If you could go back in time....what could have helped?

[rosie]

My son is 13, and started high school this year. I believe this is "Sophomore" in the US?? Anyway. It is "big" school. They go from being little kids to grown up teen boys very quickly. Scary and unsettling.

So moving along...

My son within the first week of high school, started to search for pornographic images online. Also on my iphone. He has an ipod thing that we disabled so it has no net access. But, still, he searched for it.

I could tell by the words he used (sexually explicit and badly spelled) that he had heard the terms prior to searching - which was a relief. There isn't really a way he would have been exposed to P in our home because my husband is very careful and I only find it because I am a mega snoop.

The first time it was ??? "innocent searching"??? Well, according to my male friend, it was innocent. "boobs" etc was what he was searching for. But the 2nd time (weeks later), he was searching for what I would consider - semi-hardcore things. So, not regular hetero sex, let's put it that way.

Anyway. I have explained to him that it does not represent real-life, and that it is objectifying women, etc etc. And that it is highly addictive, worse than drugs (he is learning about substance abuse at school - tied in nicely). I tried not to shame him, but I didn't really have a choice - talking about this stuff with him was shameful for him by default. :( I have told him that he is not allowed to be looking at that "stuff", and to my amazement... he hasn't since our talk - about 8 months ago.

However. In case he is and is hiding it...what would have helped YOU at that age? Which things could we do to stop HIM becoming an addict?

My husband works long hours and I work from home, so I am very present in the afternoons and nights and keep a good eye on him, we interact, talk etc but he NEVER wants to talk to me - apparently that's a boy thing?

Which things could have stopped YOUR addiction from growing? Any advice much appreciated.

[RootedinGod]

Hi Rosie, I am not sure if this helps but I put parental limits on all our Pc's mine too. I have two teenage buys one a sophmore, Vista and win7 both have built in parental stuff . I set up account and log the activity. I wont go into this to much as you may already know that these OS's have this built in. I told him the same thing though that its not real, I tried to work his known relationship with videos games as to how fake porn is, his found it stupid and the last several week the pc's show know activity on the sites he was searching for.#:-s But I am sure this is not my first battle with him.

BT- Paul

[2frustrated]

What would have helped me is if one of my parents talked to me about it.

[Daniel]

Rosie,

Depending on you and your son's dynamic, you may or may not be the right person to have the conversation with.

When I was an adolescent, my best friend's Dad, who I happened to work with, provided more than enough insight to all things hyper-hormoned for me at the time. He did it by joking around about MB and other topics that would have been horrifying to have with anyone, peers, parents, etc. But he "de-fanged" the issues by talking about them straight and not mincing words.

In hindsight, I would have a very direct conversation about the various points to consider. In my daughters' issues, we consider the "Talk" not a singular event but a series of conversations where we can get the issues on the table and talk about them in a straight-ahead fashion. To make these conversations happen we have to be attentive (they are not scheduled but just spill out sometimes very unexpectedly) and ready to read the clues or hear the words that signal the real issue is coming out if we'll let it...

I could bullet a list of specific things to say but you can find them here in the form of how destructive a P habit can be, how destructive it is on the people involved, how we defacto support the industry if we use (even if it's 'free'), how the culture at large pushes hard to de-humanize all invididuals down to body parts, clothes and make-up, with no end in sight.

At last the value of personal loving relationships needs to be highlighted and underlined, and these are trashed under the addiction(s)...

Daniel

[gnein]

What would have helped me is if one of my parents talked to me about it.

I feel you, dude. My parents talked to me about every other addiction out there, and they must have done a reasonable job, because I stayed clear of them all. Unfortunately, in the early 90s, nobody realised how addictive P really was. Or if they did, it wasn't widely publicised. I, like many others, fell right into the trap.

If I could go back in time, I'd go back and try to warn my former self about the consequences of using P.

[hellron]

What would have helped me?

Having parents available and willing to hear more than "yeah, everything is fine".

Having parents show an active interest in what mattered to me.

Being shown that I mattered, that what I thought and felt was important to someone other than just me.

I became a PA/SA at the age of 11, as I was simply unable to deal with my life.

What would have helped me the most was someone to listen to me, guide me, and show me another way through.

-- HR

[debv]

My sons are 12 and 14. In the US, this age is considered middle school, not high school, grades 6 and 8. Freshman = 9th grade (14-15), sophomore = 10th, junior = 11th and senior = 12th.

Anyway, my boys are your son's age. My 14yo was also searching for P-type stuff on the computer and ipod, and got into some chat rooms. DW talked to him (I would have been unable to do so calmly at that point, only a few months after I found out about DW's P use.) My son also was aware of how the P was busting up our marriage, I was sleeping in the guest bedroom at the time. Since DW talked to him, DW installed a stronger child protection program on the whole computer network not just the boys' computer (which is in a public room in the house), and banned him from the ipod.

Can't answer the main question of the thread. I can tell you that as the SO of a PA, if I could go back in time I would have called DW on his gawking at other women, on the P tape I found when we were moving when our 14yo was 13 months old, but I don't know if it would have helped. DW has been brutally honest telling me that what I thought and how I felt didn't matter to him at that point. Not to be mean to me, to be honest in trying to help me understand that this isn't my fault.

[craigw79]

Rosie,

If only I would have listened to my mother. First time I was got viewing P, she told me that it would ruin my life. Of course, I didn't bother to listen, and look where that has gotten me.

Communication is the key; it may not be a pleasurable conversation, but ultimately one of the most important.

Best of luck!

[RootedinGod]

Hi,

I doubt very little I could have prevented this outcome.
I have never been fond of the Monday Morning Quarter Back theory. That is not to say this is not a good post.^:)^
But, there is really not much anyone could do to prevent what occurred to them other then the obvious, never being exposed to adult material.

You are drinking coffee in the morning, you take one sip more and pull out of your drive way and run over an old lady in a scooter.
If you had just not takin that sip would you have seen her? Or perhaps you would have avoided her but now you were late arriving at that stop light that was ran by that truck that now t-boned your VW and put you in the hospital.

Our lives change in a milli-second by what we do.
A person could have been exposed to porn at a young age and never become addicted or care about it, while millions in the same life type will fall pray to it.

It may not be a popular statement, but there is very little one could do to avoid where they are now. Thats lifes design!

However, there is steps you can do to help limit the chances of others getting hooked, joining this group is a great start !
And telling people the truth even when it is not popular to do so.

[Bryan]

For me, I think my parents did honestly try to teach me and talk to me, not only about sex, but somewhat about P, but P had become a part of my life before those talks. I was exposed to it earlier through a friend of mine.

I love(d) my parents and have always respected their guidance, but I think I failed to grasp the power of P when I was young and how devastating it really would be with continued prolonged use. From my parents I learned a deep respect for the true nature of what sex was supposed to be through there talks, but P always existed outside of that concept for me. So I continued to do it in secret.

But an example of this paradoxical thought, I was in college when I finally felt "ready" to be fully intimate with my girlfriend, I knew that I wanted to wait until I was in love and with the right girl... yet I had been a very active P user from the moment we got the internet in our home years before. In one sense I honored and revered women and what sex was supposed to be, and in another I completely trivialized it and was unfaithful to that idea by my growing use of P.

So if I could have changed anything, I think it would have been hearing more stories on how truly devastating P and S addiction can be to a person, and how that just depletes them so fully. I never heard those kinds of stories or learned that when I was young.