When Your Son Discovers Pornography

I discovered my son’s introduction to pornography on accident. I was typing something into search on my phone (I wish I could remember what), when search history popped up with that three letter word every parent breaks out into a sweat over when it comes to their kids: s-e-x. I was confused and incredulous at first, but then I scrolled through my search history and there it was: a stream of phrases that had been searched for on one of our devices (the omnipresent cloud must have synced them). I clicked through a few to see what he had been exposed to. I decided against looking through them all. My heart dropped. The age of innocence was over. Pandora’s Box had been opened.

I immediately notified his dad that we needed to have a talk about the situation. I told him about my discovery and asked that we sit down to talk to our prepubescent son ASAP. He talked me off the edge of panic and asked to have a father-to-son talk first to scope out more info on the whole ordeal. He recounted later that our son denied it, so he gave him some space to think about it and see if he could “remember” anything. Of course he came back later and ‘fessed up. Turns out there had been some locker room talk that brought up some questions, so he did what any normal human being does and sought Google’s sage advice.

I wanted to kick myself for not taking more precautionary measures. I hadn’t thought twice about handing over the old iPhone or iPad to our kids to play Minecraft and the plethora of other apps during their screen time. They don’t use the computer at home, and in between shuffling my gaggle of kids to school, work, and the general busyness of life, I had somehow overlooked the fact that despite my adamant decision not to let our kids have access to their own personal smartphones 24/7, they still, in fact, had unfettered access to the internet when I wasn’t looking.

I could go on a real guilt trip here and feel awful for my oversight—which I promptly corrected by taking Safari off those dang devices—but the truth is no matter how much we restrict our kids’ access to the outside world, it’s still going to find it’s way in. Just like Jeff Goldblum’s character says in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” Well, so does sex into our kids’ lives. Whether it’s from their own curiosity or tall tales discussed by peers, sex and sexuality is going to rear its head.

It did in mine: from elementary sleepovers where girls flipped to their parents’ adult channels, to the cafeteria table non-stop through high school. Short of confining our kids to their rooms until they go off to college, we can’t control everything that comes their way, no matter how hard we try.

When we did sit down and talk with our son, we realized it couldn’t be about shaming. That would send a clear message that we didn’t really want to know what was going on his life and that he should just get better at hiding it. Although I know our son won’t be divulging his every experience during the rest of his years under our wing, we knew it was important to be open and calm in this conversation.

Instead, we focused on what healthy relationships and sexuality mean. It’s natural to be curious about sex, and it’s important that our kids have a healthy factual sex education. And pornography is not that. Our son is highly sensitive to any kind of scary movies, and we’ve had a number of nights after he watched something that was a little too scary when he couldn’t fall asleep because of the images in his head. Pornography is just like that: You can’t erase the images, and they aren’t reality.

As much as I may have wanted to put my foot down and shame my son, I’d rather teach him how to make safe and healthy decisions—about sex, love, relationships, and everything else in life. And he won’t be able to do that if he’s stuck in fear and shame.

We did get the message across that we don’t condone looking at pornography, and that we’d much rather he wait to become sexually active until he’s an adult, but we talked about safe sex too. It’s not realistic to assume that our kids are going to be innocent angels and not make choices we’d prefer they didn’t. But we can arm them with correct information and keep the lines of communication open.

We’ve talked about girls and the birds and the bees before with our son, but that was just dipping our toes in compared to this talk. And we talked ad nauseum. He sat and nodded most of the time, probably wishing it was over, but I’m proud of how we handled the situation. Which is more than I say for the sex talks—or lack thereof—that I received from my parents growing up. We don’t have control over the choices our kids are going to make, but we can control whether we’re active participants. And I may not always be on the ball about everything, but when I see that I’ve dropped one, I’m going to do my darndest to pick it back up and hit the ground running.

Alamo City Moms
Alamo City Moms is written by a collaborative and diverse group of mothers. We strive to provide moms with relevant, timely and fun information about all things mom here in the greater San Antonio area.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Well, with the way the world has gone now, such things are to be expected. Which is why parents these days need to be triple vigilant about these things and what their kids are getting up to. Especially with regards their internet use.

    My number one recommendation would be to install a keylogger or any other type of PC monitoring device/software that will help folks stay on top of their kids’ activities online. While other means should be fashioned for offline monitoring.

  2. Thanks for this post; this is a very important topic to talk about! I take a slightly different approach, so I just thought I’d share 2 resources maybe some other moms here might find helpful.

    The first is a book for young kids (we’re talking like 8 or 9-11) that just broaches the topic of the fact that there are “bad pictures,” or pornography out there they might eventually run into. As this post mentions, those images can stay in our minds forever, and they can have damaging effects. It’s important for our children to know why this is, and to not confuse it with, “because that desire you have to learn about sex is bad.”

    http://www.amazon.com/Good-Pictures-Bad-Porn-Proofing-Todays/dp/0615927335

    The second resource is basically a video the Mormon church put together based off of the book I mentioned. I am not personally Mormon, and so I kind of wish the references to “Heavenly Father” weren’t phrased the way they are, but I found it to be a good resource regardless.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x_ijWnjcOY

    No judgement here; just sharing my approach!

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