To think DS is gay and ‘friend’ is BF

[DenimMaker]

My DS, 10, has been friends with this 11 year old boy from his football team since he joined in April.
Since about mid summerish he has been gradually going round to his and him over to ours more often. And when they’re not physically together they’re always on the Xbox playing online. I just assumed it’s his best friend and I was glad he’d made a close friendship.

However on Sunday I looked at the family laptop search history to find something I was on earlier and found searches like “boys kissing” and “guys with abs” and I was stunned. The search time was when his friend was over so they were looking at it together. I haven’t said anything to DS or DH because I don’t want to humiliate him. I want to ask him if he’s gay but at the same time I want him to tell me when he’s ready. I’m not a homophobic person so I don’t mind if he is but it’s still been on my mind all week.

Do I ask him or wait for him to ask me? Do I tell DH?

They're 10 years old. Absolutely they might be 'into boys', but they might also just be interested to know what goes on, so to speak. Your son's 10 and you really don't need to worry about this at all.

Because it’s ‘hilarious’

I agree with the opportunity to talk about internet safety.

Oh my God I can't believe some people don't think children can know their sexuality at 10, I remember having a massive crush on Zak Morris from "saved by the bell" in 1990, loads of posters on the wall cut out from magazines, talking in the primary school playground with my friends about boy crushes, and I would have been 7 or 8 when that first came out.

I agree with the conversation about Internet safety and as others have said they might both be gay, but you can still be gay and still be just friends too. I had lots of friends who were boys growing up even though I was heterosexual as were they, and if the Internet was a thing I'd probably have used it to look up pics of kissing (snogging) with them too! 😅

Say nothing, just make sure he is using the internet safely. He may well be gay he also might be starting to question his sexuality. The only thing that matters is that he is happy, healthy and well adjusted.

He's very young. It is quite normal for good friends of any sex to really love each other.
Remind him of that if he is confused.
Let him be a child and leave it up to him to discover his own sexuality in his own good time.
Kids are inquisitive of so many things and while we might have been looking up words like poofter, coitus and sex in the dictionary at the school library at age 10 years ago, they will look up information on the internet.
Be prepared to answer any questions without prejudging his reason for learning things.

I thought boys were gross when I was 10. That didn't mean I was a lesbian. By my late teens through my 30s I liked them a lot. Now I'm in my 50s I'm back to not liking them again😡

Far too young to be approaching him on the topic

Aren’t you more concerned about the fact they could be looking at porn at such young age

Assuming all devices have safety locks on adult content and porn, Op.

Having a word about what they're looking at and age-appropriacy is a good idea, as @SarahAndQuack has kind of suggested, but trust me, at that age and for a while yet many boys (🙋) will be experimenting with their feelings, preferences etc in all sorts of ways; in that regard, just leave them to it

What on earth do you mean? If he's a consenting adult then it's not really any of your business. If he is a child under your care then you absolutely need to keep him safe as a priority and part of this will unfortunately be having conversations about what you found. If he is old enough to search for these things then he's absolutely old enough to have an age-appropriate conversation about them.

“The search time was when his friend was over so they were looking at it together”.

My concern would be about my child being free to view whatever your son was free to do on your family laptop whilst at your house. Would you approach their parents asking if their son is gay?! Perhaps you need to be looking at what your son has access to age 10, you have a responsibility to his friends when they’re in your home.

This thread is interesting to me because my son is a similar age and my sister is gay so he's just grown up with that being normal and accepted that auntie x has a girlfriend and they kiss etc.. (not snogging in front of him but he's just witnessed them kissing goodbye or whatever) maybe if you have a 10 year old who has googled men kissing to see if it really exists/laugh then a conversation is needed to frame it as normal. I couldn't not chat to my son about this but would come at it from "why have you googled this?" And have a chat. I wouldn't ask "are you gay?" At 10. But let him know it would be ok if he was, as a grown up. And chat about what children should be looking at on the Internet.
I really doubt the friend is a boyfriend but you need to know why those things were googled and address it.

So he is your first boy.

Boys will look at all sorts of things, these are of sexual nature but if they had been looking up some other topic you wouldn't have given it that meaning. Homosexuality will have been a topic in the playground years ago, they will have covered it in class by this point.

Don't read in to it. Don't raise that you know. Do ensure that you have good parental controls on all devices (it would not take long from some of those searches to end up on something explicit).

People google search all sorts of things. Kids are interested in all sorts of sexuality. Kids have all sorts of conversations with their mates. Especially at his age. Please don't draw any hasty conclusions. If you say that, he may feel unable to continue a perfectly unremarkable friendship out of embarrassment. He's at an age when it's normal to have some thoughts that his mum doesn't know about.

Why do you assume they're gay? That wouldn't be my immediate assumption. If they wanted to kiss they'd probably just do so.

I would have a chat about Internet safety. I wouldn't mention anything else. He could be looking up these things out of curiosity because he is interested in boys or because he wants to learn as a boy what to do (kissing wise) and be like (and) for girls . There's not enough info to go on . Do the safety talk but don't get hung up on the content of the searches. I'd say you're overthinking it.

He's ten! Get a grip.

Why wouldn't you agree?

He might be gay. He might not. My friend and I used to look through the Kays and Great Universal catalogues (🤣🤣) for pictures of women in bras and bikinis and in the shower. Neither of us were gay. It can just be curiosity about how you see your own body evolving. We definitely would have searched the internet for girls kissing, if it had existed!

My eldest son told me he was gay when he was 15. He said he had no idea until he was about 14. He said he didn’t have any interest in girls but that it took him a while to realise that he was actually interested in boys. I didn’t have any weird intuition about it so it came as a complete surprise.

I wouldn’t say a word or even hint at it. Just leave him be. If he is gay, he will tell you some day when he’s ready.

In primary school i had a male friend(i am male also), I would physically hump him when he would come over to my house after school as if he was my gf and i was maybe 7/8. By 18 i had a bf already and I am in my late 30s now and fully who I am(Bi)

do not let anyone tell you do not think so because he is 10.

Probably just curious, I mean they are only 10. I don't think this means he is gay and you asking him outright will cause you no end of problems. I always made it clear to my DS's growing up that you can't help who you fall in love with, be it a man or a woman, and that it didn't matter, they also always knew they could tell me anything (and they did and they do now, too much sometimes 😂)

I would be checking your internet settings and putting some age restriction on and his phone if he has one, searches like that, although innocent, could lead to not so innocent sites.

Curiosity at that age. It may not even be your son, but his mate taking advantage of open internet. It could be a clumsy search and they didn't add the word girls. Or they could be looking at 6 packs as they are planning gym life for when they want to go - my lads couldn't wait to turn old enough to go to the gym and use equipment. Could be research for the playground hot topics. One of my lads had a lot of freedom at a young age with social media due to lockdown and omg the weird and wonderful things they chatted about! And such a wide range - from very innocent to those very cheeky and knew stuff they really shouldn't and liked to share shock factor.

She doesn't have to label, however 10 is also too young to be searching for these kinds of things online, as it's so easy to go from one thing to another, and before you know it you're viewing something really inappropriate. This is the discussion you need, OP, rather than one about his sexuality.