girlie pics on 12 yr old sons laptop

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Oh god. Watching film with my son and thought he was casually keeping an eye on something on his laptop/facebooking his mates.... I looked at it and he had googled "nude girls". I had taken the grot block off to enable him to look up some sport gear he was after for the holidays and the little tike is looking at some pretty hard pictures.

Do I put the grot block on and give him a talk or take the laptop off him until he is older and get furious?

Should a 12 year old even have unsupervised access to a laptop? - he travels between me and his dad and homework goes back and forth on it so I thought it was ok, but not to search out nudie pics. He goes to his mates houses and watches jackass and looks at god knows what. 12???? I was climbing trees and eating sherbert fountains not thinking about sex....

Am I just getting old? Is it a healthy interest and if so shouldn't he just happy with nicking his dad's copy of the Sun or is it straight in at the deep end now?

I am insulted that he did it when we were meant to be watching a film earlier as an end of term late night treat after the other kids had gone to bed, I mean not mega late but 8 until 10.... but I suppose that is me being unreasonable? Is 12 suddenly what used to be 15? If I blow my top and stop him won't that make it even more intriguing to do?

Someone talk some sense into me.....please

I went to an all girls school and with regards to sex my parents were rather conservative about that in my upbringing. The forst porn mag I was shown was when I was eleven at a friends house.

That was a one off and I had no interest in it except to giggle feel uncomfortable and secretly think eww gross. It belonged to her Father.

I think in this day and age of computers it is best to do what you can to monitor his exposure to porn on the computer etc at home but accept he can access it at a friends house or on their phone etc. You won't beable to control all he does.

You can only do what you can do..must be very difficult and I sympathise.

Monitor him at home and where you can as you have always done.

I think it depends on how explicit the photos are really.

At 12 I and my friends were very much thinking and talking about sex and I'm 43 so it's not a new thing.

Having said that, we were never exposed to porn at our fingertips or some of the depravity that can be found on the internet.

I would talk to him about what he looks at and decide from there whether or not you want him to have access.

I would always make sure the filter is on though as there are some extremely disturbing images out there that can come up during a perfectly innocent search.

Yes, you need parental controls as there's a lot of very unpalatable stuff out there, it's really not just 'girlie' pictures. I'm sure you're already talking to him about sex and relationships.

Maybe you also need to check with the other parents if you think they are allowing unlimited access while he is over? No, it's not appropriate to give a child unlimited access to the Internet and I think shortly we shall see this as negligent and I'm going to guess parents will be held criminally responsible in the future if they do this.

Of course its normal for him to search and I'm sure he will have seen stuff already, even with parental controls there is still some images available.

It is really very important to talk to him about it. Most of the stuff on the internet isn't very nice in terms of what he can see and how women are portrayed. There was a really horrifying article I read (sorry no idea where it was to link) about what average ages children had seen certain things (anal, bestiality etc.). It was VERY young.

The internet isn't going away so he needs to develop a critical eye. Talk to him about respect, consent and the difference between fantasy and reality which should put him streets ahead of the average man.

I think the fact that he did it whilst in the same room as you is very bad. He needs talking to about boundries!

The next thing I would adress is the way women are portrayed in the media..seriously. It's natural for boys to look at women and girls and naural to have curiosity but porn...soft and hard is a different kettle of fish and he should be educated about the fact that women are not a pair of tits to be looked at but that they are people in their own right and he should bear that in mind.

its a bit weird that he'd look a porn whilst sitting with his mum. boundaries, indeed.

I had this problem with my son when he was 11. He would come home from school an hour before I came home from work and obviously spent it on research!

What upset me was that on boobs.com or something similar there were links to sex with animals.

I told him that I had to take the computer into work because it had a virus. He knew enough to know the technicians would be able to see what he'd been doing.

After that I noticed he had some copies of Nutz or whatever it's called. I said nothing about that.

In my day boys had the odd copy of Playboy or the Littlewoods catalogue!

thank you. I think that is what spooked me... the images contained one or two of young - really young looking girls. I have been ok about looking at the sun and have been open and talking about it/sex/his bbm girlfriends who he has never met.... Will try to see if there is some kind of filter which allows some things - the block I put on was just blocking everything from itunes/amazon/sports direct and normal stuff so it was driving me nuts putting the code in all the time to allow stuff.

OK, suppose it is a healthy interest..... yikes. poor kid was mortified and went up to bed all sorry and sad. I don't want to slam him for stuff like this or make him secretive but was kind of surprised..

That's a big concern about these free porn sites Blether they link to pay as you go porn sites which are very often MUCH harder ad very disturbing...violent images etc...women beig raped...(or what is designed to look like rape) and to boys at such an impressionable age there is a HUGE risk that this will skew their ideas about whatcontitutes a normal sex life.

There has been a big rise in underage girls being asked for explicit pictures of themselves by peers...and also offering them...they are at crucial stages in development and watching shit like this really affects them.

I'd put the block back on rather than take all access away from the laptop. I know this must have come as a shock but it's not tremendously surprising behaviour for a 12 year old boy.

As others have said, I suspect many of us had started to be intrigued (if remained remarkable innocent) about sex at this age but our access was mainly via well known "rude" books. Which, in retrospect, weren't particularly rude. But although internet access is immediate and in theory easier, if you make sure the filter is on his ability to find dodgy images will be drastically reduced.

I remember getting satellite TV when ds2 was 12. Not long afterwards I came downstairs for a glass of water late one night and discovered him in the sitting room with the remote control and a guilty expression. It turned out that he'd been told that at the "rude television" channels went live at midnight and he'd been sneaking down to check out the action. He felt somewhat cheated because, in his words "this lady starts to take off her cardigan but just before it gets interesting, the telly goes fuzzy and you get a message telling you to put a card in. I don't suppose we've got one, have we?"

and yes, that really made me feel odd that he did it whilst in the sitting room with me.... suppose it is the general lack of respect or awareness or something. Wierd - he didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it... I mean the being in the same room. He was mortified that I had seen it and was calmly angry but he seemed baffled when I asked him what he thought he was doing even looking at it whilst we were meant to be watching a film.

Thanks. Boundaries will become a lot clearer. Trying to get him to understand respect for girls and the difference between real girls and photoshopped Riannas when it is all so blatant is kind of tough.

Big talk tomorrow... thanks. x

Pandemoniaa, that made me smile! Glad it isn't unusual then.

KissmyEH - I feel bad as have already had one run in with him when I found a picture of a girl who he kind of knows in her Marks & Spencers on his phone. When I checked back on his texts he had asked her for a picture. He lost his phone for a month as I confiscated it, but now he deletes his messages and is more canny with it.

I feel old. Am off to bed to listen to the wireless....

Thanks

What do you mean "in her Marks and Spencers"?

Her undewear? I think the less you try to minimize this the better and termslike "Her Marks and Spencers" whilst amusing, do nothing to keep this seious which it is...a minor having sexual photos of herself out there is bad...I would be seriously worried about that! I would also consider telling the school as it indicates that there's a culture of this kind of thing...which precludes them having sex with one another...and at 12 that's not ok.

I'd filter and block as much as you can because it can get addictive, and he is very young - unlikely to be able to regulate or police himself if he does start having a problem with it. So make it as hard as possible to get hold of until he is older and can work it out for himself.

As well as this I would definitely have some chats with him over the next few years about differences between sex and porn, the importance of enthusiastic consent, not just passive acceptance, dispelling myths like "All women have rape fantasies" "Girls don't want to look like sluts so they will say no when they mean yes" and "She's up for it if she " etc. Also I think important to explain to him if he chooses to watch porn what he's actually watching - that women may have been trafficked, may be drugged, may be forced to do things they're not comfortable with via threat of violence or financial necessity, and that the companies which put these free clips on websites are really doing so in order to drive traffic to their subscription sites, and companies who have spare cash to do this kind of advertising are much less likely to be moral/scrupulous about the ways they make this cash so are probably more likely to be undertaking these dodgy practices.

Remind him that even if he is under 18 he can be prosecuted for owning or looking at images of underage girls.

so sorry, not being offensive or making light of this, didn't know what else to put and was trying not to ignite. I did find out who the girl was and yes, it was in her underwear. I called her mum and had a long talk with her about it, yes there does seem to be a thing going on their bbm messenger. I really did take it deadly seriously.

thanks for the advice though, wasn't belittling it. By girlie I simply knew that people would know what I meant - should have used different phrase. Marks and Spencers are what we call the underwear in our house - realise it prob sounded like I was being dismissive. It was awful - truly.

Odd that you never mentioned that before the looking at pics really as that is the more serious issue without a doubt. But you seem to know that...or you would not havetried to ifind out who she was.

How do you imagine her parents might feel about it?

Would you want to know if your son were sending images of himself like that to another pupil...

Don't worry OP. I don't see any problem with your post. It's just that sometimes we get creepy one off posters who come along and write on suspicious topics and then it becomes apparent they're just fishing and poking for replies to add to their, er, "personal folder".

However posters are supposed to use the report function if they suspect this is the case.

I didn't mention the phone thing as it was some time ago and dealt with. It was really difficult to call the mum and talk to her but I was horrified at what my son had done. I also got his dad round and we talked about it so it was kind of dealt with and we were extremely angry. and no, I am not belittling it, it was horrible and as you can imagine her mum was shocked. It wasn't until that other reply that I thought to add two and two together - not for any other reason than I was trying to deal with this looking for pictures.

Really, just tired housewife who wanted to know if being upset, angry, and all that was normal or whether I was being unreasonable and actually it was just part of his curiosity which he had pushed too far, and if so some ideas of how to deal.

I think the block has to go back on... But fairly normal behaviour for a 12 year old I think...

I remember being about 11 / 12 and getting a tv in my rooom and staying up late to watch eurotrash in the late 80s 90s.. Pretty much soft porn really.

I would ask his dad to have a word with him about this.He might be able to relate better to him as he has also been a 12 year old boy who probably also looked at porn magazines at a similar age.

P.S. I do remember spending a lot of time looking at the mens underwear pages of my DM's Littewoods catalogue!

This is sad. It used to be looking at page 3 a glimpse of an abandoned porn mag and it was almost a progression.

Now they sit down and it's straight into anal fisting and teenage lesbians.

The curiosity in itself is natural. Getting exposed to hardcore pornography the minute you act on that curiosity isn't.

Do tell him the hard facts about how exploited a lot of the women (especially girls) are in those photos. That anything said to the contrary is probably written by someone with a vested interest.

Porn is very very different to in my youth.

It is sad and shocking. I would definitely use this as a chance to restore computer block but even more importantly have lots of chats about objectifying women etc.
His curiosity isn't wrong but what he can find is extreme and will do him no good.
Couple of years ago, DH found that DS had searched for 'sexy naked ladies' on the computer. It sounded such an old fashioned term, almost sweet even. When I looked at the screen tho, I was really horrified with what came up.