Would you call the mom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as I would want to know if it were my daughter, I would probably keep my mouth shut. We had a situation backfire on my son. Another kid's bad behavior led my son to be ousted from the group. I was not involved, except through what my son told me. Before I said anything I would make damned sure my daughter wouldn't pay for me "doing the right thing"

I agree, talk to your kid but stay out of it.

I agree with this, too. You don't want to unintentionally shut down the communication between the two of you, and a social misfire like what PP described could possibly do that.

OP, they are all going to see porn. There's no escaping it. You won't be able to stop it, and other parents won't be able to stop it. You just have to educate your kid about it in accordance to your family values.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dont really think its a huge deal. 12 year olds look at porn. I can remember in the early 90s waiting for our AOL dial up to connect so we could type in "hard penis" in the search engine. We weren't pervy or "bad" or anything…just 12 and curious.

+1. I concur with this and would neither inform another parent nor wish to be informed myself. It is every parent's choice to monitor their child's use of technology as they choose, and if this was something the other child's mother wanted to know I would assume that she already knows. I wouldn't regard it as my business to monitor another child's actions or for another parent to monitor mine in this way[b].

It ceased to be "another child's actions" when the girl showed it to OP's daughter and others.

And you're naïve to assume that the parent already knows (and therefore approves, since the porn was still on the phone, right?). Many parents don't monitor kids' technology use.

When you were a kid in the early 90s, hardcore porn was not instantly available to anyone, anytime, with no dial-up time to connect. You're acting nostalgic about being curious. What kids can access now is not just the penis pictures you found, but far more explicit. If you're comfortable with a 12-year-old's curiosity ending up with her or him viewing sex acts of any nature at all, fine for you, but maybe OP isn't OK with that. Maybe the girl at the sleepover only showed some penis pictures, but I doubt it.

Conflated two posts in my reply but the point stands. Both are naïve posts, one for thinking parents adequately monitor media (and for being gutless about telling a parent if a kid has porn), and the other for acting like kids are actually seeking out still pictures.

the problem is you have no idea what they were looking at or what the girl's definition of porn is. It could be just pics of a penis and since you dont know, you need to stay out of it. If it turns out to be nothing major your kid will pay for your meddling. Use this as a teaching moment with your kid and set a precedent for her to feel free to come to you about ANYTHING in the future. This is not the time to be high and mighty

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as I would want to know if it were my daughter, I would probably keep my mouth shut. We had a situation backfire on my son. Another kid's bad behavior led my son to be ousted from the group. I was not involved, except through what my son told me. Before I said anything I would make damned sure my daughter wouldn't pay for me "doing the right thing"

I agree, talk to your kid but stay out of it.

I agree with this, too. You don't want to unintentionally shut down the communication between the two of you, and a social misfire like what PP described could possibly do that.

OP, they are all going to see porn. There's no escaping it. You won't be able to stop it, and other parents won't be able to stop it. You just have to educate your kid about it in accordance to your family values.

+1 Make sure to reiterate to your daughter that she is never, ever to allow someone to take compromising pictures/videos of her. She is not to receive compromising pictures/videos of anyone else and she is never/ever to engage in any sort of porn chat forum - even if the girls think that they are just joking around, a forum/chat like that could be dangerous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as I would want to know if it were my daughter, I would probably keep my mouth shut. We had a situation backfire on my son. Another kid's bad behavior led my son to be ousted from the group. I was not involved, except through what my son told me. Before I said anything I would make damned sure my daughter wouldn't pay for me "doing the right thing"

I agree, talk to your kid but stay out of it.

I agree with this, too. You don't want to unintentionally shut down the communication between the two of you, and a social misfire like what PP described could possibly do that.

OP, they are all going to see porn. There's no escaping it. You won't be able to stop it, and other parents won't be able to stop it. You just have to educate your kid about it in accordance to your family values.

+1 Make sure to reiterate to your daughter that she is never, ever to allow someone to take compromising pictures/videos of her. She is not to receive compromising pictures/videos of anyone else and she is never/ever to engage in any sort of porn chat forum - even if the girls think that they are just joking around, a forum/chat like that could be dangerous.

How exactly do you propose to stop someone from receiving any pictures, including compromising ones?

You could delete them once received, but there is no practical to way to stop the receipt of anything (other than turn off your phone/laptop/etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as I would want to know if it were my daughter, I would probably keep my mouth shut. We had a situation backfire on my son. Another kid's bad behavior led my son to be ousted from the group. I was not involved, except through what my son told me. Before I said anything I would make damned sure my daughter wouldn't pay for me "doing the right thing"

I agree, talk to your kid but stay out of it.

I agree with this, too. You don't want to unintentionally shut down the communication between the two of you, and a social misfire like what PP described could possibly do that.

OP, they are all going to see porn. There's no escaping it. You won't be able to stop it, and other parents won't be able to stop it. You just have to educate your kid about it in accordance to your family values.

+1 Make sure to reiterate to your daughter that she is never, ever to allow someone to take compromising pictures/videos of her. She is not to receive compromising pictures/videos of anyone else and she is never/ever to engage in any sort of porn chat forum - even if the girls think that they are just joking around, a forum/chat like that could be dangerous.

How exactly do you propose to stop someone from receiving any pictures, including compromising ones?

You could delete them once received, but there is no practical to way to stop the receipt of anything (other than turn off your phone/laptop/etc).

Don't encourage anyone to share pictures like that with you and delete them immediately of someone does send them to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If DD reported this to me, I would call the other mother. I would start by saying, "I'm sharing this information with you because I would want someone to do the same for me. My daughter reported that the girls were looking at a pornography site on your daughter's phone at Larla's party last night. I don't know whether this is true of not. I just know that if my child was watching pornography, whether on her own phone or someone else's, I would want to know."

OP, if you haven't done anything yet, please follow this.

[Anonymous]

At age 12, I'd talk to my child and wouldn't tell the parents. You want your kid to talk to you. She did. Pat yourself on the back and dont go ratting them out to other parents. Help her figure out a discreet way to handle it if she's in that situation again. She will be, whether it's alcohol or drugs or porn.

If they were 10 I'd probably have a different answer.

In the future we'd conveniently have other things to do if this kid asks for a sleepover.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as I would want to know if it were my daughter, I would probably keep my mouth shut. We had a situation backfire on my son. Another kid's bad behavior led my son to be ousted from the group. I was not involved, except through what my son told me. Before I said anything I would make damned sure my daughter wouldn't pay for me "doing the right thing"

NP here. OP, this response seems to assume that your daughter might be shut out by her friends for "tattling" if you report this to the parent. Yes, it could happen, but I totally disagree that you should do nothing at all. Please tell the other parent. And then your DD should stop seeing the kid who had the porn. I will get blasted on here by the "let them work it out themselves" crowd that is on DCUM, but no, you need to step in and ensure your DD does not have sleepovers that involve this girl and also doesn't see her to hang out after school etc.

I am not saying this is some horrid kid. Nope. She's not the villain. But she does have horrible judgment and made her friend, your DD, unsettled and uncomfortable--and friends don't do that. And as the adult, you are never obliged to let your own child continue seeing another child who does what this kid did. (again, not popular ot say here on DCUM, but I draw the line at porn being casually shown around.) This may be pure curiosity on the girl's part, but it clearly upset and unsettled your child. I would not make some huge "you're no longer friends with her" announcement; just start having your child be too busy to see her. If they share friends, your girl needs to start seeing the others in that circle in other settings, or all of them only if an adult is around.

Please listen to the posts seconding the excellent PP who gave you a simple, clear script for how to bring this up to the other parent. Please do not wait too long to do this. And ask clearly that the parent not tell the girl which of the others at the sleepover reported this to a parent.

Porn warps people's expectations about sex and relationships and can make girls feel they have to behave like women they see in porn in order to get boys to pay attention to them. It's so readily available that girls as young as yours are now getting exposed to it just in the way your daughter has. While a few minutes of porn to an aghast group of girls obviously doesn't mean they're now all warped for life, it was a warning sign that this one girl needs some adults to scrub her media and then keep much better tabs on what she's doing.

I'm the poster you comment on. Your response is very naive. Kids by middle school spend most of their days away from their parents and most social interaction is at school. You don't control who your child is friends with. You certainly can't control who your child's friends are friends with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DD reported this to me, I would call the other mother. I would start by saying, "I'm sharing this information with you because I would want someone to do the same for me. My daughter reported that the girls were looking at a pornography site on your daughter's phone at Larla's party last night. I don't know whether this is true of not. I just know that if my child was watching pornography, whether on her own phone or someone else's, I would want to know."

OP, if you haven't done anything yet, please follow this.

OP. Please don't. The language is stilted, authoritarian and lacking in the kind of warmth that would be needed in this situation to awkwardness. Plus, your daughter may not survive socially the shitstorm you create.

[Anonymous]

It is not developmentally appropriate for 12 year olds to be watching porn. Like others said, it is very easy to wind up watching hardcore things, it's not like the 90s watching old Felicity videos.

The ethical thing is to let the other mom know. Some of you are so afraid of your daughter suffering "social consequences" from something so small. Interesting how afraid you are to speak up about such a small thing, because you're worried about peer pressure! It amazes me when parents are so spineless because they're afraid of their kids being made fun of or something. So let them watch whatever porn they want to watch?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is not developmentally appropriate for 12 year olds to be watching porn. Like others said, it is very easy to wind up watching hardcore things, it's not like the 90s watching old Felicity videos.

The ethical thing is to let the other mom know. Some of you are so afraid of your daughter suffering "social consequences" from something so small. Interesting how afraid you are to speak up about such a small thing, because you're worried about peer pressure! It amazes me when parents are so spineless because they're afraid of their kids being made fun of or something. So let them watch whatever porn they want to watch?

It's not about being spineless. It's about the fact telling another parent won't do any good. And it could harm the parent/child relationship. And even if you don't care about social harm, you should care about the relationship between you and your kid. If you shut down communication, you are creating a bad situation all around.

And the reason I say it won't do any good is because it's so easy to get porn these days. The kids will see it, no matter what parents say or forbid. All you can do.....all you "should" do is discuss it with your kid. And that mother should already be discussing it with her own kid. Tell them not to view it when other kids are, if that's what you care about. Tell them it's mostly fake, or worse, pressured/drugged/forced sex. Tell them that many participants are trafficked for sex. Tell them the amateur videos are often uploaded without everyone's permission/knowledge. Tell them some participants may be underage and they are at serious risk if they download it. In other words, tell them it's not so simple as watching naked people having sex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not developmentally appropriate for 12 year olds to be watching porn. Like others said, it is very easy to wind up watching hardcore things, it's not like the 90s watching old Felicity videos.

The ethical thing is to let the other mom know. Some of you are so afraid of your daughter suffering "social consequences" from something so small. Interesting how afraid you are to speak up about such a small thing, because you're worried about peer pressure! It amazes me when parents are so spineless because they're afraid of their kids being made fun of or something. So let them watch whatever porn they want to watch?

It's not about being spineless. It's about the fact telling another parent won't do any good. And it could harm the parent/child relationship. And even if you don't care about social harm, you should care about the relationship between you and your kid. If you shut down communication, you are creating a bad situation all around.

And the reason I say it won't do any good is because it's so easy to get porn these days. The kids will see it, no matter what parents say or forbid. All you can do.....all you "should" do is discuss it with your kid. And that mother should already be discussing it with her own kid. Tell them not to view it when other kids are, if that's what you care about. Tell them it's mostly fake, or worse, pressured/drugged/forced sex. Tell them that many participants are trafficked for sex. Tell them the amateur videos are often uploaded without everyone's permission/knowledge. Tell them some participants may be underage and they are at serious risk if they download it. In other words, tell them it's not so simple as watching naked people having sex.

I posted earlier encouraging OP to protect her relationship with her child and completely agree with this poster. I'm not the police of every other teen my child interacts with. It will do no good to tell the parent. If the kids were snorting coke, yes, tell the parent. But 12 year olds are going to see porn. I was 12 in the early 90s and had seen porn.

I'm protecting my teens relationship with ME first and foremost by encouraging her not to hide from me. And she won't ever approach parents with her problems if you run to the other parents instead of teaching her how to handle herself in uncomfortable situations. Telling the parents is focusing on the wrong thing. They probably won't care anyway, sadly, as my experience has taught me.

Again, I wouldn't set a rule that my child couldn't go to their house, but I'd make sure we were otherwise engaged if the invitation happens again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just looking at porn? Nope. Wouldn't tell. I wonder if some of those saying tell would call the mom if it was a boy.

You said she had been on the site before. If it's a forum or a chat site, I would absolutely tell.

I treat my son and daughter the same way, thanks, and I WOULD want to know, and WOULD tell the host parents. If it gets my children ousted from the group, too bad. I can't believe some of you think watching porn at 12 is OK.

[Anonymous]

Yes, report it. I would want to know too.

[Anonymous]

YES!!!!!!!