innapropriate behaviour (long post sorry)

[mankind85]

not really sure where to start but wanted to know if anyone had any advice from similar situations as im struggling to think of what more i can do practically,

my wife and i adopted brother and sister around 5 years ago both present with attachment disorder and initially took a lot of work for her to accept me as a caregiver, my daughter is now 9 and a short while ago i found that she had been trying to search for "boobs" and "sex" on youtube using the app built into the tv however due to me putting parental controls on their were no results, we tried to discuss this with her but constantly came up against "i dont know why i did it" we bought her books about the bodys development and had a chat with her about the things she had been searching for were not safe having gone through the books with her and having the "birds and bees" chat with her initially seemed to work however last week we were at a realtives house and allowed the kids to play on phones for 30 mins and when i got home i found that i had notifications from instagram which i have never used before, from checking it appears that my daughter has logged into the app using facebook login and began to follow some sexually explicit pages, the most concerning is that she appears to have sent a private message to one of the pages the content of which is " hi can you have sex with me ill sho u my willy" i have asked her about the message and again i get the response "i dont know why i did it" she is well aware that she doesnt have a "willy" as a girl and dont know whether she has tried to make the message appear as though it is from me as its my account, we have tried to talk to her and identify the reasons for this but she cannot explain and im at a loss as to what to do next. tia

I can't be sure at all, but I remember when I was a kid, me and my friends would do this sort of thing together because at that age we were hearing about that sort of thing and we had knowledge that it was "taboo", etc. It was fun making fun of that sort of thing and having a laugh about it. Perhaps that's what's going on here. But, I would never do this sort of thing alone as a kid, only in the company of others - I think it might be a bit worrying if she's doing this sort of thing in her own time. Perhaps she was shown explicit content at a young age - maybe you could ask her if she remembers seeing anything like that before, or if anyone showed her it. Either she was shown, or she heard about it/ is hearing about it.

In this time of technology things could be so different to when I was a kid. It'a horrible, but it might be the effect that technology has been having, kids having phones at young ages and all. Maybe she's hearing about it at school.

Chances are, her saying she doesn't know why she did it, is technically true - it's weird, especially as a child, seeing something taboo, but it's not okay, so for sure, something should be done about this. You seem like sensitive parents, but just in case, punishing her is definitely not the way to go about it, and would 100% create a pathology in the future around fear and shame are around sex, etc. Unfortunately I have no idea how to protect children from this sort of thing, so perhaps you could do some reaearch on it. I would just advise you to try to create a safe atmosphere for her to open up about how she heard about this stuff. Don't try to force it though. It's safe to assume she's learned this behaviour from someone else...

@mankind85 Do you know everything you should about your daughter's history ie was she/or is it suspected that she was sexually abused or was she exposed to inappropriate media, such as pornography, at an early age?

I don't have any personal experience of the difficulties you must be living, but I think I'd be mindful to seek the help of post-adoption support ASAP and also log every incident of inappropriate behaviour, for the sake of protecting yourself from any future allegations.

@mankind85 Have you and your wife discussed this? What does she want to do?

In your shoes I would ask for some post adoption support about this area if you can get it. If your daughter has got some issues going on then I do think you need some help with it.

Good luck.

Cross posted with 8Moominmammaatsea*, I agree with everything Moominmammaatsea says in this respect.

I think some of it may be simply curiosity - starting to hear about sex and having an easy means to look up what that means. My DD8 is a bit curious about boobs and bums and kissing etc and would go looking if only she knew how.

The difficulty is that she (my DD) doesn’t have any sense of stranger danger or personal safety which when combined with that curiosity about sex, makes her very vulnerable. We are very low key about sex, we answer factual questions in age appropriate ways, we help her think about privacy in her own body and safe touch. We also work hard on stranger danger, about how she builds relationships, people who are safe etc. In the case of Instagram, I’d be focusing on her contacting a stranger rather than the content of the contact.

Tbh I also restrict her time on all screens, she can’t access you tube even on our tv, she isn’t allowed online unless my DH or I are observing what she’s doing and no Xbox live type stuff. There’s absolutely no unsupervised screen time. At 8 she doesn’t need it and doesn’t have the knowledge to navigate it safely - I don’t see that changing when she’s 9.

I also think “I don’t know” can be I honestly don’t know why I did it, I honestly don’t know why you think it’s wrong, I feel desperately shameful and can’t tell you - all of which are possible in adopted children. I very much doubt she has the insight required to try to make a message sound like it came from you - you’re ascribing a sophistication of thought that she won’t have yet. One thing worth thinking about - my DD clearly struggles with processing and making links - eg telling her about something being wrong in one setting doesn’t mean she understands it’s also wrong in another, different setting and she struggles to retain information we find that most things involve a steady drip drip of information and checking out rather than telling her and her retaining it. It’s improving but definitely connected to hyper vigilance where her brain is so busy processing her environment that sometimes there’s no space for anything else.

I’d also be thinking about how long she had online - 30 mins is quite quick to download Instagram, work out how to log-in using a different site, find sexualised content and write a reply. If she’s been able to do that so quickly she’s either well practiced (in which case you need to find out where she’s learned how to do that) or she was on there much longer than 30 mins, which I know can easily happen but maybe think of other ways to keep her entertained. Simply put, she isn’t equipped to keep herself safe online - try not to look at is as her purposefully being inappropriate so much as just not knowing how to figure it all out. You wouldn’t blame her for crashing you car before she learned to drive - this is no different.