Yes you did. You did drugs, drank, fucked, and ditched school.

Then that's more a reflection on their parental aptitude than it is an example of sound child-rearing. When a kid is doing wrong it is the parent's job to correct the behavior - something the parent can't do if they either don't know about it or ignore it.

There is no such thing as violating your child's privacy. The child has no privacy. If the child is mature enough to enjoy complete privacy and no parental check-ups on what his activites and interests are, then the child is mature enough to move out and get a job.

We as a society recognize that children do not reliably make good decisions. This is why kids aren't allowed to drive, can't enter into binding contracts, and get their criminal records wiped clean once they become an adult. It is rather silly to admit that a kid is not mature enough to reliably avoid making harmful choices, and then turn around and preach that children should be given strict privacy, and that parents should never try to find out if the kid is doing something he shouldn't.

Yeah... It still frightens me that you've spawned.

I imagine we're all fliping out now over this latest thing that kids are doing, but down the line, it will be included in one of those talks that parents have with their child along with the sex talk (the birds and the bees), the talk about drugs, the talk about gangs, the talk about college, how to drive, and other heart to heart mother/father and son/dauther talks as their child comes of age.

Well, first off, the notion that kids who are stupid enough to text each other some nude pictures deserve to be treated by the police as criminal sex offenders is repugnant, and it is also overkill to the point of extreme stupidity. Kids are going to mess around. It's happened since Day One. Trying to pretend our little darlings are, or ought to be, icons of chaste innocence and purity until they walk out the door to go to college is stupid enough-- trying to enforce that with draconian laws demanding sexual puritanism is even stupider.

What does it solve to give a 14-year-old boy an indelible stigma that will follow him forever, not to mention the psychological trauma that must go along with being arrested and labeled a pedophile-- while you're still an adolescent!?! How will it make things better that instead of the two kids being terminally embarrassed that their principal and their parents have seen fit to confront them about their emergent sex lives, and have all seen them naked in a sexual context; instead they also have to know a bunch of policemen and women have seen them, are privy to their private sex lives, their pubescent mistakes and stumbling attempts at erotic play?!

Do I think it is sensible or desirable that adolescents be sending each other home-posed sex pictures? Not really. But I also think we are all entitled to make our own mistakes, to experience our own voyages of sexual self-discovery, for better or worse. All we can do is talk to our kids early and frankly about sexual responsibility, and make sure they know we're there, and give them the trust to do what they think is best when they can, and to come talk to us if they can't-- which we then have to make sure they'll do, by establishing that it's safe for them to tell us things, and that we won't fly off the handle and punish them for help with the hard decisions.

This is a tough balance: they live in a world that's technologically very different from the one we all grew up in; but some things don't change, they just change shape. We all messed around as kids. Maybe the reason we didn't send each other nude pics at 13 is because we lacked the technology. But certainly not for lack of desire. Kids will do this. Why every generation seems so surprised by it is a mystery to me.

I lost it at 13, myself, complete with some stupid risks and a little grown-up sex play, and you know what? It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't the best choice I ever made, but it wasn't the worst. And the world kept on turning, and I grew up, and became the modestly functional and mostly ethical rabbinical student I am today.

No reason anyone and everyone else shouldn't be given the same opportunity.

Kosher phone taps into new market for mobiles - Times Online
While this is an extreme example, but I know some orthodox jewish communities that will only allow these phones for children, and in today's environment out there I do not think it is a giant leap for me to consider it (well in 10 years maybe when my daughter is old enough for a phone).

I do believe we have to address the sexuality that children are open to, and that can be huge thread in itself. The truth is this is child porn, and does really open up children to predators out there, and people need to teach the kids how this is unacceptable. But I do feel that it is criminal the question is how to punish and I would rather it be in the form of community service for first time offenders versus being labeled a sex offender.

I will agree that most parents are probably blind to how quickly their children grow up and they always want to think of them as their babies.. but parents need to be involved in their kids lives..they need to talk and inform them of the dangers. It's not going to stop much, but at least they can have some information when they start to do stupid things.

I'm not even going to address the criminal charges as they are so completely out of touch it sickens me. I cannot believe that anyone thinks that placing a sex offender tag on the kids for this type of behavior is actually going to solve anything.

hooray for the justice system.. fucking things up as always.

:rolleyes:

For the record, I don't do it when he isn't home or behind his back. I do search it while he is present. I want him to know that I am keeping an eye on him.

And like others, before I had kids I had one opinion... once you have one it kind of changes things.


Further: I too had a trusting parent. She would let me go out and drink and party (so long as I called her at midnight to let her know where I was). But that didn't happen until I was 15+. I plan on giving my kids the same sort of trust as they reach the age where they are going out with friends,etc.

From the article it's hard to tell why he thought it necessary to go through the kid's phone. I thinks it's just as likely that the principal is a perve, and was hoping to find something juicy in the phone.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just scribble on the lens with a sharpie?

OMG, these were SOOOOOO popular last year when I was living in J'lem! Seemed like everyone who wore a black hat was getting these: not just Haredi (very Orthodox) parents for their kids, but every other boy I met in yeshiva (seminary/Bible College) had them, and just about every unmarried girl.... Plus, they had a phone plan that charged them next to nothing per minute for talking six days a week, but charged them outrageously inflated fees if they placed any calls on Shabbat (during the Sabbath, when Orthodox Jews consider themselves prohibited from using the telephone).

I didn't even know you could get something like that in America....

Or you could just put a dot of nail polish or paint on the lens and block sms/mms and Internet access.

Uh, TwistedMosaic, MSD... how much of a challenge is removing nail polish to a teen girl? :rolleyes:

...

Yeah, I'd use a Dremel tool on the camera lens. Nail polish and marker come off far too easily. Used to use it in the army to shrink the display windows of various gear to minimize the face-glow effect. If you dig out that camera lens and literally pop the eye out of that pr0n-makin' monster, you've solved the sexting picture problem permanently. I don't know of anybody that repairs cellphones, they're just expensive disposable technology these days.

...

Reading World's King's parenting philosophy makes me want to go get that vasectomy I've been planning. For kids, privacy is a luxury and privilege, not a right. This man-eat-child, children-screwing, law-fucks-everybody world has only reinforced the need for stronger parenting practices. CYA, fo real.

RIGHT?? Kids do not need privacy they need DISCIPLINE!! Remember for a second in the real world, not fantasy land, how you acted as a kid. regardless of what your knee-jerk reaction is about to be, you definitely hid things from your parents. my parents were very very strict and I got away with a ton of things. I shudder to think of what kids with lax parents are getting away with...like texting naked pictures of themselves to each other! Privacy? WTF not under my roof.

Studies show that children actually cherish boundaries and will frequently test them just to find out where they are. If there aren't any, they'll just keep testing further and further out until some lunatic lawyer with a hard on decides your 14 y/o girl is a sex offender b/c she texted a pic of herself in a training bra to her 15 y/o virgin boyfriend. PLEASE just discipline your children and this would not happen. Parents: go through your (children's) stuff on a regular basis regardless of what they say. You paid for the damn things anyway. Phones are ABSOLUTELY no exception

In all of this, what I find more astonishing is that we've normalized violence and made sexuality taboo.

I'd love to know why we've done this. This is fairly unique to Americans, this normalization of violence and shaming of sexuality. I really don't understand where our culture got this notion and why we perpetuate it.

Not that I condone what happened, but puberty is nature's way of telling us we're sexually mature and nature trumps nurture any day - just ask Siegfried and Roy.

Did you just compare this thread to a man being mauled by a tiger? Nice.

That's how we've been forever. I blame white people. I can see fifty people being decapitated on broadcast, but not one bouncing boob. It's depressing.

...

And I don't give a flying Giant Hamburger about sexuality and nature vs. nurture and all that happy philosophy crap. That's for old people with beards to kick around. I'm only worried about the idiotic life-destroying "sex offender" label getting stuck on my kid and whatever litigation-happy douchebag and/or police officer is knocking on my door. I've seen the law in this country perverted and allowed to literally destroy people for no good logical reason. It scares the hell out of me and I'm not afraid of a whole lot in this world.

Seriously... you might as well put a gun in your mouth if you get a sex offender label in the US. You can't live a normal life again. Ever.

Mini-rant:

I fully expect my offspring to be bumping their Crungle at 15. I do, however, also expect them to make the right choices about it and keep it to themselves and off the airwaves. I'm pro-abortion, too... so they better not make me a grandfather until they're done with college or I've got got a coat hanger and a stretch of Carolina swamp where nobody will notice the smell. Ugh. Shitty parenting today kills me. You are not your child's friend... you are the drill sergeant screaming hard-learned lessons at them so they don't go and get themselves killed when they get sent to the combat zone of Real Life (TM). It's serious shit and I lay awake at night sometimes thinking about what would have happened if someone hadn't kicked my ass when I was a teenager and straightened me out.

...

Deep breath. Okay. Okay, I'm done.

There's a really cool discussion within that question. It's a Chicken-Egg question. Are people finding weirder and stupider things to do because there is more and more regulation, or is there more and more regulation because people are doing stupid and weird things.

I personally think the problem is social; but, hey, I'm a 22 year old liberal. There is so much sexual and personal oppression in North America that it's borderline impossible to explore without a) breaking the law, or b) being taboo. I mean, kids exploring their own sexuality shouldn't be taboo. We all did it. And I know that no one wants their kids to be subject to being harassed and teased because they sent a nude picture to someone and they forwarded it to a million people (see the "documentary" American Teen for a great example) but that's the nature of the beast.

When does it stop is my question. I'm not crusading against some angsty Orwellian Social disease, but at some point we won't have room to breathe. Are we really protecting kids by doing this? I know someone said "it isn't these pictures that make perverts" and I couldn't agree more. We are just trimming the leaves by doing this. There has to be a better way of regulating shit like this than "Hey, you! 15 year old who is trying to figure out who they are! Your a pervert and disgusting for being a TEENAGER!"

It's kind of disgusting.

Tie-dye philosophy is great, but don't rock the boat if the crew will call you a sex offender and toss you overboard.

You might not like the boat or approve of how the crew does things, but don't piss 'em off unless you're got Plan B.

...

I'm thinking Canada is looking better and better as I get older.

As I was reading down through the post's to this thread I was thinking a similar thought. How does this supposed principal know there are nude photos on this phone? Was the boy dumb enough to have it saved as the background of his phone? I would hope he was smarter then that. So if this was not the case the principal went searching through the phone specifically to see what was on it. So he then should be in some sort of privacy violation shouldn't he?

This just drives me crazy that parents these days are just giving their kids cell phones. I didn't have one till i was 18 and able to get it on my own and pay for it myself. I see the benefits of having one but there are so many options out there that they don't have to have a phone with all the bells and whistles.

Now I'm not going to lie, I have myself sent provocative photos via picture messaging before and probably still will to my significant other. But I would educate my children about all these types of things and by no means would I even let them know I did a such a thing.

I personally send the photo then delete it and I have the hopes the the person receiving the photo sees it then does the same eventually. Only because of the many reasons for it to no be found on your phone. or if you have a phone that you can hide files then damn it do so.

Knowing that sometime in the next 5 to 7 years I will possibly be having children of my own; articles like these make me not want to even consider the possibility and this is on of the minor problems to look out for. Kids are just growing up way to fast and our society is not helping one bit.

you could always get you kids the cheap 19.00 phones from walmart with the LCD monochrome screens that send nor receive pictures. Although in the old days we would still print porn on dot matrix printers. (looked good from a distance) either way, kids will find a way around it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try however...........

I knew girls that did this in highschool. They were usually with different guys every week and pretty dumb... not realizing consequences and such.

This has been going on forever and only now are people recognizing it?? In junior high this picture of a naked student was found, and just passed around...the teachers knew nothing of it, but all the students did. Of course, the girl in said picture cried to the principal after learning that her picture was being passed around and said that somebody had "framed" her and took a picture of her in the locker room. (Not true.. she was posing in her bedroom.) Girls need to stop thinking they need to please every guy they're with by taking incriminating photos of themselves and thinking he'll keep it to himself when the fact is he'll actually show all his friends.

Camwhores just totally piss me off. Well.. the free ones at least.. because they look for "sexual attention" and when they receive the wrong kind of attention they get so fucking butt hurt. They should've thought about that shit before they started acting like a fucking dumb ass.

Oh I understand that kids will find a way around things trust me. I'm not that far off from being a teenager. I am only 21 and still remember everything very vividly mind you. But the parents still need to do their part as parents to protect their children and aid them in making the right choices. That's what a parents job is.

Or shit give them the damn phone that has all the bells and whistles on it and just teach them and talk to them about the risks of what could happen.

I understand that I myself am not a parent but shit they still need to make sure they have those difficult talks with their kids. Mine sure did and I didn't do half the shit the my friends have done.

Sometimes talks don't work. Though, they do in a lot of cases, in some they just don't.

My friend's parents talked to her constantly about the dangers and consequences of drugs, unprotected sex, and other crap stupid people do and yet she was the only one among my friends to become an alcoholic, acquire an STD from her boyfriend, and allowed herself to be in an abusive relationship.

Sometimes kids just don't listen or don't care.

Do you have kids, World's King? You're saying that if a parent does his job right, the kid will never do anything illegal? I'm sorry, but you're bound to find that as a kid grows up, no matter how good his parents are, there's a good chance he might do something illegal. And it will be the responsibility of the parents/guardian.
Why not give the parents the right to monitor a bit of what goes on, then talk to their kid about why it's wrong? Or take care of the problem with a more appropriate solution, like confiscation.
You can be a great parent, but what if some chick decides to send your 17 year old boy a nude pic on his cell, she is 16 or 17, and he gets caught? The parent's responsible.

Good parenting is always good, but you need the right tools as a parent. One of them is oversight.

You know, girls sending naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends really doesn't bother me. They get shared with a bunch of kids at school? Big deal. Maybe they'll learn something. In my adolescence, late 70s-early 80s, kids still fucked around, yes! And maybe there weren't pictures to go along with the stories, but the stories spreading around the school was just as bad FOR IT'S TIME.

Now it is the 21st century and kids are still fucking, but there is technology now that allows them to express their sexual enthusiasm in different ways. I think the outrageous reaction to this phenomenon perfectly encapsulates the obsession/denial relationship America has with sex. It's all great in films and television shows and music videos and beer commercials, but when it comes to real people expressing themselves sexually, it's seen as an unhealthy, negative thing to do that will ruin your life. Especially when we are talking about girls and women. If we want to encourage young women not to let their identity be swallowed up by their budding sexuality, then stop teaching them that it is the most beautiful, valuable and desirable thing they have to offer. Jesus, we're such hypocrites.

Amen to that.

Agreed fully. You said it better than I could. Teenage sexuality is perfectly normal. Putting people in the criminal justice system for this is a crime itself. Whatever happened to parenting? I am not a parent so maybe I have no clue but this seems like it should stay a private family matter. Now it's get the nanny state to save us from ourselves.

I agree it is ridiculous to prosecute anyone for something like this. Especially considering that the pictures are being taken by the girls themselves. Pictures like these should be private and if someone in authority who is not a parent comes across them, then the only people they should be accountable to are the parents. That said, I don't think people should be too harsh on the parents. Lots of good parents have children who either experiment sexually or are very active sexually. I don't think that a teenager having sex is necessarily indicative of bad behavior or bad parenting. Same goes for the taking of these pictures.

It's ridiculous to charge these kids with child pornography charges. I don't blame the kids; the entertainment industry is teaching them that young women are supposed to be sexually aggressive to attract men.

I blame the parents, plain and simple. No, not because they don't have the kids under 24/7 surveillance - that's simply not possible and would not be right anyway. I also don't blame their parenting in general; you can instill whatever great Christian values you want to your kid and as teenagers they will bend and break the norms you've taught them, because that's what teenagers do.

Getting a cell phone for your child is not a bad idea at all, in fact for the most part it is a great idea for keeping in touch and for emergencies. And while some have suggested getting a phone without a camera, that may be easier said than done as including a camera in a phone is becoming the standard, and it is doubtful manufacturers will continue to be producing phones without them.

However...there is no reason whatsoever for your child's phone to have a plan that allows for media messaging or text messaging. These are typically optional services anyway, and even if your family plan includes them, they can be disabled for specific numbers in the plan. You can also disable incoming messages entirely.

i will toss in my agreement that sex offender labels are too harsh for the majority of these kids. there may be some situations, like the three girls in PA I think, that were basically whoring out the other girls.

personally, my kids will be getting either cell phones with no cameras, or phones from a plan that I can have image texting turned off. i think i would want that distinction, texting is so huge with kids right now, but there is no reason they need to send photos.

---------- Post added at 10:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:01 AM ----------

and this, kids have no rights in school. they can search anything they want any time they want for basically no reason at all. in my school we weren't even allowed to have things left in our car that were not allowed. if they decided to search your belongings for some reason, they included your car in the parking lot when they went through your locker and bookbag. its all part of being a student in american public schools.

SEXting
 

Help!
I noticed my son, 15 yrs. old, was running up our cell phone bill. I quickly confiscated it and found pictures sent to him by an adult married woman, supposedly the wife of a "friend" he met playing Xbox. Now understand I gave him the whole, you can't trust who you talk to on line. There are people out there that will hurt you. Do not give out personal info, nor ask for any. And DO NOT do any thing tht you have been taught is wrong. He has been raised in a christian home and christian values.
I asked his best friends mom to check her sons phone and she found that the woman had text them asking for pictures of the boys be sent to her...they only sent a portrait head shot, unfortuntely my son sent "plenty" of pictures back to her.
I explained how wrong it is and that he essentually was cyber raped and that I was going to the police with the info and that she would be held responsible. He, instead of being embarrassed from being caught and by his mom, was upset because I was going to ruin her life. She has successfully brainwashed him.
Now my problem is, if I follow thru and take the phone/bill to the police in our small village, I am afraid he will be labeled for life, or worse arrested. He is a good boy and I know that it was probaly every young mans dream to be "LOVED" by an older woman, but I feel he was violated. This is worse than when a boy gets caught with a dirty magazine, the pictures don't talk back, ask you questions that would curl your hair. They aren't real...this woman is and she is preying on the innocence of youth. There's no telling how many young men she is playing with.
I have removed his Xbox from his room. He cannot be online without somone else present and positively no cell phone.
How do I hold her accountable without any further damage to my son and my family?
And can I go to the state police office instead of here local, for some type of privacy?
In this day and age sex is too readily available and whether you are looking or not it will find you...

Without knowing where you are in the world or what your intentions of "punishment" are, it's difficult to give you any advice.

Your son went along with it. Personally I think he knows what he is doing although you just have to make sure he doesnt give out any face shots and no personal info. People that you dont know are easy to walk away from online. The whole idea that he was violated is nonsense, there is no pure 15 year old boy out. Everyone of them wants some sort of sexual gratification and they will go to great lengths to get it.