Long time poster - name changed for this.
I have a lovely, bright 10.5 year old. In a lot of ways very mature (has just started her periods - first in her class - and was able to talk very openly with me about that, for example). Lockdown has been hard for her as an only child and having only DH and I around her, both of whom have very full on full time jobs. School have been dreadful - only started any online offering this January and then only 3x 15 min class catch ups a week with no online learning. She’s been lonely at times and become quite withdrawn. We let her download WhatsApp to stay in touch with school friends etc. She’s only allowed a phone at all if DH or I are able to check it from time to time.
She turned to crafting, which soon got out of hand in the volume of stuff generated. We let her download an anime-style cartoon app (aimed at 8-14 year olds). Other people make these cartoons and upload them to YouTube. DD is not allowed on YouTube unsupervised because there is no limit on the storyline that these cartoons might take. DD makes slides and stores them as pictures rather than making videos with it.
Last week she was complaining that her phone storage was full. I got around to looking at it last night. There are thousands of pictures, predominantly these cartoons. Flicking through them most are innocuous enough, but there are a handful with very clear sexual themes: kissing, touching, one where a character is asking why another character won’t have sex with them. Several of these have been deleted.
We’ve always been very open with DD and take the view that if she is old enough to ask a question she’s old enough for an age appropriate answer. So she understands periods and where babies come from, but we haven’t covered anything in the foreplay or consent arenas. I don’t know what is driving this - it’s clearly not just her adolescence but she is either hearing things at school (she’s very careful not to name classmates when describing her day now, because “they are entitled to privacy”). I don’t know whether she’s watching stuff on YouTube and hiding it by deleting her history.
I need to talk to her, but also maintain her trust that I’m not snooping or spying on her, but i can’t do nothing because I am worried about what she is being exposed to somewhere along the line.
Anyone experienced anything similar? How do I address this with her? Tempted to remove access to the app and get her doing something active instead. They don’t tell you this in the baby books!