DS is in a ‘long distance relationship’

[verleest]

My son turned 13 last week, for the past month he's been spending more time in his room and being moody when we ask him to go somewhere with us. We thought it was as he was about to be a teenager.

Today, I checked his phone as I usually do but he keeps changing his password, today I told him he wouldn't have his phone if he didn't tell me his password, so he did eventually.

Whilst I was looking at his search history, he got a message from a girl on Instagram who I hadn't heard of, so I checked her profile and she's 14/15, and she has him in her ‘bio’ and apparently they've been dating for a month. She doesn't live anywhere near us (about 3 hours away). I checked their messages and she broke up with a girl to be with DS a few months ago and then she went back to the girl and now she's back with DS again and she seems a bit clingy. She constantly tells DS she misses him if he hasn't texted her for a few hours. She also tells him she loves him constantly but that could just be teenagers!

What do I do about this?

I also told DS that he can only message/be followed by people he knows from school etc and that was the rule for him having Instagram. He doesn't have snapchat though.

‘She’ also does seem manipulative, as whenever DS tells ‘her’ he needs to go somewhere ‘she’ asks him why and says that she thought he loved Her etc.

The

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We have spoken to him about people not being who they say they are online etc.

I check his phone as he's a child and I'm glad I do as I wouldn't have any idea!

I did think I was over reacting after the first few replies

Definitely not overreacting, OP. There are some very naive posters in this thread. You absolutely need to keep an eye on this. A PP referred to Breck Bednar, who was a 14 year old boy murdered by an 18 year old who groomed him via online gaming. The Northants police have developed a short film about this - I’d watch it and judge whether your son is old enough to be shown it too (or advises 15+) www.northants.police.uk/news/northants/news/campaigns/2019/april-19/brecks-last-game/

Don’t let him meet this person in person without you and preferably at least one other adult present, and in a public place. As PP have said, no 14-15 year old girl would be interested in a just turned 13 year old boy - unless he’s lying to her and she thinks he’s 16-17, in which case that’s another conversation about catfishing you need to have with him.

My first thought was whether it was some sort of scam or grooming. YANBU to be concerned, and I don't think you have over-reacted.

You are definitely not overreacting. I totally agree with everything @SilverGlassHare and others have said.

Id have a few net safety talks/revenge porn and stop asking for his password and checking. Id make an offhand remark about catfishing and "hoping she isnt a 50 year old bloke/thank goodness for facetiming" comment so he starts thinking for himself and not be too trusting and then leave him to it. However, i would make sure all location settings etc are off on his phone and that i knew he was exactly where he said he was (disrceetly if possible) to minimise chances and opportunities for snatching or lying to meet up.

And just putting it out there, if you dont trust him to have a phone you dont actually have to let him have one. And whilst you are entitled to check it at that age and put whatever conditions you want on it, it could damage your relationship to do so.

My son and his mates were catfished by a girl who 'was the same age' they were videod masturbating etc.. Turns out the guy was a paedophile in America. We only knew because the police over there got him and they found ip address of sons friends laptop. Pics and vids had already been shared online... I don't know, I wouldn't be so concerned about the sex Ed talk, more about online safety and sending pics etc. Probably all innocent your side, but that fact that it's making him miserable sets off bells to me!

I think this day forming online friendships, meeting people online first, and even forming a romantic connection online is really normal. I made and met so many friends in the late 90s early 2000s it must be really normalised by now.

However your son is still young and needs a good talk about online safety, never sharing nudes, and to be honest the other thing that stands out is if she is who she says she is her messages are controlling and manipulative, you need to start having conversations about healthy relationship dynamics rather than condoms.

verleest like others my concern would be mostly that this 14 year old girl is actually an adult man, and that DS will be asked to go off on the train to meet "her", be collected by the fictional girl's "dad" etc.

Of course it could really be a 14 year old girl who's interested in boys who've only just turned 13... If you take it as genuine its still a little worrying because the girl is demanding contact every two hours, and sounds as though she possibly has some issues (anxious or other mild mental health problems perhaps, who knows, but that's very intense and dependent considering they've never met!) and is controlling and influencing your child to avoid normal offline social contact and daily activities even if without any conscious bad intent.

Its tricky of course (I have teens and pre teens) but you definitely need to monitor without being heavy handed, and to have a talk about online safety, and the need to be aware of his own mental health - I've talked to my own 14 year old about the mental health issues of screen based life dominating, and the importance of doing more "real life" socialising and activities than screen time for mental and physical health.

I was being groomed online at that age. Nobody knew as no one monitored what was going on. I had even given out my home address as he was going to send 'gifts'. I'm lucky nothing worse happened.

I would absolutely be concerned. In my situation I was aware of Internet grooming, yet still had no idea it was happening to me. You never think its going to happen to you

She's probably not a girl and DS is probably being groomed by a man for eventual meet-up.

OP I would consider getting some professional advice about the best way to handle the situation. Maybe the NSPCC could put you in contact with an organisation that could guide you in the best course of action?

I'd be taking his phone away (as a last resort), but would show him that documentary and anything f else to make him change his mind

She could be cat fishing and grooming him. Very worrying because this “teen girl” could ask for explicit images and videos or even ask to meet up.

Ignore PP saying this is “normal teen stuff” and to mind your own business. This is a huge safeguarding concern.

verleest when I see posters advising parents not to monitor young teens online conversation with complete strangers, not to give a thought to who their young teens are spending hours in private exchanges with online, or on other threads not to have any cerfew for or wait up for 15 year olds staying out late at night at unspecified locations or in parks, then I wonder who posters who give advice like that actually are - teens themselves, or people with an interest in discouraging parents from knowing what their children are doing and keeping them safe...

You can speak to children about online safety all you like - it does not remove the responsibility for actually monitoring and checking.
There are regular posts here from parents who had no clue that their young teen children were sending nude pictures. Recently there was a poster who was contacted by her child’s school to tell her.

@nimbuscloud

You can speak to children about online safety all you like - it does not remove the responsibility for actually monitoring and checking. There are regular posts here from parents who had no clue that their young teen children were sending nude pictures. Recently there was a poster who was contacted by her child’s school to tell her.

Sigh. But checking a teen's phone is not going to tell you all you need to know. Most teens are very IT savvy and if they want to hide what they're up to, they can. The trouble with routinely checking is that it can lull you into a false sense of security - as they get old enough to know how to cover their tracks, you have to empower them to realise for themselves when someone is interacting with them for sinister purposes.

The more you openly routinely check and monitor the phone, the more they're going to delete things and the happier you'll feel because you'll think everything is fine.

Teen children don't always think about the consequences, because they're impulsive and they haven't seen any consequences yet. The only way to stop them from sending nude photos is to equip them with the knowledge that not only could the person receiving those photos not be who they think they are, but to explain that once you send a photo to someone, they can publish it online, they can send it to your friends - they can do all sorts of things with it, and you can't stop that.

It's not much of a fix to remove access to a phone (temporarily or permanently) or to monitor known accounts/apps, because teens are creative. They will always find ways around it. It's more powerful to make sure that if they have the ability to do something, they know for themselves that it would be a really, really bad idea.

It's more powerful to make sure that if they have the ability to do something, they know for themselves that it would be a really, really bad idea.

How do you do that? For a 12 year old?

He is a child op. He needs to be told that. Not an adult having any business being in a 'relationship'. Yea I would give him a firm talk about this, and nip this meeting up in the bud.

The trouble with routinely checking is that it can lull you into a false sense of security - as they get old enough to know how to cover their tracks, you have to empower them to realise for themselves when someone is interacting with them for sinister purposes.

How many parents know that getting around parental controls (especially on phones) isn't very hard. You can easily fake your location, get around time limits, porn filters and there are "hidden apps" that look boring eg notes but are really serving another purpose. Secret extra social media accounts and apps like Snapchat when content can be hidden or disappears makes it impossible

OP Have you asked him how he met her? What checks did he do to see if she was really who she said she was ? There is a programme on MTV called Catfish where they check the identity of online romances. Sometimes the person is who they say they are but sometimes it's someone they know, a total stranger or someone who's not even the same sex as the person that they are pretending to be. He needs to watch out for requests for money or gifts as well

FWIW my son is 14 and his main communication device is through the PS4. Some of the people on his friends lists aren't people he knows irl but he needs to friend them to chat so that they can trade stuff in games. I can hear him gaming and am confident the real life chat is with school friends as I know their user names.

Of course it could really be a 14 year old girl who's interested in boys who've only just turned 13... If you take it as genuine its still a little worrying because the girl is demanding contact every two hours, and sounds as though she possibly has some issues (anxious or other mild mental health problems perhaps, who knows, but that's very intense and dependent considering they've never met!) and is controlling and influencing your child to avoid normal offline social contact and daily activities even if without any conscious bad intent.

I think this is a good point, that I missed first in my assuming the person he is chatting to isn't a 14 or 15 yr old girl at all.

But actually talking about healthy relationships is another really important things to do. Even if this were a teen girl, your ds needs help to understand that her demands and controlling behaviour have no place in a healthy relationship.

I found it helpful to talk about relationships I'd come across (same with scenarios I'd come across) if it ever came up in a film or a series they were watching, or on the news, or, what I would do every now and then is tell them about "Someone at work's dd / ds had this happen..... I didn't know this was a 'thing'. What would you have done? Does this happen quite a bit amongst people you know?" etc etc, as it removes any personal involvement from the situation and you are talking about a theoretical relationship or occurrence so no-one needs to get defensive or secretive.
Obviously I was making up the scenarios - I don't think my colleagues dc have lives that are that dramatic

Today, he refused to go out with us, he did eventually go but he was sulking for the whole time we were out. When we got back, I took his phone etc off of him and told him we weren't going to go on technology today (I also took my other DCs things so it wasn't just him) he then started complaining that it wasn't fair, then later on he tried to take his phone back but I caught him and he told me he ‘needed’ his phone, I asked him why he told me he just did. I told him that I knew about his ‘relationship’ and I tried to speak to him about healthy relationships but he wasn't listening and he wouldn't say how he met ‘her’ either.

I think that at 14 most kids start enjoying spending more time with their friends than with their families, particularly boys. These days they mostly communicate through Instagram/Snapchat (phone essential for this) and many good friendships are cultivated over the xBox. That is pretty much normal, so don’t worry if he is starting to decline going on family oriented outings.

The worrying thing in this case is that he is having an intense relationship with someone he hasn’t met at all in real life, as there is a good likelihood that he is being groomed.

I suggest that instead of taking the phone off and separate him from all his friends, you sit with him and explain what it is worrying in this case.