Need thoughts please

[Arania79]

I have four kids, 5 and 10 are boys, 9 and 11 are girls....

My issue is my 10 year old. I love that he's already a computer whiz, but this has raised a problem. I'm trying to not make a big deal out of it, as the negative response is sure to make him want to do it more. I know I'm rambling, but I want to make sure I get my thoughts out as well.

He was looking for porn online. When confronted with it, he said he had heard about it and was curious what it was. I do believe him, he's still not of an age where he's interested in girls yet, so I know that sex is the furthest thing from his mind right now.

My question is, how can I discourage him from doing it again, taking into consideration that I don't want to take away his computer time totally, and we are supervising even more now, without damaging his view of sex, I don't want to give him the idea that sex or the human body are bad things. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to nudity, sex, and stuff like that, I watch porn with my husband myself. I want to go with the "you're too young right now" approach, but is it the best way?

On the funny side about this though, he kept guarding the screen from his 5 year old brother while he was doing it. When hubby saw this (I was at work at the time) he was behind the younger one, and saw my older boy cover the screen with his arms when his brother walk in the room.

Thanks in advance for any help...

[MamabearTo4]

I went through the same thing with my son, who is also 10!

I found out that he was looking at it when he had left the room, so I was able to think about what to say to him for several hours. Here is what I came up with:

Boys being curious about a womans body is a normal thing (you don't want to make him feel like a freak). The way that women (and/or sex) are portrayed on websites like that is disrespectful and disgraceful. I asked him how seeing those images made him feel, and he said that he was uncomfortable and that he didn't see what the big deal was. I told him that he could always come to me with topics like this that are uncomfortable to him and I would never judge him. I also told him that if he was curious about a womans body, together we could look at sculpture or paintings of nudes.

:

I handled the situation the way I did because I want him to feel comfortable coming to me for anything. Experiences like this can only strengthen that bond...and make me want to strangle the little neighbor jerk who's been 'spreading the news' all over my neighborhood. :

[smillerhouse]

I like to talk to my teens about the difference between objectifcation and love. That is around the age my son startedlooking at it. It is so ramapant. I feel as long as there are many other activites and outlets and most importantly much modeling and support for seeing all humans as human beings ,it is not a huge crisis. My son is now 16 and daughter nearly 14. Sallie

[alllyssa]

Why don't you have parental controls on your computer?

[Houdini]

My son first came across online porn at the age of ten......at 11.5 we are still battling the addiction. He started out with denying looking at the stuff (at age 10) to realizing he has trouble staying away from the temptation of looking at porn. He has recently asked me to place more blockers on the system, so I have been working with a computer geek friend of mine to get more ideas for blockers. He has determined on his own that he doesn't want to view porn, but isn't able to alway stop himself.

We have parental controls in place, but have had issues finding the right combinations to block certain things and not everything. It's been a long journey and we still have a long way to go.

[Houdini]

Originally Posted by alllyssa

Why don't you have parental controls on your computer?

We had controls in place on our computer, just not the right combination. It was an all or nothing thing on our system. Either we had to block every single site (they needed a password only we knew) or it allowed site we didn't want. It is a matter of finding the correct combination of the controls.

[Arania79]

Originally Posted by alllyssa

Why don't you have parental controls on your computer?

We do, but like was said by a PP, the controls are all or nothing, not to mention, this is a boy who at 4 was able to plug in, turn on, get around my password and get onto cartoon network, he takes after his father when it comes to technology and such....

ETA: We want to teach him, he's old enough to get a REAL reason to not do it, not just "don't do it because we said so"....He's intelligent enough to understand the reasoning as well