Children and the culture of p8rnography (article)

[nmoira]

Kids playing doctor is actually very normal among the under 6 group and isn't meant to be sexual in the way we think of it. But I agree it's how it's handled makes all the difference.

 

 

Once the neighbor boy and I were playing house. There was a mattress on the floor in my basement, and we made it up with a sheet and blanket so we had a place to sleep at the "end of the day." Just crawl in, snore, and get up. We were four or five at the time. My mother came downstair to get something out of the cellar and completely freaked out... and we weren't even unclothed much less playing doctor (though I'd been watching him pee into a drain pipe in his garage for years... kid had great aim, even from five feet away).

[I.Dup.]

I think of playing doctor as totally different than performing sexual acts, or getting close to it even.

[jillian]

I think of playing doctor as totally different than performing sexual acts, or getting close to it even.

I totally agree. Like it or not human beings are sexual creatures but there is a time place and age for certain activities.

 

Nmoira I remember playing doctor and house with a neighbor girl and her brother. We also played show me yours and I'll show you mine. And I totally burst out laughing at the aim comment

[Trish]

When I read articles like this, I feel like I live under a rock. It is so far removed from anything I ever experienced or heard about anyone experiencing when I was in high school.

 

Disclaimer: Ignorance shown below

 

I do hear about things like this from time to time and wonder naively wonder how widespread it is. In other words, is this problem more widespread in some schools than others? Is this problem evident in most circles but in lower percentages than others? I've asked one teen who is now in college what it was like at the home school classes he attended. He said sexting wasn't an issue there, but was present at his workplace with the teens.

 

I also think that most of the parents of the girls and boys who are engaging in these activities would be shocked to find out what their kids are doing. I think there is the idea that we know kids are out there doing things they shouldn't do, but that they are *other* people's kids. But someone's daughter is sending inappropriate pictures. Someone's son is spreading these pictures around to his friends. We'd all like to think it is kids that we don't know and that our kids wouldn't want to be friends with.

 

Is there just massive unsupervision (not I word, I know) going on?

 

I do tend to think that the kids are way ahead on the curve with technology and this has contributed to parents not having the oversight they should.

 

A middle school teacher I know said that we adults would be shocked at what goes on in middle school, that it is well beyond what she ever heard/saw/knew about in high school. As always, there's an advanced subset of kids *doing* those things (the types of sex referenced earlier as 'not being sex'), and everyone else simply hears about it, knows about it, or talks about it. So pretty much the whole middle school culture is unfortuately affected by it in that sense. It sort of makes me depressed for the kids, and the pressures they are under as they move to the highschool level.