Would you tell on your kid's friends

Do you think other parents should have a say in how you discipline Mo?

It depends on what they did but I probably wouldn't tell even if they weren't going to get hit (unless I needed one of them to come pick up an unruly or out of control child).

No. And that's why I'm here asking.

Only if you think it's something important that the parents really should know about. But you probably won't feel good about having done it. One of those no win situations, I guess. Damned if you do & damned it you don't.

Yikes.

That's tough.

I guess with this (and any other kid, unless I knew they would be really abused) I think that minor stuff you just handle.

Stuff that has you worried, or that you would want to know about if it were Mo, or that affects your willingness to have the kid over again, I think we ought to share.

sans safety issues, No

Okay. So here's what they did.....

A week or so ago I caught Mo and his friends googling "sex videos".

My computer wouldn't allow me, as the administrator, to put parental controls on my own account so I set up a new account for Mo with all the controls in place.

His two friends came over to spend the night over the weekend. I turned off my computer and told them they weren't allowed to use it. They turned it on, figured out the password to my account and looked at some pornography.

They didn't go any further than the main page, didn't access the videos or anything but they did see some rather explicit photos.

The next day, after we walked them home, Mo fessed up about it because he was bothered by what they saw.

We had a LONG talk about not only porn, but about them violating my trust, and about internet saftey. I also showed Mo how easy it was to check the history to see what people had been looking at in hopes that it would innoculate him against peer pressure should this kind of thing ever happen again.

I know one of the friends in question had been caught looking at this stuff at home and was "beaten" for it.

I intend to mention to the boys that I know what they did but I'm struggling whether or not to tell their parents who.... well.... don't always deal with things the way I would.

Kids are curious. I get that.

But the internet is a dangerous place for them to go looking.

So.... you know..... I just don't know.

I would not tell the parents what happened in your house unless they ask
you.

As for "spanking" - I have called Child Protective Services before. My daughter has a sweet friend whose father was violent towards her. Her mother divorced
the father due to domestic violence but unfortunately they agreed upon joint custody. Whenever the girl was at the fathers' she developed anxieties and
numerous times she confided in my daughter, how her father got angry at minor incidents and started hitting her. When she supposedly fell down some stairs,
I called CPS and it seemed he was already on record there.

Like Dys says, without safety issues, or something equally important, I would keep it to myself. To me, it's a privacy issue, not a matter of how the kid is going to be punished. I'm weird that way, and I know it.

Do work on your password, though. I often use the randomly generated password I was assigned by Abuzz. Easy to remember, and you won't guess it in a million years. For access to windows, though, I just use "111". Nobody's watching me type it, and if I had company they could use the internet just whenever. My financial passwords are a bit more complex.

I would be VERY angry if a child of mine had accessed porn, and the parent supervising them knew, and I didn't know.

The reason for this is I know from bitter experience that this CAN be very traumatic for kids, and I'd damn well want to be able to have a chat to my kid and help them with any difficult feelings and questions that they had.

For some kids, this can also lead to some quite harmful acting out, especially if they haven't had a chance to deal with their feelings some other way, that can be distressing/harmful for other kids, and/or lead to the kid in question being landed with a reputation for being a yucky kid, which can be very damaging, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course, lots of kids can shrug it off.....but it CAN be very serious indeed.

Frankly, I would also want to know so that I could be very sure about properly supervising my kids...and I would want to be damn sure that you were going to ensure my kid wouldn't access it again at YOUR house.


Spanking is just a weasel word for hitting.

If you think that parents of a child who is visiting you cannot be trusted not to hurt their kid because you pass on important information to them, then I have to question whether the kid is safe generally, and I would suggest that, in your position, I would notify.

I notice the "spanking" thing has become beating.

I see your dilemma, as stuff to do with sex can make shaky parents go troppo on their kids, and fail to understand that kids have intense curiosity which is perfectly normal.

Again, if the kids are not safe in your view, I am wondering if there is a bullet you need to bite.


I'd be fascinated to know how you talked to Mo about what he'd seen, by the way!!!

It's a tribute to your relationship that Mo told you, and was able to talk about it, btw............lots of kids with a perfectly happy history sit on this stuff because they are too scared to tell their parents.

Try locking your account down with a password that consists of combination of a foreign word or phrase that you can remember and numbers and Capitol letters. Password security shouldn't be so easily circumvented.

Telling Mo how easily it is to find out the history of other users could lead to him finding out how easy it would be to cover his tracks in the future.

Take into the whole account, one positive from this whole shebang ... that Mo came to you with a troubled conscious and told you before you found out. Use that to your advantage. Encourage his moral development in this arena. Perhaps, he can be a good influence on his friends in this department.

As for telling on the other kids? Let it slide this time. Warn them that the next time that you find them breaking the rules of the house that you WILL tell their parents of their past transgressions. Hopefully, the combination of Mo's ethical maturation and this proverbial axe over their head will keep them from so blatantly breaking the rules.

One sentence jumped out at me.

If he's a second time offender there is a problem and I think his parents need to know, but the parents need to know their method of dicipline has not worked and some suggestions could be offered as to diciplineary methods.

Advise the parents of what diciplinary action you have taken with Mo and that you dicounted spanking as you dont agree with that method.

BTW I distinctly remember furtivly perusing penthouse/playgirl at my local corner store at around that age as I'm sure many boys did.

A lesson on female anatomy and sexuality (no means no) could be a good idea to short curcuit curiosity.

You're right.

One of the thing that differentiates normal exploration from concerning behaviour is failure to stop when it is explained that the behaviour is inappropriate.

I am guessing that this is the kid that Boomer has discussed previously, at whose home Mo has heard things that have upset him?

Boom, I see the dilemma in two directions. One, that the kids are doing things that the parents should know about, and two, that the reason they are doing it might stem from natural curiosity or it may stem from an unhealthy overall environment in the kid's home. I think you're worried about number two.

There's no fire - you don't need to march over there and give them some news that they can't live without. On the other hand, if the kid is living in an unhealthy environment maybe you should be talking to someone else. Not sure who exactly, it seems a bit premature and presumptive to call CPS but....

I understand why you're pausing.

I agree with JPB. Giving advice to other parents in how to discipline their
kids comes over really well (not). I wouldn't even attempt to do so, and yes
CPS is only for as a last resort which in our case with my daughter's friend
had a history of beatings wife and kid.

These boys are 8 years old, almost 9 ? and I do think that a little anatomy lesson and sex education is in order. They're obviously interested.

This is tricky, but I believe it takes a village...
I don't think beating/spanking a kid does much more than make them angry, more defiant. My kids had a few friends where this was the preferred tactic in their homes. When the came into my home, I had rules. If they were broken I talked to the kids as if they were mine and explained that not only did I have rules, but there were consequences to their actions. Just like when the go to school....
Not every infraction in school warrants a call home. If I was made to skip recess or sit in a corner, it didn't necessarily get my parents attention. I think we have to have some trust in the people we allow our children to associate with. I remember being chastised by my friends parents for things that my parent's never found out about.
I think this teaches kids a lesson too, that they are part of society and it's not just mom and dad's rules they have to obey.

The other parents definitely need to know about this, for the reasons that dlowan outlined.

And you need to explain to Mo why the other parents need to know about this.

The moral peril of not advising the other parents is greater than the moral peril of telling the other parents.

You might become known as the "cool" parent, but you would also become known as the lax parent. If the other parents find out, you lose their trust. The kids learn that they can break the rules at your house and get away with it.

thinking about all of this.

The material in a Penthouse or Playboy 30 or 40 years ago is not the same as what someone sees, even on the main page, of a porn site.

I was younger than Mo, maybe, um...8 or 9 and of course a girl when I got a good look at some porn. It totally confused and scared me, yet I was curious, and went looking for its hiding place, examining it and become even more upset. It really gave me the idea of women being degraded, as in "why are they making her show her (fill in the blank) to everyone?"

I was afraid to tell my parents, and I knew they would blame me for looking at it. The stuff came into my hands when my father was sick with the flu. A neighbor, our tenant, called and asked my mother to send me over and pick up some magazines for my father to read while he was sick. I went over and he handed me a fairly large bundle, in a paper grocery bag, with the top turned over.
I knew that was weird, and there was something in there he didn't want me to see. So, of course I looked in the bag as soon as I got in my house. I was sure my parents would know I looked. I mean, I would have assumed my kid would have looked, that's only natural.

Oddly enough, if he had said to me "don't look in the bag" I wouldn't have. I was an obedient child.

Off subject, a few months before my mothers death, I confronted her with this, and asked her why she never went to the neighbor and chew him a new one for giving her daughter porn in a paper bag.
Basically, she said it was my fault for looking.

Anyway....boomer, is there any way YOU could talk to the boy in question about what he saw?
Of course you're not his parent, but maybe he would have a question/comment he's too afraid to tell them.