to expect that my dc should be able to play outdoors without being subjected to porn?

[cariboo]

Dc & other neighbors riding bikes & scooters Sunday afternoon. I looked out to see that an older boy (12) was shoving a book in my dd's face (she's 8), forcing her & others to look. Dd covered ds' & neighbor girl's eyes with her hands (they're both 5), saying 'don't look, don't look'. I rush out, grab the book & see that it's an erotic comic book with drawings of naked men & women on the cover. Two other boys of around the same age are standing nearby, laughing. I shout at the boys, calling them dirty little perverts, where did you get this, how could you show such a thing to little kids, you should be ashamed of yourself, etc. Marched up to one boy's home, ready to blast the parents into orbit. No answer. So I call the police, who refer me to the child protection agency (closed on Sunday, of course). Meanwhile, dh is having more success locating parents who get a stern warning to keep their kid away from our dcs.

Should I contact the child protection agency or am I over-reacting? Other parents with little ones involved have now forbidden their dcs to leave their own gardens but it seems such a shame to keep them practically chained to the house.

We live in a hamlet, btw so no access to local park or playground without taking the car.

come to think of it I see kids not much older than twelve playing shrieky chasing/pinching etc type games and it's not unususual for a girl to screech "Oi, you perv!" without anyone being traumatised

but it's probably a bit more shocking when an adult says it and isn't joking

As always I'm surprised about the general MN blase approach to children and porn

I think you said manga didn't you? I was just picking up all the different japanese types of comic and bunging them into one post.

No, you're right, we don't know. But even if it were two girls one cup, I still think calling the police is a reaction too far

I tend to agree with solidgold - I think that the bullying nature ('forcing' them to look at porn) is something that should be addressed with the parents, as well as the fact that the 12 year old had the porn in the first place.

However, I do think your reaction was over the top - calling the police? What did you expect them to do?

A small anecdote, if it helps. When I was about 4, my brother (then 9) showed me a really hardcore porn mag. I remember some of the scenes to this day - there were horses involved, and I was a bit upset by it...to the point where I had a nightmare that night and when my mum asked me what was wrong, I sobbingly told her that it was the magazine DB showed me. My DB got a thorough telling off, confessed he had been given it by one of our cousins. My mum phoned her sister, she told off her son, and he told her he'd got it from his dad's bedside table!

Anyway, there is a point - yes I was upset for one night, but was fine after that and it really had no influence at all on my views on sex/relationships or had any long-term effect. Apart from possibly giving me an aversion to horse porn

spice I did mention manga, as an alternative view to the assumptions people were making as to the nature of the material.

I haven't at any point said that's what it was, just that it could have been anything, up to and inculding this hentai stuff which I'm definitely not going to be buying any time soon...

For those people who are wondering if the Op thinks that her children have been shown porn or not, read the title.

what IS a hamlet, anyway?

three houses and two pubs in the arsend of nowhere, usually

and they all have one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and they eat their young

here Mp

It is very very unlikely any of the children would actually have seen anything. You can wave an image in front of someone but you cannot make them look unless you force their eyes open.

I think the boy found the comic (recycling bin somewhere perhaps or discarded litter), was agog at the pictures and wanted to show others to see if they shared their reaction.

I also think if the 8 year old had said 'no thanks' and turned away the boy would have given up pretty quickly.
But seeing as she covered the 5 year olds faces and started shrieking don't look don't look, the 5 year olds are probably firstly goign to be more curious and secondly a bit frightened by the 8 year old's reaction.

But that is just my take on it.

...and they point at aeroplanes.

Really? That sounds like an estate to me Greeney, a Hamlet sounds much posher.

one of these days I am going to transcribe the home page of a mainstream, google top ten porn site, in the hope that people who aren't familiar with what is really out there, and it's explicitly misogynist tone, will start to take the issue more seriously.

Things are changing incredibly quickly out there as the technology charges forwards.
I think the bottom line is that once your child or their friends have mobiles (av age what - 10 now?) they are extremely likely to be exposed to hardcore porn, and very likely to see 'extreme' stuff like fisting.

For this reason, I also keep meaning to start a thread asking for anti-porn MNers for their experiences of explaining porn to their dcs, as I'd really like to give them some tools to deal with what they might see before they see it, but without harming them in the process.

Sopposed to be working now though.

Nah ledodgy - that's just for dramatic effect to get more posts. It is AIBU after all.

Sorry bbbb - am not picking on you. I just think we don't know so it's a bit pointless speculating really. And I bet the OP will never be seen again so we never will ...

I'm sure I know cariboo's name tho spice?

Oi nancy! I don't like in a hamlet and I point at aeroplanes. Only when I'm with my youngest though.

It would be interesting to know how this would have been handled if it had happened inside school (had the boys been 11 instead of 12 obv)

I think the 8 year old certainly saw something - otherwise she wouldn't have been telling the 5 year olds not to look.

a hamlet

Cariboo is a regular. She's got a profile and everything.

Well then she should know better than starting a thread in AIBU and then disappearing off without giving us the full facts

I'd appreciate advice on how deal with online porn issues for children.

There was a channel 4 programme on about it a few weeks ago and I was quite shocked at how available it was to kids.

Quite a few had seen pretty extreme stuff including child porn.

cariboo lives in Switzerland, dont they walk neekid in the woods in those parts of the world?

Child protection sounds way over the top to me. This kind of stuff - big kids trying to make themselves feel tough by alarming little kids - used to happen all the time when I was small and played out in the street all day. Not nice at all but normal part of kids behaviour - maybe a clash of polite children meeting rougher ones?

I was small we found a porn mag left by some builders on a pile of sand and after lots of shrieking 'ew yuk!' kind of stuff we buried it so we could find it again but then lost interest. I was also harassed frequently by older kids and once my dad went and shook a few of them. If they are out playing this kind of thing will happen sometimes. Words with the parents are probably best. The kid's big brother might be wondering what happened to his erotic comics.

see, I see where you're going with that VT - they're sexually liberal there so what's the prob..

(I know it's a joke, sorry), but I think it's another example of how porn has managed to make itself interchangeable with sex.

Porn is not simply an image/images of sex - it's a medium, with a very specific set of messages.

A child seeing a picture of sex is not the same as a child seeing a pornographic picture.