This tutorial for you Guys 💔🤝
Exposure to pornography can happen to any child, whether they are looking for it or not. To think that ‘it won’t happen to my child’ leaves your child vulnerable to stumbling upon sexually explicit material that they may not be ready for.
This blog post isn’t about kids who deliberately seek sexually explicit material. That is a different issue. This post is about what parents can do to protect their child from unwanted sexual material ie where a child has stumbled upon it accidentally or was deliberately shown it by someone.
If your child has already been exposed to pornography, you need to know that it isn’t a reflection on your parenting or on your child. Today, it is actually harder for kids to avoid online pornography than it is to find it.
It is our responsibility as parents to protect our children to the best of our ability. For today’s child, this mean preparing our children for when (not if) they stumble across pornography.
But there is hope.
Even with the seeming pervasiveness of pornography, parents have power to protect their children and prepare them to face and reject pornography.
Kids and porn – know the signs.
There are a few warning signs that may signal that your child has been accessing sexually explicit material:
Find evidence of pornography in your browser history (older kids will be smarter and may delete any history).
Discover that the browser history has been cleared on the family computer.
You notice an increase in pop-ups, spam messages, viruses or other inappropriate content on the family computer.
Unexplained charges on your credit card, mobile, tv or internet service bill.
Your child lies about their computer use.
Your child is spending large amounts of time online, especially at night.
Your child locks the door when on the computer in their bedroom.
Your child quickly changes the monitor screen, hiding what they were looking at, when you enter the room.
An unusual curiosity about sexuality.
You overhear your child talking about sexually explicit material.
Your child talks about women and/or sex in a disrespectful, physical and highly sexualised way.
Your child starts displaying inappropriate sexual behaviour.
Your child appears depressed and withdraws from everyday family life.
My child has already seen porn. What now?
Sometimes we go to start our first conversation about pornography with our child, to discover that we are too late and that our child has already viewed it. For kids today, the reality is that it is harder to avoid pornography than to find it.
If your child has already stumbled across pornographic material, it is important to stay calm. Let them know that you aren’t angry with them, and reassure them that you are glad that they have told you, so that you can help them to make sense of what they saw. Ask them how they came across it, what they saw, and how it made them feel. It is important to not embarrass or shame them during the conversation.
If they were shown it by a friend, let them explain what happened, talk about how it made them feel and how they can respond if it happens again.
If they went looking for it, let them explain why they went looking for the material, talk about how it made them feel and discuss better ways for them to find out about sexuality in the future.
If your child has been viewing pornography frequently, you may be wondering if you need to seek professional help. This is a difficult question to answer as it depends on the severity of the material that the child was viewing: were the images limited to just body parts or did it include graphic sexual acts, violence or animals? Has the child acted out in a way that is sexually inappropriate or acted out what they saw with another child?
If your child is clearly traumatised by the material viewed, regularly views pornography, or later ‘acts out’ sexually with against another child, then you will want to consider seeking the help of a health professional with expertise in the area of pornography. True Relationships & Reproductive Health have created an app, The Traffic Lights®, that can help with identifying and managing sexual behaviours in children and adolescents.
If your child is viewing pornographic material frequently, you may be wondering if your child has an addiction. Sometimes it can be hard to determine the difference between a habit of watching porn and an addiction where you try to stop but just can’t. Whichever it is, there are some things that you can do as a parent to help your child. And keep in the back of your mind, that sometimes viewing pornography is a sign that something else is going on. Sometimes kids become sexualised before they are ready, and seek our pornography because of this
Is porn harmful?
Despite the fact that we know most children will see pornography before adulthood, we still don’t have enough evidence to say if pornography is harmful to children.
There is very little research to support that viewing sexually explicit material will cause a change in sexual attitudes, beliefs or behaviours or even harm child sexual development.
However, we do know that adolescents who have viewed sexually explicit material are at greater risk of developing:
Unrealistic attitudes about sex and relationships
Inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality
Preoccupation with sex
Sexually permissive attitudes
Positive attitudes about casual and recreational sex
Belief in traditional gender roles; including views of women as sex objects
Increased sexual behaviours, such as oral sex, group sex, anal sex, and using drugs and alcohol during sex (some researchers disagree with this)
Insecurities about body image in females
Insecurities about sexual performance in males
Sexual harassment (there is no link to sexual aggression for the majority of males)
Misbehaviour at school
Social maladjustment
Symptoms of depression
But what about in young children who have not yet reached puberty?
Again there is no evidence of long-term harm from exposure to sexually explicit material. Some research suggests that between 12% to 38% of children aged 9-16 years, are bothered or upset by finding sexual material online.
Someone may asked, so Shapiro Acid ''How do I stop my son or daughter from watching porn?'' By the way l have some few ways to share with you all,
Ways to Block Porn on Your Kid's Devices
1. Turn on Google SafeSearch.
2. Use Screen Time on iPhones and iPads.
3. Ask your internet service provider (ISP)
4. Install parental controls.
5. Go the hardware route.
