Surfing in freedom (or so he thinks)

By Kelly

The mother of one of Tyler's friends told me yesterday that her son M has been visiting porn sites on the Internet. She found a list he had made of his favorite sites, and they corresponded exactly to the family computer's five-day history. She wanted me to be aware that this had happened, and that she'd asked M if Tyler was involved in any way.

He said that he'd found out about it in the lunch cafeteria at school. A group of about 10 boys sit together every day, and invited him to sit with them so they could tell him all about the naked women and sex they've been gawking at whenever their parents left them home alone. He swore he hadn't told Tyler anything about it.

I checked the history on our computer, and it's all the normal sites we visit every week. I can only feel relieved that Tyler's not sitting at that lunch table any more. He's right on the cusp of being interested in sex, but also being repulsed by the very idea of it.

I've noticed that he responds to the ridiculously large-breasted women on television by leaning a little closer and mouth-breathing, where just a few months ago he would throw his hand out and turn his head, or hide his face inside his shirt. Yet he still gets embarrassed if Chris and I share a kiss when he's in the room.

Tyler often stays up later than we do, but I don't allow him to be on the computer once we've gone to bed. So far I haven't felt any need to put parental controls on his surfing, because he constantly shows us what he looks at, and bookmarks everything. He isn't aware that the computer tracks every website visited for as many days as I want to program it, so I keep daily tabs on where he goes.

I can only hope that when it comes to the influence of his peers, that the consistent, open dialog we have will help him to at least tell us that someone told him to google hot babes with big boobs before he goes to his favorite search engine, AskJeeves.com and tries to get his advice.

For the time being, it seems fruitless to tell him that the Internet is full of sex for the looking, just so I can warn him away from it. We'll just continue showing him a healthy, growing relationship with love as the object, and keep the lines of communication open.

Oh, and check that history every day.

Comments

[Aline]

How do you trust a 16 year old who doesn't dare tell you the truth. He needs his computer for school and hides all his surfing by deleting the history ! I have found unsavory sites on my computer that were left before he relaized he could prevent my snooping by deletin

[m]

I've decided I want to resign from this whole parenting thing. "I quit," I told my husband tonight. "You can't quit," he reminded me. "Fuck," I responded.

And this is one of the reasons.

Instant Messaging is all the rage at my 10-year-old son's school. They decide before leaving what time they're all going to get on. I thought it was all pretty harmless--a junior Seinfeld episode of sorts--because from what I was reading, they seemed to talk about nothing. Then I saw an away message from a girl one grade level above my son's.

"I'm away from the computer right now because all of you fuckers are too boring so if you have a problem with that, you fuckers can just kiss my ass and go fuck yourselves."

I enjoy a good curse word as much as the next longshoreman or San Quentin inmate, but this took my breath away. I'm archiving all his messages and I check the cache and history regularly, but I feel as if I've let this monster in my house.

[udge]

A geek writes: Checking the history file does not necessarily show you where he has been surfing. The history can be easily edited to remove incriminating evidence.

It does indeed come down to trust and communication.

[Charlene]

I have a 3-year-old son and wow, the thought of porn surfing hadn't even crossed my mind yet. But it is a reality and hopefully we'll be armed to address if/when it hits. Great post.

[Nicola]

I second Terry's comments. Porn is out there. Tyler will eventually find it and enjoy it as has every young man before him. Lets just hope that he chooses to enjoy the standard stuff, and by supervising his internet use you can keep him away from the more frightening and abusive forms of pornography that are out there.

[kelly]

Katherine, he's 12 now, so I think it was more like 6, 7, and probably 8 when he was doing that. Thank Goddess he grew out of that one!

Terry!! Hahahah! and man, that quote is representative of most of the men in my life. I remember coming home to an empty house when I was 12, and sneaking into the crawl space to pour over my father's box of Playboy's. It ruined my body perception.

[Tim]

scary stuff!

[terry]

I almost just wrote "This is a hard one, Kelly," but then thought better of it.

This is a difficult subject, Kelly. There is so much porn out there on the internet and so much of what used to be outside the mainstream of porn is now considered quite "vanilla." This topic came up recently on my bbs and, while the women were all up in arms, the men said, essentially, "when i was 15, I wouldhave watched porn 18 hours a day if I had known where to get it."

I think that, by modeling a healthy relationship, which is the very opposite of porn, and by monitoring ( and perhaps later limiting) his unsupervised internet use, you're doing the right things.

[Katherine]

oh my god - you just reminded me of how he used to cop a feel of my breasts whenever he could wrangle it - and he was what - 9? 10? . . . those hormones they are a flowing . . . and he's such a good little man . . . I bet he'd talk to you about a site like that - simply because he'd pick up on the awful funk vibe of it - he;s so sensitive . . .