I'm wondering how to approach my 9 year old

Hi,

Lots of males have homoerotic curiosity and and/or have an odd homosexual experience. Far as I know that has nothing to do with sexual preference. Far as I know sexual preference is set in the womb.

Size is a major curiosity for all boys. Media pushes size matters so young boys care to know if they stack up.

Since "size" was part of the search I would place it under curiousity.

Stuck

 

At 9, I had absolutely zero sexual interest. Curiosity, yeah, because it was something new. It was almost a morbid fascination though, because all of what I saw at the time I thought was sort of gross. I'd just let him know that he isn't bad for looking, but definitely that it's fake/unrealistic.

He probably thinks of it as far less monumental than you do. Not that I have recent experience with 9-year-olds, but if you don't stress too much, chances are he won't and you'll both be just fine.

 

Gosh, that is a tough question. I agree with the poster above me though, in that I had no inkling of sexual interest or drive at 9. I don't even think I gave it a second thought until 12 or 13. Then suddenly I was attracted to men... Yeah, that scared the hell out of me.

I love to see parents on EC asking about their kids. I am 25 and I would love it if my parents actually bothered to join. My best guess in response to your post is simply that your son is likely feeling pressure from the other boys at school, and is looking at porn to satisfy his curiosity, even if he doesn't actually have a sex drive just yet. Then again, he just might, do you think he's hit puberty? I hear that is happening earlier now.

No surprise he bypassed the parental controls, kids are geniuses on electronics now. It's pretty amazing. I wouldn't worry too much, but confronting him about the porn would be good. At 13, I'd say let sleeping dogs lie, but 9 does seem awfully young...

On the bright side, most of my friends in middle school and highschool were perverted little sh*ts, but most of them turned out just fine!

Good luck, and keep us posted.

The Seeker

 

Access to this stuff has changed so dramatically -- now any kid can point their iPod or phone up to the sky and get anything.

To me this is less about access to porn, but about internet access in general. I would frame this as a discussion about being safe, responsible, etc. online.

To me this does suggest that better internet controls are needed. Not that kids shouldn't be able to get info and learn stuff, but that ought to be on a PC that's sitting in the corner of the family room or kitchen, not their room in the middle of the night (certainly at age 9).

In terms of addressing what you think he saw. Your approach is good -- you can say a lot of the stuff online is people acting, not the way real people are together when they have sex.

You should also be clear with him, that if he downloads this stuff, sends it to his friends, does this at school or other public places, he could be in deep trouble with the law. Kids have no idea that sexting/sending photos of themselves is criminal.

And my suggestion is, make sure the internet password you use at home can't be cracked so easily. You know on most routers, you can set access by IP address or device, too.

 

Being calm, non-judgemental, and open to his questions or what he has to say should help him feel like it's alright to talk about sexuality with you, which is an excellent way for you to remain a guiding and available resource in his life. Remaining silent or treating sex/pornography as dirty, evil, or wrong is a good way to keep him from ever sharing information like that with you. Telling him, "This is pretty unusual, dangerous in reality, and not a good example of most sex" is a lot different than "This is bad, don't look at it". A parent who can explain and give context to pornography and other confusing new sexual information is so valuable to a young person. I wish you the best of luck.

 

He is so young right now he doesn't exactly know what to be really attracted to or what to "get off" on. He's just looking around this whole new world and being curious, I highly doubt he's actually masturbating to any of it, or if he even knows how to masturbate. I'm no parenting expert of course, so take my advice as a grain of salt, but my opinion is to not mention anything. It'll make him REALLY embarrassed and could associate bad memories with sex if you do, and there's no reason to necessarily approach him yet, as far as I can tell. If you're really concerned, you should monitor it and let him keep exploring, and if you really dislike hardcore porn and don't want it to be something he uses to get an idea of sex, then talk to him only if he really starts to frequently look up hardcore porn.

If you do choose to approach him, please don't mention that you caught him looking at it. Try to set the talk more like an informative thing, like "porn is _____ and I think _____." Instead of "I found porn on your iPod. This is very naughty and don't want to see you looking at it again."

 

Tough.

l wouldn't want my young kid looking at any porn, regardless of orientation.

Just...eh. They don't get it, l think you're right in that he's just going to think that's normal sex and be confused when he starts. Or develop an obsession with it early.

l don't think it means a whole lot about his orientation, kids are really sponging everything up at that age(this sounds weird here but you know what l mean).

Some kids have an inkling of what they like but they're still very curious. l wouldn't bring it up to him, l don't think but l might either take the ipod away or disable the internet access if possible.

 

You guys are great parents! Your son sounds very lucky.

 

I wish my parents were as kool as you

 

While I think your approach in general is great, I don't think controlling electronics will help much. There's a million open wifis around, phones connected directly to the internet through the network operator, his friends not having parents who care as much and so on. All the rest you said, like talking to him and everything, will do much more than filtering out internet traffic. You will not succeed in holding him away from porn, but you can prepare him for it.

And btw, I was a pre-teen in a pre-internet age and at the age of nine I'd already seen a lot and knew a lot. But I didn't find it sexual, just factual I guess ("ok, so that's how you do it, weird, ok let's go back to play").