to be so utterly shocked by what I have discovered by looking through my ELEVEN year old's phone...

[Cathycomehome]

and to feel like a terrible parent, and to not even recognize the child that wrote these messages?

Im sure your son is not a horrible child cathy , a hormonal one though Im glad you sorted it out and feel a bit more prepared if it happens again , I also when mine were younger made sure the internet settings on their phones were low , dd2 didnt get the internet on her phone till this year ,

Also, in the olden days, our access to porn was limited usually to page 3 of the sun and the grubby magazines we found discarded in the woods when we made dens.

We weren't even allowed to hear Frankie Goes to Hollywood say 'come'. Remember that?

Nowadays you can't turn on the tv without seeing Rhianna forgetting to put her clothes on and dancinging as if she is pain. pre-schoolers sing along to 'me likey likey when you touch me down there.; or another favourite 'I got passion in my pants and I'm not afraid to show it. I'm sexy and you know it.'

Sex is insiduous and commonplace now.

I had frankies album and used to have it full blast to shock my dad i think i was about 13 ,

I agree merrylegs sex is everywhere and I dont think its a good thing really seeing scantiliy glad girls in music videos is normal these days

It's funny isnt it how you dont recognise them at all in their persona they portray to friends peers? I once accidentally came across something my sweet quiet unassuming young pre-teen nephew wrote on a forum about his mother - my sister. He said 'Know what I absolutely f*g hate my mother'. He went on to say 'and she thinks she's f**g won - not a chance'

He was a lovely lad whenever I saw him - he's 15 now and though a typical difficult at times teenager still a nice lad. I never told my sister - I put it down to just playing up to his mates etc. and apparently she had confiscated his new xbox for a week as he'd not been doing his homework.

I think you have reacted well, Cathy. I'm sure your son is lovely - i don't doubt that for a moment.

However, talking nonchalantly about porn, referring to girls as sluts, even dumping them without a second thought - all of that is unacceptable behaviour imo. He needs to be taught respect for girls. Sadly, that is becoming more and more lacking in society (it seems to me).

I dread my DC reaching the teen years.

Realisation that I will have a toddler and a teenager at the same time dawning...Gulp!

Thanks for help, everyone - might have to go back to bed for a bit, I'm knackered!

I think Hassled's idea is a bit extreme (no disrespect)
most 11 year olds go through a phase of 'oh yeah we no about sex and swearing, yeah and maybe both at the same time' especially boys.

as a teaching assistant I came across alot of 11 year olds more foul mouthed than the 16 year olds.
its when this sort of stuff really has a novelty, I'm not saying ignore but your child is not gone awry'.

I'd recommend you read Jenni Murray's book- I think it's called "That's my Boy". I thought it was really interesting. It's not a parenting manual- more a discussion of how a feminist wanted to raise her sons.

As far as what to do next -- I would tell the school that you have become aware that girls are being labelled in this way, and that somehow some children have been able to get access to pornography.

I would also cast around for some activity your DS and his dad could do together, as well as getting him to play a responsible role at home through chores, garden work, etc. It's really good for young teens to develop competence at cooking for the family, taking responsibility for the cleanliness and tidiness of one room in the house, taking out the bin, emptying the dishwasher, making their own school lunch, etc. When the baby comes you will need a helpful extra pair of hands.

Am I the only one on here tha thinks all this is way way OTT?
Do people have NO knowledge that being obsessed by sex is totally totally normal at this age? He referred to a girl as a slut in a text to a friend.Big deal.Don't you think the girls are just as bad at objectifying and even sexually harassing boys especially the 'less developed' ones?
All you have done is made your DS feel guilty for normal behaviour at his age and breached his trust by snooping on his phone.He'll just make sure he covers his tracks better next time and won't want to confide anything in you.

As for the comment going to the school to say one boys ahd referred to a girl as a slut to another boy, had me ROFL!! What planet are you on Mathanxiety!!

I don't think 11 year olds are obsessed by sex. I don't think the egregious parts of the conversations were about sex per se either. An interest in sex is one thing and an obsession is another and what is going on here is neither.

They were establishing a culture of male superiority over girls and women and things that occupy women such as babies, so not about sex but about power. An 11 year old boy who has access to porn is learning that males are consumers of the bodies of girls and women with the right to judge them, use them, discard them. That is not normal behaviour. It is a sign of a significant problem in the home life of some child or children in the locality. The general sexualisation of society may very well be the way the wind is blowing but it is not right and it is not normal for children to start looking at pornography at 11 and embracing the values associated with it. It is a very big deal indeed and it needs to be challenged.

Trust needs to be earned. Trust is not a blank cheque. A child of 11 is still very much accountable to his parents for his behaviour whether that behaviour has some tenuous link to sex or not, and he needs to demonstrate that he can be trusted by respecting their values and expectations of his behaviour. Training a child to do that at age 11 means taking away privileges and experiencing real and possibly painful or embarrassing consequences until respect and willingness to conform to behaviour expectations can be demonstrated. At 11 years of age a child is perfectly capable of showing the beginnings of maturity and responsibility and real empathy towards others and a parent has every right to haul a child over the coals and face the consequences of his actions if he has failed in those areas.

A parent who has allowed their child to access pornography is a parent guilty of neglect. A parent who does not put his or her foot down once he or she has discovered their child has been shown porn by another is also guilty of neglect. A parent who keeps the information she has discovered to herself and doesn't let the school know needs to consider whether she has a responsibility to the community and to the children of the community who are being harmed by what is going on. At the very least other parents should be told, but in order for the situation to be dealt with properly and with tact the school should be told.

I'm on a planet where my DDs go to school every day confident in the knowledge that if anyone referred to them as a slut the administration would take immediate action. It's a nice planet -- there's a very positive learning environment, it's very respectful, an RC school. If I thought a professional educator or administrator in my DDs' school held the notion that the behaviour and attitudes of the bottom of the barrel of society were acceptable behaviour in their school I would consider that person incompetent.

I think you have handled this in a perfectly good way tbh.

yes it was a shock when you first discovered it, but now you have had a chat with your ds, brought it all out into the open and let him know how you feel about his comments. I don't really think there is much more you can do.

FWIW, I do think a lot of this sort of thing is all about fitting in with their peers, and most well bought up children might write these things, but not actually mean them. The fact that your ds is a lovely boy at home who is excited at the prospect of having a baby brother, has teddies on his bed and loves his mum is the thing to hold on to, along with all the nice conversations on his phone, NOT the odd text that make your skin crawl!

I recently discovered text messages on my ds's ipod (aged 10, yr 6) saying - 'you are a cock sucking retard and I hate your fucking guts' . In all, he had 25 texts all of a similar vein. Luckily, ds realised the (same aged) boy who sent these was an idiot, who deserved no respect whatsoever, we showed the school who dealt with it appropriately. BUT, the shock i felt when reading this - well, my God!

It was, however, a good thing that it happened because it meant we could have frank, honest conversations about text/phones/inappropriate language/respect etc etc and ds is now much more open about 'stuff' - iyswim. Hopefully, all this coming out will be a good thing for your ds too.

PS - do 10/11 year old pre-teens really wank?? I sometimes catch a glimpse of ds's willy and it is such a maggot, his hand would really be too big and just slide off the end as it moved up and down. Surely it needs to be, well, just bigger!!

I remember being 11, and talking to my friends about sex,and willies, and french kissing, and I also remember some of the more vile boys having porn mags which they looked at behind a bush.
I am in my 30's.
Our parents would have been horrified, but there was not much in it. We still didn't actually know anything. still don't.
My friend said to me "do you know, when you have sex, the man puts it in and out 3 times!! at which we both went "eeeww"!

Also, having thought about it, the denigrating language towards women was very prevalent when I was a kid too.
I heard a lot about how girls "stink of fish" and, at around 14 or so, how any girl who was interested in sex was automatically a "slag".
I also had no idea what the clitoris was until I was 14(it doesn't seem to feature very much in porn!)
It's true that the prevalence and easy availability of porn is terrifying, but I think that once these boys get older, they maybe realise that it's not real, and have a (hopefully) good background of positive female and male role models to inform their values.
OP, you sound like you are giving your son a solid upbringing, and this will stand him in good stead when he is a young adult imo.
It's when they don't have that tempering influence of normality that porn culture etc becomes really damaging.

I think people who think the "olden days" were different are being naive. My DH is 42 and when he was at primary school, there was already porn circulating amongst the boys. Yes, it was in the form of magazines, but it still happened. Not that much has changed, just the media.

The denigration of women wasn't good then and the passage of time hasn't improved it.

Maybe if parents had done more to challenge it or stamp it out in past generations there wouldn't be the epidemic of rape and DV that we are contending with? Obviously some children back then didn't absorb the right message by osmosis, and predictably grew into objectionable adults or downright criminal adults.

I think what has changed is the perception that is it normal and the argument that it is healthy because it has a remote connection to sex.

Ok. I ignored the blindingly obvious, mathanxiety, about getting my son to do what I can only assume the vast majority of kids his age are expected to do around the house, and the somewhat offensive assumption that he obviously never spends time with his dad, but are you seriously telling me that he is destined to grow up to be an objectionable/ criminal adult now? Apologies if I seem snappy. I am pregnant and tired and now feeling somewhat defensive about my son who is a child who did something stupid and not nice which I feel we have dealt with.

No that wasn't the point of my post at all -- I was responding to a post of NowThenWreck's, ruminating in my own mind on how things were as far as I remember them when growing up and how children who didn't receive clear guidance or a good example from their parents ended up. (Some of the people who went to school with me sprang to my mind).

As far as spending time with his father in enjoyable activities and doing chores -- it wasn't clear from your previous posts that your DS was doing this. No offence meant. Fwiw, I did say earlier on that I thought you did the best possible thing in reading out the texts to him, etc., and I think you have handled the situation really well.

I would tell the school you are concerned about the tone and content of communication among the students in addition to all you have done so far.

I think the whole 'slut' is going a bit OTT their will be just as many girls referring to boys as pricks, wankers.dickheads. etc.
So as much as its not a nice word it is just a word ,and you also don't want to send the message, that one gender is more protected from insults than another.

If anyone on here would get just as angry reading their DD calling boys wankers and tosspots , then I apologise, but I highly doubt it, which is Hypocrisy not a good message to send.

In the nicest way possible I do think you overeacted you've really violated privacy and will no doubt be more devious in future.
You can't allow him adult priviliges i.e a phone without adult rights and respect to go with it e.g privacy. its a conflicting message.

But I understand you feeling like you need to do something is hard.

I understand mathanxieties sentiments even if I don't totally share the view,
calling someone a slut will not turn someone into a criminal I have and do use it sometimes(more jokey than an insult), no-ones died.
And to transfer all of that onto an 11 year old is tbh going to do more harm than good.

From what I've read its not that bad.

Speaking as the mother of a 12 year old and a 1 year old, I was acutely
aware when I was pg that DS1 might be very embarrassed and feel awkward about this highly visible sign of his parents' sex life. Especially as all his friends were also aware about the arrival of his little sister.

I can well imagine kids of this age dishing out a lot of teasing on the subject to a classmate whose mum was expecting. It may also be quite hard for your DS to get his head around it all - its hard enough for kids that age to deal with puberty etc anyway. I think he is probably just trying to fit in and replied to his friends comment about you in that way to try and seem like he is not bothered about it.

Throw in your own pregnancy hormones and its not surprising that it all seems so awful. If he's a good kid otherwise, I am sure all will be fine.

I can remember being that age and everyone talking about sex all the time - looking back I don't think any of us understood what we were going on about.

Wanking is totally natural and going to happen! Ditto porn...swearing...getting drunk...possibly cigarettes/drugs...and none of that makes you a bad parent, that's just teenagers (and indeed pre-teens)

I wholeheartedly agree with Lilo about the whole steering conversations thing but if you overreact to this now (taking the 'tough love' approach) it will be hard for him ever to trust you with conversations about sex, drugs, etc, and that, rather than a few offensive texts, would be the thing to get really worried about.

Woops I'm an idiot, didn't realise this thread went on for so many pages, hadn't read the end of it. Anyway you're still a good parent and he's still a normal boy!

'I think the whole 'slut' is going a bit OTT their will be just as many girls referring to boys as pricks, wankers.dickheads. etc.
So as much as its not a nice word it is just a word ,and you also don't want to send the message, that one gender is more protected from insults than another. '

I never said calling someone a slut will mean a child will automatically turn into a criminal, nor did I mean to imply that 'slut' is worse than any derogatory term applied to boys. I don't know what anyone would find on a girl's phone in this community. Two wrongs don't make a right.

What we do know is there is a culture of disrespect for girls going on here among these 11 year old boys, between the porn and the slut remark, and my points here are:
(1) slut is not 'just a word' any more than the N word is just a word
(2) allowing boys or girls to refer to each other like this is never a good thing, neither for the boys nor for the girls
(3) porn is not about sex and that needs to be pointed out to young tweens
(4) even if disrespect happens a lot it is still something parents should be trying their utmost to challenge, parents of girls as well as parents of boys
(5) if it goes unchallenged children will grow up without understanding how wrong it is or why it is wrong