11 year DS seen porn

[Mumofone2027]

Worst nightmare has come true. I’m devastated, my son has seen pornography on his iPad. We changed internet over and forgot to update settings. It sounds like what he has seen is pretty hard core, around 30 minutes accumatively over 5 separate occasions. I have tried to talk to him calmly about what he’s seen and he seems relieved to have told me, he felt weird watching it and a bit sick. I’m worried he’s traumatised and damaged, he’s also told friends about it at school. I don’t know whether to speak to the school to inform all parents to check in with their children. I’m so scared about it all

You're massively overthinking this.

He will not be the only 11-year-old at his school who has seen porn, however 'innocent' you think his school is.

Kids see things. Kids talk about it. It's always been that way. When I was 11 a girl in my class found a couple of porn magazines (showing my age there) in her parents' wardrobe and brought them into school. I'm talking actual hardcore porn, not a top shelf copy of Razzle.

We all looked at them, went 'Eww, gross' and 'Urrgh, that's weird' and that was the end of it, basically.

I'm not saying it's ideal - it isn't, and you should have a conversation with your son about the difference between porn and real life. But it's completely natural that your son was curious and wanted to watch it, and it's completely natural that he told his classmates. I don't think you need to make as big a deal of this as you seem to think.

Why did he keep turning it back on?

Well, why do you think? 😂He's a very normal 11-year-old boy who had the opportunity to see tits and fannies. Of course he kept turning it back on. Most kids would. It's a natural curiosity.

I am really grateful for these straight talking responses. I grew up with sexual abuse, not directly, but within my family and so I’m really triggered by child protection issues around this. Im scared of natural curiosity turning into an addiction, misogyny and all of the rest of the ills in our society so my mind jumps to worst case scenarios, bit of a bad habit of mine. Plus the stuff that’s available today is so much more violent and graphic than when we were young, and I feel sad my lovely little boy has seen it, but hopefully it will just mean we’ve started some open communication about stuff that inevitably is going to happen as he gets to secondary school.

Years ago, I used to record films on old fashioned video tapes then take them to my parents so they could watch them. One day I asked my Mum if she’d enjoyed the (boring) film I’d given her. She said “Your Dad certainly did” Turns out my young son had been getting out of bed once we were asleep and switching TV over to a porn channel - which had recorded so my parents film was rudely interrupted halfway through. Also, after a family holiday in Orlando my other son searched the internet (which was a new thing at the time) for a water park we’d been to called “Wet n Wild”. What he saw was not about the theme park!! Makes me sound like a terrible parent here for not having parental restrictions but they have both grown into wonderful men and it didn’t affect them. I’d have a chat with his teacher, talk to your son if he seems to need to talk about it but I wouldn’t go on about it to him

Sorry to hear that you've had some indirect experience of sexual abuse within your family. I'm sure that must be at the back of your mind a lot.

It's totally understandable that you feel sad about what your son's seen, but the great thing is that he eventually felt able to tell you about it, so he obviously trusts you. As you say - that's a good starting point for a conversation about this stuff, awkward though it may be.

Im scared of natural curiosity turning into an addiction, misogyny and all of the rest of the ills in our society

Again, understandable that as a parent you're immediately thinking of the worst case scenario, but the worst case scenario is just that - the worst. It's not typical. I think Mumsnet probably gives people quite a skewed idea of porn use. Ultimately, the vast majority of men (and a significant proportion of women) do or will use porn sometimes. Regardless of what people think about the ethics of that, very few of those men and women become addicted to it - much like very few people who sneak booze out of their parents' drinks cabinet to try when they're 12 or 13 end up alcoholics. I'm not saying porn is completely harmless, or that there are no concerns to be had about some of the material that's out there - and obviously children should absolutely not be seeing it - but just try to keep your thoughts in proportion. Your son will be fine :)

Thank you, trying to stay rational 🙏🏼

Plenty of 11 year old boys in y6 haven’t started puberty yet and aren’t looking for ‘tits and fannies’. And OP said he felt sick watching it. Clearly this kid has hit the curiosity stage though.

As a side note I’m surprised all porn sites need age verification but tv can still just show whatever they want to whoever. You’d think the channels would be better controlled. Guess OPs sons friends will all know how to bypass age restrictions on porn now!

I feel the responsible thing is to alert the friends parents, possibly risking him being ostracised but I think I’d want to know if it was the other way round

Perhaps you can channel his sexual curiosity to other resources? He’s at the age where kids want to learn. There must be some age appropriate books or programmes about authentic sexual relationships. I think you can’t undo what he’s seen or can his intrigue, but perhaps you can channel it elsewhere

I feel the responsible thing is to alert the friends parents, possibly risking him being ostracised but I think I’d want to know if it was the other way round

I’ll look into this

Good luck! Let us know what you find!

I’m not saying he’s necessarily hit puberty, I’m saying it’s not far off. And it’s totally normal for kids to be interested in sex and to have confusing feelings and to be simultaneously excited and uneasy it.

Even much younger kids than that are fascinated by body parts and people snogging, and get giggly about it even though they think it’s all a bit yucky.

It’s also, for obvious reasons, much easier for a child who has seen porn to talk about feeling sick, when talking to their mother, rather than tell her they felt a bit excited.

So yeah, it’s unfortunate that he’s seen porn but it’s completely normal and understandable that he kept looking again.

I agree kids being curious about sex can be normal, saying 11 year olds are going after ‘titties and fannies’ is gross.

I agree it’s best to say something, he’s not committed a crime and you no where the content came from now so you can avoid it repeating

Keep your head and don't say anything to other parents. Porn exists and it's really not the other parents' business. You can't predict how they will react or what they will think about you or your family or about DC. The story could easily grow legs and run off. If you think he shouldn't have been looking then it's up to you as a parent to deal with DC yourself, not to expose him to ostracism at school.

Not sure what good telling the other parents will do bar ostracising him?

Not my child, but me. I was an 11 year old boy in 1994, and was exposed to a fair bit of porn. Initially in the form of a porn mag that a mate brought in to school, and then a couple of months later a friend found his Dad's video collection which we then shared round.

We weren't traumatised, we weren't horrified, mostly we thought it was funny.

The best bit of advice I can give is to explain to him that porn isn't sex. Sex is different, it's like the difference between a TV show and real life. Fewer explosions, more communication.

Porn is about the visuals, rather than what sex is actually about. Sex is about connection, making someone you care about feel good, not about who can make the other person scream louder. Porn can make sex seem violent, whereas in real life that's not the case. (Usually, but that's not a conversation that needs having at 11)

It's a difficult conversation to have, but an important one, and it's important that he not feel shamed for looking. His curiousity is normal, but he needs to understand that porn can warp his ideas of what sex is really like, especially when he's too young to have had any experience of the real thing.

I realise you find the notion of an 11-year-old wanting to look at naked women unpalatable, but it is very normal that an 11-year-old would find that exciting and look for opportunities to see them. Sorry if that’s ‘gross’ to you, but it’s a fact. Sexual interest / excitement / curiosity happens to most kids before puberty, even if they don’t quite understand the feelings they’re experiencing it. It’s not helpful to deny that or to call it gross.

FWIW, in the early 2000s - back in the dial-up days - when my friend’s sons were seven and eight, they were playing a game on the family computer and my friend heard the dial-up modem start. She went in to see what they were doing trying to get on the Internet unsupervised, and caught them typing ‘boobs’ into Google. And my colleague was utterly horrified recently when she checked her 10-year-old daughter’s tablet and discovered that she and her best friend had searched for “Jack Grealish naked”.

No, that isn’t what I said. I no it’s normal for some kids of that age to be interested, you literally quoted me saying that. What I said was gross was you joking about a child enjoying ‘Fannies and titties’ which is a grim way to refer to a woman anyway.

Whatever porn adults here saw 30+ years ago is irrelevant, the medium has changed.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/inappropriate-explicit-content/

I said ‘tits’ not ‘titties’ - and I used those words because those are precisely the sorts of words 11-year-old boys use, FFS!

I don’t think anyone’s denying that porn - certainly the kind that’s easy to access - has changed.

But it’s still unlikely that the OP’s son is going to descend into depravity and become a lifelong addict and misogynist as a result of seeing a few five minute clips on an adult channel. As the OP admits she tends to panic and think the absolute worst, it’s probably more helpful to reassure her rather than encourage her to catastrophise.