might be an entirely In-Game relationship and blowing up over it shows that you, you old fuddy duddy, are having trouble telling the difference between reality and make-believe.

Also, it’s entirely possible that he bought the necklace from a wishlist function on a shopping website. He pays. It’s sent to her address. She never tells him anything. She get anything from Amazon recently?

BUT, I figure the confrontation has occurred. How’d it go?

130

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
But things posted on the Web are not private.
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What if you post under encryption and only the peers in your trust net can read it?

131

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Anyhow, I think I’d treat the infraction of your specific rule - the giving out of her name and address - as separate from her relationship with Romeo. But first, find out how it was sent. DID she, in fact, give out her information, or did she have it sent to school or work or somewhere fairly safe? Was you’ve found that out, then deal with that rule infraction. I think taking away the laptop for a bit is a proper response to not using the laptop according to your rules.

As for Romeo, I’d not forbid contacting him on other computers. For one, it’s just simply not enforceable. And, as I’m sure you know, the only thing that makes young love even more exciting is forbidding it. In fact, I’d ask about him. Be interested, not in a judgmental punishing way, but as interested in him as if she knew him IRL. Find out his name, his hobbies, his successes and failures. I might go so far as to say, “Well, I sure hope he’s who he says he is and not some 45 year old guy with a potbelly posting from his mother’s basement!” Nothing will whither the vine of their love faster than Mom’s approval at that age.
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As usuall, I really like WhyNot’s advice. I can’t give you suggestions from a parenting point of view, not having kids myself, but having fairly recently been a teenager and also having met NajaHusband online as a teenager, my advice to you would be… pretty much word-for-word the same. Punish the violation of the “no personal information divulged” rule, and be interested in the boy. Find out everything you can and verify it. Even suggest they talk on the phone, if you think that’s appropriate for her age and your dating rules–that means you’d have his phone number, and you’d be able to speak with his parents. Let her know that it’s okay to develop friendships online, but not okay to give out personal information without you knowing who the person is and giving permission, first. I remember exchanging addresses with internet friends so we could send each other little birthday cards and tokens of friendship, modern pen-pals if you will.

Freaking out and forbidding her to contact him only makes her more likely to do so, and less likely that you’ll find out about similar future situations. Be interested and supportive, and she’ll be much less likely to hide details about the next online dude who wants to chat her up.

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[QUOTE=PunditLisa]
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.
…and she’d be understandably MORTIFIED that her father and I have read some of these things.

Argh!
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For the record, NajaHub and I wrote some absolutely scandalous things to each other as horny internet-dating teenagers. We also, due to thousands of miles of long-distance, did not have actual sex until we were eighteen, but you can bet the farm that we’d have been going at it like bunnies if we were in the same neighborhood. Written fantasies don’t get you pregnant or transmit herpes, I think it’s a pretty “safe” way to explore sexuality, assuming the kid is really her age. Furthermore, I totally believe that the years of long-distance talk developed in us a really solid level of communication that many couples our age are nowhere near.
I also lied to my parents about where I met him, so that they’d be able to meet him without the bias of OMGINTERNETGUY blurring their view of him and causing them to forbid me to be with him.
Teenagers are sexual, they just are. You shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation. I think the chances they’re going to have a “serious” relationship are pretty low, but I also think that there are upsides to long-distance, and that if you allow her to date, you shouldn’t automatically discount an internet relationship out of hand. I do think you should learn everything about him, just as you would a boy she was dating who lives in town.

133

[QUOTE=1010011010]
BUT, I figure the confrontation has occurred. How’d it go?
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Sorry I didn’t update everyone. Yes, we had a discussion about it. I’d waded through her cell phone logs for the last few months and found that she had called someone in Washington state a few times. We did a bit of investigating on our end because, first and foremost, we wanted to make sure that this wasn’t some 50 year old pervert trying to lure her in. We paid for a few reports using his name and cell phone number as beginning points and eventually became satisfied that this really was a high school kid.

We then had a frank discussion about the dangers of the internet. We told her that it was clear that she was “friends” with a stranger and that she had crossed the boundaries, which caused us concerns.

She didn’t think that she had violated the rules because she insisted he only knew her first name and cell phone number. She said that he never sent the necklace, but that she’d gotten it for her birthday party last year from a girlfriend. and that she and “Chris” used it to symbolize their avatar wedding. (It’s a role playing thing. I don’t get it either.) We pointed out that her Yahoo email address (since changed) WAS her first initial and last name and that it was very easy to obtain information on a person knowing just basic information. And that in violating our rules, she’d endangered herself.

We asked her about him and she told us what she knew. He lives with his grandparents, is a freshman, etc. All things matched our investigation. Then we told her that what concerned us the most was the secrecy. That she’s old enough to have a boyfriend, long distance or local, and that as parents we had every right to know about him. If she wanted to write to him, she could. If she wanted to send him a Christmas present, that was okay, too. But no more secrets. No more waiting til we went out of town to call him. etc.

And that if they ever felt like they wanted a face-to-face meeting that she should come to us and discuss it.
They’re still communicating, but I’m not so freaked out about it.

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Sounds like it went about as well as could be expected. Thanks for the update.