my 7 year old was looking for a toy dog and got a pornography website

[ska]

pop up! Shw was very sensible and clicked away from it really quickly but she keeps talking about it! I have now changed all the settings on the Pc and laptop (to my shame I was on the PC working and she was looking for ideas for her birthday present. I'd got her onto the Groovy Girls website but she creatively got to google and typed in furry toy dogs(!)). It was a slide show she says of a man licking a man's willy ('mum, why did she want to do that. It's upsetting for children to see that. I'm not old enough to understand that sort of thing')(not sure I'm old enough to want to explain that sort of thing).
Anyway, have now reset all the parental controls and we are all really irritated each time we look for anything online as we get blocked for everything! But rather that than her seeing stuff she's not meant to even know about yet.
So, does anybody else use parental controls, any ideas about good software/websites to use?
And how do I explain it to her? She has talked to both older siblings about it and talks to me a lot.

'mum, why did she want to do that. It's upsetting for children to see that. I'm not old enough to understand that sort of thing'

Your dd sounds eminently sensible and I don't think this will have damaged her. You could just explain that some adults do some funny things sometimes and that children don't need to worry about it

Sorry, just reread your post - if she wants a more detailed description I would say that different parts of adult's bodies feel nice when touched in different ways and that adults sometimes touch or kiss each other in different ways. Ideally you would not really want to be explaining oral sex to a 7 year old, but better perhaps to explain in a simple way than leave her worrying.

ska, I recently discovered that you can set google to "safe search". I'm sure there is parental control software available too. I set all the security thingies on Windows to the top level but the problem was it wouldn't let us get any blasted website at all without the password....drove me nuts in the end.

Special kids' websites are great but what about when they don't use that website? I'm very concerned about the stuff that can appear when they search for something innocent...let me know if you discover any other tricks.

I remember years ago when the 'internet' 1st started being readily avaliable(my dad worked with computers so we were one of the 1st houses to have (VERY slow!) internet)

I innocently searched for 'funhouse' (ie the kids tv programee that my best friend had actually appeared in)

i got some very dodgy sites when i searched for that and that must have been about 12 years ago.... guessing i was 14ish

our search at school won't let you search Blackpool!

BoyZone.com is really really not about a boy band...
At 5yo, DS found a video, and so asked me "What's sex..."
So I he had his first "talk".
He wasn't very interested.
"What's violence ?"
Turns out that he was reading the back of the Curious George cartoon DVD, and it said "no sex or violence"

I don't have any sex hangups, so if DS did ask about fellatio, he'd get told. From what I observe terms like blow job are in common (if inaccurate) playground use much earlier than many parents would like to think.

All the nanny controls can be circumvented, trust me on this...
Currently DS is "guided" in his web access, and since I know lots of good, interesting sites he has little motivation to find his own.
That won't last forever.

Once they've decided to find something, then they will. I would bet money the 8-9 yo at your kids school already pass around "interesting" web site addresses.

You basically have two options.
1: Deny them unsupervised access to the computer, and that includes following a password discipline that many firms have difficulty enforcing on (allegedly) grown up staff.
Otherwise the kids will get your password, good chance they already have.

2: Educate them. That involves a sex talk, which is probably harder for many people than explaining the technology.

I would recommend keeping the computer in a public part of your house eg living room, kitchen and not in a study / bedroom

I would love to put the computer out of the living room but I want to be able to monitor what they are doing, I can see the screen from where I sit. Plus I wouldn't be able to watch TV while I am on here .

I am relying on safe search on Google, are there better ways of doing it. We use AOL but I use the internet explorer window as I don't like the way AOL windows work. Don't know about the likes of Net Nanny are programes like that worth it?

I might make Yahoo kids their home page though instead of google.

If you have two PCs, then one can relatively easily be made to watch another.

thanks for the posts. I have explained a bit about sex and I don't think any of the kids have hang ups (yet!). It's more that it came up so unexpectedly when she typed in a very innocent search. We're not the slightest bit prudish and the kids do ask questions which we answer I think it's just the shock of the images for her. All she wanted was a new cuddly toy!

We've switched to yahooligans for now. I didn't know about google safe search so that's useful.

We have Norton parental controls because DH and I aren't too keen on finding something nasty, never mind about the DSes! However, it can be a bit overzealous. I'm doing a course on birds at the moment, and needed to find out about great tits and the parental controls blocked the Wikipedia entry (which is entirely innocent and about birds).