12yo DD has been chatting older boys & adults online

[cwfen]

DD has a nice group.of friends she plays Minecraft with online. I know them all in real life.

However I've just discovered that in the last couple of months she's stopped playing with them and now has a group of online friends she doesn't know in real life, and which includes a 19 year old, 16 year olds and 15 year olds - all male. She has her own Minecraft server I think and it looks like that's where these people have come from.

She's been lying to me about their names, their age and where they live (pretending they're all one person she knows in real life who is 14),

Besides the 19 year old, I'm relieved to see most of the conversation is related to the game and general chit chat, nothing obviously dodgy. The conversation with the 19 year old is totally inappropriate, although I think it mostly went over her head.

Also, she's "acting up" trying to act older than her age to impress them, which is worrying.

My biggest issue is the lying, and that she plainly doesn't understand the risks.

I've taken her phone and laptop off her, and she's not getting them back for the foreseeable.

But what now? I don't want to just tell her off. This is too serious.

It's about her keeping safe, and she's obviously been stringing us along every bloody time we've had a conversation about this stuff and doesn't get it all.

I need her to really understand for herself why this isn't on. Is it realistic to think that might be possible? What now? WWYD?

This is how my sd started. We knew nothing about it as it was all hidden and for reasons unknown her mum also hid it from us ( she knew we’d stop it and I think wanted to be ‘fun’ parent, she wouldn’t let sd socialise with friends and to her she knew where she was so it felt ok but deep down she knew it was wrong and that why it was kept hidden and apps/history deleted before sd came to where she knew we checked all devices) and allowed it to continue at her house.
What we have lived in the last two years has been nothing short of a nightmare. She’s a young adult now who is so messed up with a distorted view of sex, relationships and what work is that it’s unlikely she have what we call a normal life. It’s ruined relationships and her last years in education. She was a high achiever that left sixth form with next to nothing due to the distraction of these ‘men’.
We tried so hard to stop her, we installed apps and we took away devices. This did nothing. Had we known at age 12 she wouldn’t have touched a pc or similar without supervision for a long long time. She knew this and as a young adult cut all ties with us so she could continue her online life and selling what she could on there.

These other teenagers are unlikely to be teenagers.
You’ve discovered it, I’d act hard and fast with very firm discussions.

Yes, I totally agree with this.

This is a complex situation to handle. Something to have in mind when you’re talking to your DD about it is that these people have become her friends in her eyes. They are individuals she has formed a bond with. I would try to bear this in mind because if you group them all in one pot as ‘internet strangers’ she’ll decide you just don’t understand and not listen.

However, there's no way I'm going to let this friendship comtinue in any form.

He's 19 and has already crossed the line in multiple ways in her chats with her. Nothing extreme, but plenty of stuff that just isn't appropriate. She might think he's her friend but this isn't an appropriate relationship.

Goodness what a nightmare, I'm so sorry :(

Yes, I absolutely want to nip this in the bud now, I hope I get it right. The stakes are high, aren't they :(

Is dd your oldest ? It’s part of adolescence to think that you’re more adult than your biological age and that you’re too smart to be conned online. It sounds like dd loved the attention of an older boy and from America and while she knows she’s 12, feels like she’s 18 so her chats aren’t big deal. At primary age she may have always observed her rules but she’s impulsive and hormonal and thinks that the rules don’t apply to her. It’s better that she pushes the rules rather than is scared of everything but she needs the boundaries imposed by you.

Does she have social media like Snapchat? Messages and images disappear after 5 seconds so when you check her phone, they will be gone, when she gets her phone back, look out for that because you won’t have a clue that she’s sending nudes until they appear online.

I would gently ask her if her friends know about the 19yo. Are they the types that will be impressed or ask her why she’s talking to a pedo? I have an 18 year old and if he knew the boy chatting to your dd, he would be distancing himself immediately. He will talk to a friend’s 12 year old sister if he sees her at his friend’s house but it’s very weird and shouldn’t be happening.

You’ve caught it young enough and are enough of a good parent to want to deal with it.
don’t be surprised now she’s already snuck behind your back that she will again. We dealt with allsorts and some of it scary.
it also started with an 18 year old on discord in America and we have had Interpol involvement

I agree re the 19yo but what about the other people?

I’m on Discord, it’s like the Wild West totally unmoderated unless there is a moderator that is responsible. Remove discord immediately, I cannot stress how many gaming ones I have joined and then left.

I game and my DS was not allowed his PC or gaming console in his bedroom until he was 16.

I still game a child joined our chat last night as our friend had left his game running and chat open, we immediately removed him.

Look up that documentary about that child that was murdered by a fellow gamer.

https://news.sky.com/story/teen-murdered-boy-he-met-playing-games-online-10381241

This was obviously awful and not the only story, as a woman gamer I have been horribly harassed in the past. Learn how technology works . That’s one of the biggest issues that parents don’t understand the technology at all. It’s like when people get billed thousands for in game purchases that their kids have bought.

I found out my kids (aged maybe 10/11 at the time) were talking to someone online when playing Roblox and giving them too much information. I laid it on THICK about the dangers. I gave examples of kids that had been lured to meet strangers and then been killed. I said the person they were talking to said they were 12 but could be 55.

I deleted their Roblox account and didn’t let them go back on it for at least a year.

Some may think I went too far, but it put the fear of god in me as I thought I’d done so well with all the safety talks and was horrified that it clearly hadn’t gone in!

Years ago I got one of my daughters into the cyberfirst workshops run by GCHQ. It's gives them the computer dopamine hit.

It's been great embedding that before she got to mid teens. She's hot now on digital footprints and very cynical about all data sources and statements.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/cyberfirstnavigators

There was one that the local police used with school staff - a Welsh lad met up with his 'girlfriend' - a middle-aged male predator.

My own experience - two 13 yrs old girls at work, interacting with 11 yr old 'Timmy' on Snapchat. One of them showed me a message from Timmy - erect adult male appendage. I called in Child Protection.

Sorry but this is your fault a 12 year old with unsupervised access. You clearly had not been checking her log,game etc to see for yourself long before it got to this point, everyone knows the risks these days kids online that aren't even kids etc. We check all our kids gaming,history etc randomly several times a week sometimes a quick look some more in depth look. They are aware we will look at there phones or laptop or playstation until there older. It's not an issue if your clear about goal posts etc

This type of thing is excellent.

My DH volunteers for a national group for teenagers.
One of the camps he was at, they asked the security chaps to talk to the kids about online caution.
These kids listened with the usual “who do these adults think we are” attitude. Near the end of the “talk” the guy in charge told the kids about several of the teenagers in the room, personal stuff but no names, but all the kids were shocked because they didn’t know how they’d found this information out. Turns out a dozen, and more kids, SM presence were not private and the information they’d been able to gather frightened all of them, teenagers and adults, to do something about it!

I think the OP knows she should have maybe done differently and doesn’t need this ‘sorry but…’ response.

I'll have a look, thanks.

Thanks F1.

I think I'll ignore posts that are only about blame. They're really not of any use to me in this situation.

So, I'm still yet to have a good chat with DD as it's been a busy few days and also I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to say.

DD seems to be taking being barred from her devices surprisingly well. We're watching a new TV series together, and tonight she happily took my suggestion of getting comfy in her night clothes about 45 minutes before bedtime and reading her book. That was a turnup!

I let her on her computer to do homework today, but she accepted that I needed to see her screen without any argument. So, we say next to each other on the dining table with our laptops and I researched half term activities while she worked. It was nice.

I can see she really needed an intervention anyway, she was spending much too much time on the laptop, 19 year olds or no 19 year olds!

I'm going to need to keep her busy in half term I think. I'm seeing both bet computer use and her friendship with this older gamer as like an addiction, I need to help her replace them both with good things.

However, she's shown she's shown she just can't be trusted with Discord, so yes it's gone

Sorry, this sounds like victim blaming a child. Your DD can be trusted. Instead of expecting her to identify and block a dodgy adult, you should only be expecting her to come to you. She should get a second chance. I feel you are setting her up for years of self blame and shame by making this about how she can’t be trusted and how she has let you down. She is 12, she was taken advantage of and exploited by an adult. She is a victim.

I am absolutely not making this about how she's let me down, nor making her feel bad.

When I do get round to talking to her I'm going to take responsibility for not checking enough, and also for not making enough effort to be doing more real life stuff. That needs to change.

But the fact remains, that for 2 months she has been taking to several internet strangers, and in particular one who is 19 pretty much every day. And she knew full well she shouldn't have been doing this. How do I know that? Because for 2 whole months she's been lying to me, regularly. Every time I asked her who she was playing with, and she said Ollie, it was a lie. And she said that A LOT.

Then, when I told her I knew what she was doing and took her devices off her, the first thing she did was get up at 5am, and sneak down to talk to them again. And then, pretend she was up early so she could bring me breakfast in bed.

It's simply a statement of fact that I can't trust her at the moment. She's proved over 2 months she will continually lie to me, and when caught she lied more! It's a huge betrayal of trust and I'm not going to just brush it under the carpet.

That doesn't mean I need to make her feel awful about it. At 12, she is plainly too young to understand that it's not safe to talk to random internet strangers, even ones that seem nice.

It's on me that I didn't recognise that.

But that doesn't mean I'll just send her back into the lions den. She's clearly too young to be there.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice, you don't have to be angry with someone, or lay blame, or make them feel bad, in order to put a boundary in place, you know.

We've had a nice couple of days since she's been off the devices and we're making some nice plans for half term.

I agree with not sending her into the lions den so long as you have a plan for when she is a bit older- don’t wait too long. Because at some point she will need to be back online and have more practice at keeping safe. If you wait too long, you won’t be there as a safety net and she will be just as clueless and naive as she is now.

I am more uncomfortable with the way you are talking about her and her role in this.

You have written repeatedly as how she can’t be trusted, how she is a liar, how she is a gaming addict. You’ve made this about you by saying her lying is a “huge betrayal of trust”.

The very first thing a groomer does is makes the child promise to keep them a secret. She was conned into lying. She has not been betraying your trust.

I am simply trying to get you to have a bit of empathy and to see your DD didn’t do anything wrong. She isn’t too young to understand that it wasn’t safe, she has had the online safety book version and now just experienced how different the reality is. It all seems easy when you are told or read about it but not so easy when it happens to you. Have you talked to her about how he isn’t her friend? Pointed out the red flags in the messages?

The way you talk about her being a liar and betraying your trust is showing in how you treat her like she was in the wrong with the you can only do homework on your laptop if I’m hovering over you and watching everything you do on the screen.

She feels bad. That’s part of the reason she is trying to make it up to you and being especially good.

Shut down her account

Yes I know you don’t have to be angry. Constant disappointment and viewing your child as a lying, untrustworthy betrayer of your trust is not a boundary. It is a moral judgement of their character and she will know you feel that way about her.

My dd did similar at her age, it was a massive wake up call for me.

I took DDs phone away completely for three weeks and added a lot more parental controls. When dd got her phone back it was on the understanding I would be checking it frequently, she had a complete social media ban and was only allowed to use her phone downstairs.

in hindsight I wish id taken her phone off her for longer tbh, I’m now of the opinion they should be banned for under 16s.

Joshua Moon, the man who owns/runs Kiwi Farms says that Discord is a cesspit.

And that’s him saying that!

Yeah.... no.

You are projecting things onto me and my relationship with my DD that aren't there.

I not displaying disappointment, nor anger, not that she's let me down.

It's a fact that she's lied, that's not a moral judgement, it's what actually happened.