8 year old son searching for "sexy girls" on the internet when my back is turned. Normal or Not?

[LizzieWizzy]

Hi. This is a little tricky as my son is only 8 and my first born therefore not much experience of children at this age. I shut my computer for about 10 minutes to do something and have come back in to find a seriously sheepish-looking boy at the kitchen door. The computer was shut but I instinctively knew something was up because he looked guilty . I asked him casually what he had been up to & he came up with a ready answer so thought nothing of it until I opened my computer to find pornographic material on it. I have searched in the browsing history and found that it's not the first time...in between club penguin . I have asked him about it but he gets very angry with me. He says that nobody has influenced him and that he just wanted to search for it. That he keeps thinking about it. I understand that he probably isn't going out of his way to search for pornography. But is it too young for him to be looking at what are essentially "explicitly biological images"? Not sure whether it's to be expected and what to do? He doesn't have a man around as his father is more than useless and I don't have many male friends that he would feel close enough to talk to. What do I do? He gets embarrassed and angry talking to me about it. The thing that bothers me the most is the sneaky way in which he does his searching. Doea anyone have any advice? thank you

Completly normal imo. At that age children are naturally curious about bodies especially opposite sex, I know I was. When i was about 7 many many many moons ago, there was this biology book at school with naked male and female bodies, at library time we would get that book out sit round the table, me and the boys and gawp and snigger at the crudely drawn pictures of naked bodies

Mabey he just wanted to see naked female bodies as part of natural curiousity and not necessarily strippers.

"My six year old dd composed a poem recently that comprised only of words like 'bum, wee and poo', it wasn't a very good poem obviously"

This made me laugh and laugh.

Lizzie, glad you had that conversation, it sounds really positive.

I don't think that it is sex education that makes children interested in how their bodies work, growing up or sex for that matter. I think these are all totally natural things for eight year old (and much younger) children.

It is a bit sad that your ds felt he needed to use the internet to find these things out though. To me this just seems like another argument for talking to your children about these things in little bites over time from when they are quite small so that if they have any questions or thoughts they come and talk to you, rather than try and find out for themselves. I've had many a surprising chat with my two (now 9 & 10) about all sorts of aspects of puberty, relationships and sex. I asked ds if he'd ever typed in "naughty words" into Google and he looked at me very blankly, and said he thought that he'd find "inappropriate" things. Maybe he's just quite immature (he currently hopes he won't have to worry about any of these things until puberty). Is there any way you can start having conversations about sex/growing up with him? I've done all of that sort of stuff with both my dd and my ds (dh doesn't seem to feel inclined) and it's been fine. A bit of humour helps - we have lots of giggles, as at this age most children think it's all fairly gross.

I can totally understand your horror and concern at finding he'd been looking at porn.

Strict parental controls on your computer from now on will prevent this..at 8, he should really be asking permission to go on and his usage should be monitored so have that as a general rule for him and so it doesn't seem like a punishment for looking up these images, tell him that sometimes, your work can be lost or deleted if others go on without you knowing.

Get a good sex education book for his age group and ask him once you have it if he'd like to chat about it...if no, leave it. Try really hard not to let him feel ashamed/guilty about these images but he needs protecting from what is not designed for his age group.
All kids do this sort of thing...we didn't have internet as there were no computers when I was that age but I do remember looking up naughty words in the dictionary...times change but the access now is grester and can do more harm so it is just vigilance.

I have ds9 and cant imagine him looking at stuff like this so yes i think its rather young.

I agree you need some parental controls on the laptop and you need to talk to him about sex and bad stuff on the internet.

DS is 9 I was checking his browsing history

He had searched for
'worlds prettiest girl'

followed by

'worlds biggest hot dog'

OP - normal, but unsettling for you.

Lizzie, isn't it the other way round about sex education? He went on the internet because he hasn't had enough sensible, informative education.

His interest is natural, given that he is entering pre-puberty and will also be aware that children a few years older than himself are entering puberty. He cant' have known how grossly inappropriate some of those internet images would be.

So the way forward is definitely good books. My own 9yo is also interested. So was I at that age, though of course there was no internet around.

AFAIK sex education for this age group stops far short of anything than might lead them to search out boobs on the internet - it's all kittens and puppies. I agree with cory.

I talked to my son about how babies are made at around 5, then again last year we had a talk about "recreational" sex, prompted by a (very loud) question about a Condom Machine in a public loo

SeasideLil Last year I caught DS1 (then 8) and his friend trying to google "Bum stuff" (normal boy interest in bums, I think). Fortunately they were on Google Maps because I'd hidden Google, so all they managed to get was a satelite picture of Bumhole Arizona or something.

I shudder to think where 2 clicks could have got them ......

I think 8 is quite late to be introduced to all this, so I agree with cory. Has it not come up before?

Totally normal for an 8 yr old boy to want to know about sex and to want to look at sexy girls. Also normal for him to be wanking(sorry if you're not ready to consider him doing this yet but he probably is or will be very soon).

Also totally normal for him to use the net search for pictures of sexy girls, it's the resource that most of us, nowadays, use to look anything up so why not him for pictures of girls?

Having said that the things he is going to find on the net when looking for sexy girls are absolutely not suitable for him, but you know that already.

Don't know if it's been recommended yet but you can download blue coat K9 web security for free and limit all the content that's allowed on your pc so he'll not come across anything unsuitable on there because he will look again, guaranteed. He's curious, which is natural and he will have been fascinated by what he saw.

Taking him to library to teach him the basics is a good idea but it's not going to stop his natural curiosity and his hormones. So for now you have to control what he looks at because you won't control his urges! Nor should you.

I think 8 seems very young to be looking for pornographic images but I don't think it's clear that that's what he was doing. This is a very typical age to be interested in what other people's bodies are like and what "sexy" is. It doesn't mean he's got some sort of unhealthy interest in grown women or sex, it just means he's absorbed the notion of "sexy" - let's face it how can they not absorb that notion given mag covers, lyrics from popular music, WAG culture, etc etc. He's interested to know what women / girls look like, plus "sexy" is meant to = goodlooking, and looking at goodlooking females is quite possibly pleasurable for him in a very innocent way now. Or if it does give him some sort of vague physical sensation, that's ok. Or maybe he's looking because someone at school has talked about it and he's been embarrassed during the conversation and wants to explore a bit alone at home.

I think you need to open it up, be unembarrassed yourself, realise that he's not actually looking for porn but just exploring the world he finds himself in, and talk to him - a short, reassuring, clear chat.

Oh dear - is more than I have been here...