Parents Stories

There is value in sharing with other parents! It is good to see how other parents open the lines of communication, keep the line of communication from shutting down, and how they feel when they are talking to their kids about pornography. It is also interesting to see what other parents are truly dealing with and what their kids are struggling with. Most parents are afraid they will somehow damage their kids or say something they do not already know and take away some of their purity. Other parents are afraid they may give “ideas” to their kids that were not there in the past. This section is designed to help you find comfort in the fact that we as parents all feel un-prepared and un-educated when speaking with our children about sex and pornography.

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Stories from Parents Just Like You

We first learned that our daughter had a MySpace site through a friend who had a daughter about the same age. I had some concern at first, but my daughter assured me it was safe and only her friends could get on her site. After several months we received a phone call from my daughter’s friend telling us that there was pornography all over our daughter’s MySapce. We were shocked. When our daughter tried to get on her site, she was unable to see anything. When everyone else looked at her site they could see everything. Explicit photos with my daughter’s picture replaced what was once on the space. There was also foul language, satanic pictures, and a profile stating that my daughter was a lesbian. Our daughter was horrified. She was shaking and crying. She was afraid that someone would try to find her. My husband and I sat down at dinner that night and explained to her that if her friends could look her up, then anyone could be looking at her. After a long conversation on how child predators are using MySpace to lure young children, we thought that would be enough to keep her away, but a few months later we found out that she had made another MySpace page. Again we sat down with her to remind her how she felt when someone hacked into her last site. Her reply was, “But Mom, everyone has one. Besides, that won’t happen to me again.” It’s that kind of “it will never happen to me” attitude that gets our children into trouble. Our daughter is fifteen years old. We are committed to talking with her on a regular basis and have set rules that we both have agreed upon. When we talk it feels like we are talking to a brick wall. She replies with things like, “My site is clean,” or, “ I do not do the bad things that others do on MySpace.” We are constantly confused and want her protected. One good thing that came from our hard hitting conversations is that our daughter knows she can come to us with any problem she is having. She learned we are here for her, and we are.

Joseph and Robin

For us it was not just one “porn talk” it is a continuous conversation. Our son is in 7th grade, going into 8th grade, and our daughter just graduated from high school. At times the conversations about sex, pornography, explicit images, and MySpace have gotten pretty crazy. Most of the time my husband is very embarrassed. We just made a rule that if they have any questions they can ask them and pretty much now on a weekly basis they have one. My son has more questions than my daughter, because my daughter is now older. We just grit our teeth and tell them what they want to know. We listen to them. After a discussion we ask them how they feel about the subject, usually they feel quite a bit. Junior high is full of things my husband and I never heard of until we were practically adults. So how we do it…open, constant communication.

Lea

One day my son came home and began to tell me of a very grueling story. He is twelve. He said, “Mom have you heard about the ‘waffle thing?’” I said, “The what?” He said, “The waffle thing.” I said, “No. What is it?” He proceeded to tell me that he heard some of his friends talking about a game some of them were playing while sitting in a circle and looking at pornography. He began to share with me a very disturbing game. The boys sit in this circle looking at pornography and then masturbate onto a waffle. The last boy to finish…must eat the waffle. I was sickened. After considering home schooling, I began to talk to my son about how this made him feel. He shared with me that it made him feel very uncomfortable. We talked about porn, and how and why these sorts of things happen. As disgusted as I was and as uncomfortable as it was even thinking of such things, I am glad we talked. I am glad he was able to talk to me, his MOM, about this stuff. He felt better after we talked and since then he has been able to come to me with many more “stories.” I believe my hitting this subject head-on helped him to let go of the images and trust me to care about anything he is dealing with…even porn.

Trudie

Recently, I have been trying to talk to my son about pornography. He was asking me if girls with other girls was considered pornography. I was unsure how to answer that question exactly. I told him yes, and why did he ask. He told me about a girl we as a family have known for years and how she was considering kissing another girl. He also told me about one of his classmates who asked him if he liked to watch two girls kissing. When he told the boy, “NO!” The boy asked him if he was gay. He is in junior high and was just so confused. I asked him lots of questions about his school and if there was other things like this going on. After finding out that there was, my husband and I have been making it a point to talk about subjects like this weekly. I am sure there is more he is seeing, hearing, or experiencing, that I may not even know exists. We try to stay up to date on what is happening in the world, but the world is running so fast we feel at times like we cannot catch up.

Albert and Barbara

I have a 7 year old daughter who likes to play on Barbie.com. One day I had come back in and got on the computer after (child's name removed) had been playing on Barbie.com. There were tons of pop ups for sex/cartoon porn and other sorts. I talked to her about it and she said she had left the computer before that had popped up and she didn’t even notice it.

So maybe a couple of days later again, she was on the same site. I walked up on her and noticed she was watching cartoon porn. She didn’t know how she had got there, she couldn’t back track the steps, but I cannot believe what she saw. Even though I put on the parental control, because it was cartoons, it didn’t block it. So now I have to block every single site with a password and approve it as she plays.

Anonymous