Innocence Stolen ~ A story about my beautiful 8 year old daughter

For the past eight years, the age of my eldest daughter; my husband and I have been working hard to protect our girls against the ‘evils of the world’ – we say no to certain movies, music, TV programs and magazines. We don’t’ let them take part in adult conversations and we encourage their love of play and make-believe. Kids definitely grow up too fast, so we have been diligent in helping them to stay innocent and child-like.

A few weeks ago that innocence was shattered. We arrived home after being at a party only to discover that Emily (my eight year old), had been doing a ‘Google’ search’ on horse riding sites and had stumbled across a pornographic website showcasing obscenely graphic and disturbing images of men and women engaged in sexual acts – on the home page I might add.

No, ‘click here to enter this site’ or ‘key in credit card details’ -This stuff was laid out for all, including my 8 year old girl to see. Multiple pictures of disgusting and perverted acts on a website nestled amongst horse riding sites. Fascinated by this unusual array of breasts, penises and vagina’s, my daughter surveyed each picture (apparently), before inviting my 6 year old to have a look at the funny pictures. It wasn’t until Georgia shared this site with the babysitter that this problem was uncovered.

When our babysitter (a responsible middle aged missionary) showed me what had happened, I was absolutely outraged, to say the least. Immediately, I began setting up my security.

I am only sorry I didn’t put all the stopgap measures in place earlier. I guess I figured that Emily’s innocence and lack of knowledge when it came to the computer would safe-guard her. I was wrong. Parents, be vigilant. Know what your kids are doing at all times on the computer. Never for a moment take a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude. At thefamilyroom we believe in being proactive. Here are a few suggestions that will benefit your home and children (whatever their ages) from an earlier pod cast on internet pornography.

Install your firewalls – net nannies or whatever else you can do to screen this stuff out
Set up your computer security
Keep the computer in a central location – not in your kid’s bedrooms.
Talk to your kids about what they might find and how they should respond.
‘Supervise’ – don’t leave your kids unattended or expect them to make the right moral choices.
Every now and then do a history check to make sure the wrong sites are not being viewed.

Nicki Partridge.