The Day My Son Googled a New Word

my summer vacation - by an 8 year old boy

my summer was great, it felt like it was really long, my sister thought it went by quickly.

we went to the mountains a couple of times, went to the pool often, mom loves Menchies so we were there A LOT, sometimes we’d go during the day and not tell Dad so if he wanted to go after dinner we’d get to go again!

i have always been a bit scared to go down the water slides but a friend convinced me i would love it, i did love it!  it was awesome! i must have gone down a million billion times.

i also did something mom found out about and i wanted to die, i looked at naked people on youtube.

mom said Miley Cyrus’s new video was inappropriate so i couldn't help myself, i went and looked. and a friend's brother told me what "stripper" was so i typed that in too and there were lots of pictures and videos of people, girls mostly, taking off their clothes. i couldn't NOT look, but it made me feel so weird. so i stopped. but i did go back to the places that didn’t make me feel too bad.

then one night mom picked up my iPod and saw the pages i had left open!

i thought i would die.

she said she wasn't mad and that looking at this stuff was normal but i felt so embarrassed and bad that i could stop crying and that made me feel even worse!

and she kept talking and all i wanted her to do was STOP!

but she explained some stuff to me that had been bothering me so i was kind of glad she kept talking.

now every once in awhile she asks  “have you been looking at naked girls?” and i want to die but i tell her the truth. i haven’t  gone back to naked sites but i told her i have watched that miley cyrus video a couple more times.

Our Summer Vacation - By the Mom of an 8 Year Old Boy

This summer my son got the nerve to go down the water slide. I had tried for last few summers to convince he would love it but no luck, not even with bribes. I tried cash, ice cream, lego - nothing. Apparently I should have bribed him with porn.

He’s 8 and he had a big summer full of firsts. It’s the year he got the nerve to open his eyes under water and to focus them on naked girls on the net.

Good grief.

Not that long ago a curious boy (likely older than 8) would have had to find their dad’s hidden Playboys to get a look at a naked girl. Motionless women posed on fur rugs and haystacks so benign in comparison to what a kid can find today... girls that move, peel of their clothes, attack the pizza delivery guy and cavort with farm animals - sometimes all at once.

We talked about what I found on his iPod. He was mortified. I assured him I was not mad and that it was normal but that it needed context. For example; the game show he found that featured female contestants shooting baskets and having to take off a piece of clothing for each missed shot was not what his dad and I played on the driveway after he had gone to bed. 

As we talked I discovered he felt bad that he felt things “down there”  for these girls he saw because he did not want to marry them. God love him. So I explained that those stirrings will come at various times and for various reasons and that I had felt them for some fellas before I met Dad. “DOES HE KNOW????” 

"Yes he does and he felt that way for other girls before he met me and that’s the way it is. All normal."

So, as disinclined as we are to talk about these things because it makes everyone squirmy, when you do talk you often find that it is not the obvious that lurks heavily on their conscience but something you would never have guessed. I could never have predicted that thing my son felt most badly about was that he was attracted to girls for whom he felt no lifelong commitment. That’ll change!

Next we discussed the rules. He can keep his iPod but:

• I will be checking his on line history and only I am allowed to erase it. 
• If he is looking at something on YouTube and the options down the right side offer something racy and he simply cannot help himself and looks, he has to tell me.
• If he has questions he is to ask me or his Dad.
• He is not allowed to share what he has learned from us or seen on his iPod with anyone.

I cannot keep him from seeing any of this. If I take his iPod away, he’ll see these images and videos at school with the older boys who can be spotted on the playground and the bus, groups of horny boys, heads smushed together starring down at the screen and the little kids poke their faces into the scrum. He wouldn't tell me what he saw and we wouldn't talk.

I want to keep the conversation going. So that when he sees a picture a schlong hanging past a guy’s knee he doesn’t feel inadequate (or terrified) or that when he sees naked girls, hairless from chin to toe, seemingly thrilled to have every orifice filled by something  that he doesn't think this is what his dating life will look like. 

He, and his sister, deserve to have perspective, context, self respect, respect for their partners and a willingness to let us help them learn all that. And that's all there is to it.

After it was all over and everyone had gone to bed, that night I discovered his porn past, I had a quiet cry. He stills believes in Santa but has googled "strippers". It goes faster than ever these days.