Blurred Lines Of Communication

Tuesday 7 March 2017

My eldest son is 8 so when I heard the director of services at the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Caroline O'Sullivan talking about children as young as 9 “sexting” my blood ran cold.  Sexting refers to the sending or receiving of sexually explicit messages or images by text message, email or the myriad of social networking apps available, 

I’m not easily shocked but 9 year old's photographing their genitals and sending those pictures to other children, that saddened me hugely.  And it made me really think about my parenting in this area and to ask am I doing enough to protect my children?  To educate them? To ensure that they develop healthy, respectful attitudes towards their bodies, towards themselves, towards others and towards sex.  Personally, I don’t think a 9year old has any business having a phone, especially not one that enables them to have access to an online world they are simply unprepared for, but I am also aware that is only a small part of the issue at hand.

Darren Reid, Psychotherapist at Carlow Psychotherapy says that children develop a healthy curiosity about their sexuality and that if parents aren’t willing to answer questions, then the internet will.  And some of the answers it gives can be very damaging to our children.  “Parents need to feel more comfortable about sex.  Sexting at a young age can be a signifier of many things but wanting to see the genitals of the opposite or same sex, is coming from a curious place at that age. It is the same as playing Dr’s and Nurses was for us as kids.  It’s exploration.  It’s not a healthy exploration but it’s not anything worse either.  It’s a product of the digital age.  Online and off, the lines are blurred for kids”. 

Ms. O’Sullivan told an Oireachtas Committee on cyber safety, that sexting is now the norm rather than the exception among young people and that once children start to share, that the pressure grows for them to provide more and more explicit images, leaving them open to coercion and ‘sexploitation’, where the threat of using the photographs against them, in order to obtain more, is a very real phenomenon. 

For me, there’s a huge amount of parental accountability here.  Children cannot possibly be expected to understand the long-term implications of their behaviour.  The onus is on us as adults, who do know better, to simply do better.  It is our job to keep them safe, to create boundaries, to create an environment where the words penis and vulva are no different than elbow and chin. 

Darren suggests that the main thing we, as parents need to do is create a relationship with our children where they know that when they have a question or are unsure of something that they can ask us, as the adult about it.  And that as their parent, we will strive to be honest and open with them and not uncomfortable or shaming.