DD10 and Internet safety - how to approach this now?

[ChickOnAMission]

My daughter was sent a very graphic photo, basically gay porn. By her friend also 10 who had googled 'naked man' and thought it was funny.

I know my DD saw it, I found it when I looked at the ipad. When I spoke to her she was in floods of tears. We had an incident recently where my DD had goggled nude people and sent her friend a pic of a nude man, we found it. Had a serious talk about it, she knows not to do it again.

This time I spoke to her and said there are some very upsetting things on the internet, and that kind of thing is what we are worried about you seeing. She was so upset that at the time I just wanted to reassure her she wasn't in trouble as she hadn't sent the picture.

How on earth do I approach what was in the picture? Should I bring it up? Say nothing?

Other girls Mum knows, we've taken away the internet access on iPads but how to deal with the actual content of what she saw?

Any advice appreciated, I'm not sure if she's totally shocked and freaked out by what she saw, or doesn't understand and has just forgotten.

I don't want to keep going on about it but I wonder if I shouldn't leave her wondering.

School did an internet safety talk for parents a while ago. I'm kicking myself for not going now :-(

Worth raiding this with the school and asking for advice.

I had to do this re something not related and the school was very helpful. After all, they deal with thousands of kids and I only have experience of my one.

Oh and we have apple got everything and DH tuns his own server. We can monitor everything and have very tight parental controls.

The safety precautions sound good but I don't suppose you can stop children seeing some pretty awful stuff now.

You say it was gay porn. What exactly was it that disturbed her about it? It wasn't BDSM or something that could look violent / uncomfortable / unpleasant? If it was, then maybe a talk about how people sometime pretend and it's pretty unpleasant stuff. If it was relatively 'normal' (if you see what I mean) then I guess the best way is to say that people like different things and some people like sex like that, and some don't. That she doesn't ever need to do anything that she doesn't want to, and let other people get on with what they want to.

If this was me I'd do the following

Remove all internet access from her ( I see you've done this ) - they don't need it at this age

I'd then say someone like ' hmm, I've been thinking about that picture that your friend sent you and I wished you'd not seen it because it's probably given you a bit of a shock hasn't it? ' and then I'd take it from there. I'd say I'd removed the internet because there are lots of grown up stuff things out there that are really stupid and she doesn't need to know about them and I'd also probably make light of the actual pic, in that I'd say it wasn't suitable for her to see however we all have bodies so it was nothing to feel scared/ worried about

I'd then just drop it as it's least said soonest mended . The way forward is no access like this in future until she is properly old enough

Ah ok. It was a graphic sex photo. I missed that bit! Hmm, advice would still be similar and I'd probably just do a bit more reassuring.

At the end of the day, that stuff is there, and children need to be protected, but, at some point they have to become responsible for what they look at.

I have had this with my now grown up son. We had to take his laptop to be re done at PC world, after a sleepover. The staff there let US (him included, in the shop) know what they had found, and we subsequently had a long conversation that covered many areas, including people trafficking, the drugs trade, etc etc etc. AND the fact that you cannot unsee things. I laboured that point, and the fact that, once it is on your computer it is there FOREVER.

The consequences of that can have endless repercussions in terms of employment, etc tc etc.

Now, I may have laid it on a bit thick, but it worked.

For my daughter, I have used a similar tactic, but have drip fed, rather than wait for a crisis.

It's dead hard isn't it?