A friend from High School responded to my post of Sexting. I want to share with you an except of what happened with his son and my response.
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I saw you message about sexting and I wanted to share with you what happened to my son @ school.
Each student gets an apple laptop for the year. Some girls sent him some naked pics with them having sex w each other and my kid opened the email up and looked @ them.
Later, he took the laptop in to be checked for a problem and the teacher found the pics .
I got a call from the vice principal who told me that my son was suspended from school and if they would have been able to identify the girls he could have been charged by the police as a sexual predator!
…even though he was the innocent party. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He could been tagged with this for the rest of his life!
The girls today are worse than the guys. What kid at that age wouldn’t look at this stuff? I had a long talk with my son and he promised me he wouldn’t open any more emails that were unfamilar on his school computer.
It’s a tough world for these kids today. Thanks for mentioning this.
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My response:
Thanks-
The world is obsessed with sexual predator phobia. It is becoming like the Salem witch hunts and McCarthyism.
The real problem isn’t the kids. It’s the parents. We the parents are tolerating and supporting the media that makes all these sexually laden messages available. The kids are just reacting normally to the flood to trash that is thrown at them everyday on TV and in music.
There is a certain mistaken idea in the world that there is such a thing that is ‘not appropriate for children’ that is appropriate for adults. That is wrong. Anything that is too explicate or violent for children is not good for adults either.
In the words of the great philosopher (Pogo)–
“we have met the enemy and they is us”
Warmly,
Anthony Kane, MD
Funny that this should come up! My son was a part of this just recently and I too received a phone call from the Principal. First of all he doesn’t go to that school anymore because I pulled him out and I am homeschooling him. So it was surprising to get a phone call from the Principal. The Principal informed that a boy and girl at school were seeing each other, the girl sent her boyfriend a picture of herself in her underclothes and then a week or two later they broke up. The boyfriend being mad sent the picture to friends and it went like wildfire from phone to phone. The principal said the police were involved and that it could of been serious but the girl was at fault. They talked to several of the kids at school and my son’s name came up. The Principal told me to talk to my son about how serious this can be. I talked to my son immediately and he said yes that someone sent it to him and he forwarded it to two others. He was scared and understood how serious this matter is. You’re right about the girls! I can’t believe how these young girls in middle school don’t respect themselves!
I applaud your statement that what isn’t appropriate for children isn’t good for adults either.
If more people understood this a lot of our problems would be eliminated.
Parents need to be more aware of what their children are doing. The email should never have still been on his computer to find.
This is so agreeable kudos to all of you. Cell phones are banned at the school my daughter goes to, but they are pushing personal laptops which can be just as bad. The schools should not provide laptops that do not have security measures like “the nanny” or some other program.