How to tackle sexting

[waterloo100]

I suspected my daughter was using her ipad when she was supposed to be asleep so while she was at school I took a look. My suspicions were correct, but more importantly I discovered she has sent a couple of images of herself in her underwear to her boyfriend. He then sent a 'dick pic' back to her. I'm furious with her after the times I have drummed into her the risk in sharing these sorts of images on line. I want to tackle her about it but to do that I can't see any other way but to admit I've been snooping. This is going to cause upset, anger and a lack of trust of her with me. I really don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

So sorry to hear OP. How scary.

You need to talk to the boyfriends parents ASAP and make sure the pictures he has of her are deleted from the phone, the ‘bin’ folder, and not backed up to iCloud.

Talk to the bfs parents, tell her you looked and remove access to devices in bedrooms for a while.

This is very common. It doesn't make it OK, but it needs to be put in context so that you don't loose your mind. What I would say is that the message needs to be reinforced regularly, along with explanations about why.
Raise the topic of sexting again and ask her whether she's ever felt tempted with her BF. You need to make it a safe space to talk, so that she will confide in you rather than hide what she's doing.
Explain again that it can feel very exciting to be in a relationship, and that it's natural to want to explore each other's bodies, but that sending any form of photo could get her into huge trouble.
With my girls I have always said no pictures. I've also admitted that I can't completely stop them and added a caveat to help, in case they come under pressure. I've said, if you can't help yourself it needs to be completely impossible to identify that it is you. No background in the room, no obviously identifiable parts of your body.
The book 'When You Loose It' gives an excellent portrayal of the perils. I definitely recomment it. I mentioned it in my podcast episode on this topic.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I came clean and told her I'd seen them. She took it badly obvs but not as bad as I thought. We looked at Snapchat to see what happens when you save a snap compared to saving a photo and tried this out with photos exchanged between ourselves. It doesn't seem as if the boy have saved them to his camera roll (neither had she) as snapchat tells you. It also tells you if the person takes a screenshot (which again it appeared not to be the case). I told her to talk to him and both delete the photos-which they have done, and each can see that this has been done. She cried and cried, saying I must be disappointed in her and saying she didn't know why she'd done it. We talked about being sex-curious and growing up etc so hopefully cleared the air on that too. Am still feeling worried though.

@waterloo100 This is fantastic parenting! Now she knows that she can talk to you about these things and that you won’t overreact and shut down her freedom.

I really do believe that the most important thing we can do to keep our kids safe is to have open conversations about the pressures they experience, and help them to navigate them safely without shaming them.