Received Disturbing Text on Shared Phone; How to Handle?
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Anonymous
Good idea. Since she already got the police involved they should handle. |
Anonymous
| OP keep us updated, its a scary text to get even if it turns out to be a dumb dumb fellow 7th grader pulling a prank. |
Anonymous
A good scare would be to send a text back saying - The police have your name John Smith. |
Anonymous
Can you explain this? |
Anonymous
As suggested by someone already on the thread, read the de Becker book (The Gift of Fear). It will give you a lot better information than I can in a paragraph. He runs a world-renowned security firm and does a lot of work with high visibility clients. Basically he says that a lot of people like OP's texter will will escalate their behaviors if you respond to them. Conversely he says that if you ignore them they may escalate for a bit but then they will move their fixation on to someone or something else. He gives a lot of examples of how people have responded to people like OP's texter and how it has resulted in an increasingly negative series of outcomes. We have had all of our kids read the book once they were teens. It is an easy read with good suggestions about how to recognize the warning signals from people who are potential stalkers and he gives advice about what to do or not do. |
Anonymous
| How would this person know your son's name and get the number. It is a school prank. |
Anonymous
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Maybe sign up that number at a site like this. Do not give identifying information, but say "predatory text sent to minor"?
https://www.badnumbers.info/ |
Anonymous
even better, label it as a spam number. |
Anonymous
THEN block. |
Anonymous
| I think you need to treat this as a crisis with your kid. He clearly gave the number to someone that he was talking to about important personal stuff. That person took his trust and twisted it into something sinister. By involving the police, you’ve dealt with that. But something is still going on with your kid that this happened at all. |
Anonymous
+1 I agree. |
Anonymous
Yes! OP you will now need to talk to your son. He needs to know he can trust YOU. |
Anonymous
| It honestly sounds like he’s being cyber-bullied by a classmate or another kid. There are ways to spoof phone numbers so the person who’s “number” it actually is might not even be aware. It’s not a bad idea to involve law enforcement in any case. Even if it’s just stupid kid stuff, you’d hate for your son to send pictures/information to the wrong person and the cyber-bullying gets worse. |
Anonymous
New poster. Agree, especially with the bolded above. OP, please sit down with your DH and both of you script what you want to say to start the conversation. Don't wing it. You do not want your son feeling scared that you're coming down on him like a ton of bricks, are angry, will punish him for...whatever. You need him to feel he can talk about whatever kicked this off (even if it's nothing HE did). Even if this is another kid pranking, it's bad. If it's another kid bullying, your son could be getting cyberbullied in other ways and you might not know it (does he do online school? Other forms of social media? Does he do gaming where he'd have contact with other kids and possibly adults masquerading as kids or as friendly players....??). You need your son to be willing to talk to you honestly and without fear about whether he might have given out personal information in ANY way. If he's in school even virtually you do have access to a school counselor, OP. Talk to that person. And you were right to involve the police. Do NOT contact this person. The PP above talking about The Gift of Fear and escalation is right. Please update us. |
Anonymous
| A grown man did this to me on the phone as a kid. Late 80s. Said he was my mom's doctor. |