8.5 year old looked up sexy websites on my log on. He doesn't know that I know. What now?

[bungalowbelle]

I hold my hands up. I've been lax about internet security. It seems when I set parental controls they block the kids out of even the most innocent, educational website.

Now and again I check their internet history to see what they've been looking at and it's always totally innocent. Until today.

I left ds, who's 8.5, home alone for half an hour and when I came back I saw he'd been looking up naked women. He did a lot of surfing in that half hour. Most of it was pretty tame YouTube, women pole dancing on trains etc ... then I noticed he moved onto Google and accessed some, fortunately, lightweight stuff. Women half naked, or naked and lying down with those ridiculous soft porn pouts. So not the sort of images I want him to be looking at.

I think it's the first time I've left him home alone so he really took the first chance he had. Yesterday I noticed he had smelly arm pits for the first time ever.

So he's growing up.

I have put parental controls on and changed all the passwords so he can no longer go on anyone's log on but his now.

Is there anything else I should do? He's obviously curious. Should I chat with him or would that be mortifying. He'd typed into Google 'i want to have sex' which he doesn't, necessarily, but is obviously getting some feelings.

Do I need to do anything?

"getting freaked out by central heating noises."

FFS he is 8 years old!!

if you leave your child in the house you tell them NOT to make toast, answer the door etc
you don't just go out saying "have fun darling do what you like"

well my 11 year old dd left alone in a big house on a winter's day for half an hour phoned me to say she didn't like the noise and it sounded creepy! If you are in a silent house and it's getting dark and you have a vivid imagination, you could get freaked out by it if you're a child... and then your parent reassures you, explains what it is and then it's fine. But if you're 8, you might be very freaked out

Most kids would feel quite grown up to be left alone and behave impeccably. I wonder at those that can't be trusted with something as simple as this. Not all kids are pyromaniacs desperate to trash the house if given the opertunity!

It's not about trust/ misbehaviour, it's about an 8 year old's ability to deal with the unexpected.

According to the Children And Young Persons Act 1933, parents can be prosecuted for neglect if they leave a child alone "in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health", but there's nothing in the legislation more specific than that. No minimum age to leave a child unattended, and no minimum age at which older kids can look after younger ones either. But the NSPCC recommendation is that no child is left alone before the age of 12.
However if that 8 year old set the house on fire then the parents would be liable for prosecution, surely. I am that there are no laws and really thought there were.

I was walking home from school with my own house key at 9, give her a break!

I walked to school with my sister when we were five and seven. A mile and a half and many, many roads to cross. T'would be unthinkable nowadays. No wonder kids tend towards fatness and bad behaviour.