Internet Porn for Children

My daughter was introduced to Internet porn the other day. It wasn't a voluntary thing - on her part or mine. I guess that's probably obvious. Anyway - suddenly there it was, and I had to figure out how to talk to her about it.

But first let me just say this -- it's not fair!!!

I wasn't being a bad parent on that particular day. My daughter and I were snuggled together on the sofa, using the laptop to find pictures of Scooby Doo and the Gang for a little project she was working on. The timer rang on the oven, so I left her for a moment to take some home-baked muffins out of the oven. I'm not making that up -- home-baked muffins, from scratch. I swear I was being a good mom that day!

But the problem is that sometimes people like to dress up as Scooby Doo and the Gang. Only they neglect to put on underwear. And they have to bend over for some reason. And then they get their pictures taken.  And then they post them on the Internet.

Sigh.

So, my daughter was looking at pictures of Scooby and the Gang when she saw some pictures of naked people, and she was pretty shocked. I knew something was wrong when I went back into the living room and found her sitting completely still, not moving at all.

So, here's a question - how do you talk with an 8-year-old about porn? (Just for a frame of reference - she doesn't know about sex yet, and she thinks kissing is gross.)

The answer is that there are lots of things to say to an 8-year-old about porn.  We talked for a long, long time.

At first she didn't want to say much, and just seemed to want a lot of reassurance.  So I talked in a very matter-of-fact, very calm way.

Then after a while, she wanted to make some sense out of what she saw. We had to start somewhere that she understands, so we talked about bad guys. One way to be a bad guy is to take naked pictures of people and post them on the Internet. Another is to let somebody take naked pictures of you.

But it's more complex than that, because, even though it seems bad to her, people are actually allowed to do those things. And she's old enough to understand some level of complexity. So we talked about how, weird as it might seem to her, naked pictures are actually legal, as long as it's grownups in the pictures, and grownups taking the pictures, and never, ever kids. And as long as everyone knows it's happening, and has agreed to it.

That led to questions about whether there should be a law against taking naked pictures and posting them on the Internet. Turns out 8 isn't too young to start thinking about freedom of speech, and starting to understand both sides of that issue.

And it led off on the tangent of understanding that's why you can't use a cell phone in the locker rooms at the Y. Because maybe somebody isn't talking on the phone, but is actually taking secret naked pictures of people.

Now she gets why young kids don't get to use the Internet by themselves, for exactly this reason - that sometimes they might accidentally see something on the Internet that wasn't meant for kids. She immediately vowed never, ever to use the Internet without her dad or me right there, because this really freaked her out. But that issue is more complex, and the situation has changed for us now, because she was clearly able to tell when she'd come upon something she wasn't supposed to see, and she had done the right thing, which is to do nothing until I came back and helped her. So we talked about what a good kid she is, and what good judgement she used, and how we're likely to trust her to do more alone on the Internet now that we know how responsible she is.

Much as I might have hoped we could have avoided more embarrassing territory, we really couldn't, because much as the experience shocked her, and freaked her out, she also found the pictures kind of ... interesting. She was uncomfortable admitting it, but she kind of wanted some reassurance and understanding of that too.

So I explained that pictures of naked people are pretty common on the Internet, because sometimes people enjoy looking at them. I wasn't ready to talk with her about all the fun and exciting aspects of nudity, and I really don't think she's ready to hear about them, but we did talk about curiosity, and how it's perfectly natural to have some. She can look in the mirror to see what a naked girl looks like, but she doesn't ever have an opportunity to see naked boys, and she's curious. It's not like I had a great answer for her. It's natural to be curious, but you're supposed to wait until you're an adult to indulge that curiosity by looking at naked pictures of people on the Internet. Bummer to be a kid.

And then we even talked about some of the words, so that if she wants to talk about it again sometime, she'll have the vocabulary.

It was a long talk. Afterwards it felt like somebody ought to swoop in and give me a medal, or at least a drink, but of course nobody did. Her little art project got derailed, which was too bad, but it turned out to be a pretty good day anyway. I can't help but believe that we added some points in the trust column that day, with the difficult but honest conversation, although the topic hasn't come up again.

Thank God.