I don't even know where to begin. This is all over the place. I know this is going to come off frantic but I can't compose myself to make more sense so I'm trying my best.My kid is in 5th grade. She has this new classmate friend. The friend was a late transfer, they just met a month or so ago. After trying to end a previous friendship gone sour, I was excited for her to have a new friend.They both are big fans of the same youtube video topics. Like video game animations. So they "roleplay" the animations. Now, I have to admit I try to stay interested and involved but apparently I wasn't nearly educated enough on what these shows are actually about. I still don't even know. When she watches youtube it's practically always "visually supervised" (the computer and tv are in the same room), but we also have a courtesy guideline of using headphones on the computer as to not have battle of the speakers. Didn't think that was going to backfire. So when I see kidish animation on her screen, I guess I think I know what she's watching and that it seems all well and good and fine but apparently I was getting the wool pulled over my eyes.So my kid does have a phone because she has needed it for communication purposes with me but it's a cheap pay as you go plan and it mostly just sits unused when she's at home and if she goes somewhere without me then she takes her phone but doesn't seem to use it much. Point being the phone has never seemed to be a problem.Just in the past week she exchanged phone numbers with her new best friend and they exchanged a few silly texts/emojis/etc over the next few days. This is her first friend she's opened a texting door with, having text conversations at all.Today, however, a whole new world was revealed to me. She was in her room on her phone for at least a couple hours. I thought it was cute...aww my little girl is entering tweendom. Bittersweet cry. Little did I know....Fast forward to eveningtime I was holding her phone to adjust boring settings, while she asked me an arbitrary question... and since I was splitting my attention I kinda went "uhhh...." and when she heard me say "uhhh...." she asks, "what?" so I say "just uhhh that I was trying to think about your question." She says: "Oh I thought you saw what I was texting earlier!" (as in thinking that I was having a "uhhh....I just read something on your phone...." kind of uhhh.) So that raised my suspicions!After she went to bed I immediately went to read her texts. I've told her in the past that it's her phone but I will be fully involved in it. I've never told her she has full privacy, I've told her that I have a right to check it whenever I want to or need to. So I checked it.Going back to the topic that they roleplay their youtube characters when they're at school during recess, I just thought....they were pretending to be silly characters. Making up conversations. Acting out stories. You know? It sounded innocent to me. Like when she would "roleplay" my little ponies on a G-rated level. I though at most they were using "bad words" because she has mentioned that, and we had a talk about why I'm not ok with that, even if it's just quoting characters for roleplay, it's still better to use self-filtering. I thought that was the worst of it. It's not.Oh God.So I'm reading her texts and it's practically full on explicit sexting. I couldn't keep track of when she's pretending to be herself or the male fictional character or pretending to be WITH the male fictional character, and vice versa, they were like being "four" individuals, their female selves, and their fictional male partners. Full on "Fuck me harder!! uhhh! uhh!" "Oh I got cum all over me" "Put it in again! Fuck meee!"What???? The???? WHAT????Where the HELL did she learn this?! I can't even think of a time she's alone with any electronic devices! I have no idea if these youtube videos are supplying these roleplaying examples or if she learned it from her new friend, or if it's just something that's in her head anyway.I had a sexually charged adolescence. I started stealing my dad's porn at 12 (not sure if I would have taken it younger if I'd known about it younger...). I started "cyber sexing" as they called it at age 14/15 in the 90s when I first got on the internet (again, no idea if I would have started younger if it was available younger...). Then I got all slutty from 16-18. I had a personal reformation or something as a young adult before she was even born so she's never seen me be a slutty example. She saw me in one long term relationship that ended five years ago and nothing since. I'm not showing her a revolving door or anything so she's not getting the example from me, but I certainly don't want her repeating my past. Making a connection, it was something I wanted to think about and do and sought out without any peer suggestion, so it's very possible and likely that she's in the same headspace.I'm so freaking out. If she's learned how to sext this explicitly at an age where I foolishly thought she's practically NEVER ALONE, I have no idea how or when she learned this, how long she's been interested in it, then how can I not think of all the things she is capable of hiding from me??? I was good at hiding my adolescent sluttiness too. I'm not naive in THAT regard, I just thought she was so....sweet....and harmless... Oh god.She's always made her barbies/kens do bed stuff and even things like tying them up and using handcuffs at such an early age like toddlerhood so I thought it was adorable funny like she was going to grow up into bdsm (which would be fine) but assumed she didn't know about a sexual connection at the young age, just figured she didn't know why she liked the things she liked etc. I have no idea when she started to understand that she actually likes the idea of sex.She has been starting the beginning stages of puberty so I know sexual thoughts come naturally with that, but this explicit sexting is way over the top. If she was looking at porn I don't think I would care so much, but interacting with another person is not okay with me.What do I even do? My first thought is to take away the phone and the youtube AT ALL but I mean come on? I can't take away her friend at recess can I? Not to mention kids find a way to do what they want to do even if I take all those things away, so how do I address the ROOT of the problem? What even IS the root of the problem? What do I say during a conversation???I remember talks with my mom going like "You're not having sex are you?!" and me saying "No...." then I'd turn around and go out to have sex. So...what's a talk that actually WORKS? How do I find out where she has learned this stuff without her shutting down and lying out of fear/shame? I don't want to mess her up permanently, or mess US up, by coming at it all wrong.I should also add that her friend over text said once "Let's not talk about sex now" so I don't know if my daughter is the pusher of the topic, or if the friend is on equal footing.Additionally, the friend's family is from another country and the first (and only) time I tried to have a conversation with her mom, she didn't speak very much English, and it was hard to really communicate at all about even a few simple sentences. So I'm not thinking that trying to bring this up to discuss with her would be a good step.What do I do, what do I do..... Please help. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2el84X8
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