phone apps

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

anyone have any recommendations for a good phone app that blocks porn or adult themed material or chat. My son who is 11 was caught looking at porn and also was talking to some of his female friends on a chat site called KiK. This totally caught me off guard because my son seems to despise girls, I was really disturbed at the conversation on both sides of my son and this girl. I had a long talk with him and took his phone away for a few days, I think I should have waited another year or so to give him a phone.

[Eco]

anyone have any recommendations for a good phone app that blocks porn or adult themed material or chat. My son who is 11 was caught looking at porn and also was talking to some of his female friends on a chat site called KiK. This totally caught me off guard because my son seems to despise girls, I was really disturbed at the conversation on both sides of my son and this girl. I had a long talk with him and took his phone away for a few days, I think I should have waited another year or so to give him a phone.

[Moi]

Check out Secure Teen.

[livednlearned]

There may be a connection between his interest in porn and despising girls... .?

I felt out of my depth with any conversation about sex and girls with S14. I enrolled S14 in a class at a local church last year. They have a non-secular but values based class called Our Whole Lives (OWL) that teaches kids everything about sexuality. And I mean everything. I think the churches that use this curriculum are United Church of Christ, although again -- no religion in the curriculum if you aren't about that.

The idea being that it's better to talk to kids, and have kids hear what other kids are thinking/feeling, than it is to let schools handle this. School curriculum typically talks about sex in terms of fear -- getting pregnant, getting STDs. Not much in the way of how to handle situations, how to deal with porn, sexting, all the social media stuff going on. It felt way too awkward with me being the mom, trying to talk to S14 about this stuff, and I'm pretty open-minded, so I was relieved to find this course. It lasted 9 weeks and was free, although sometimes the courses are run by people who charge a small amount if it's not affiliated with a church.

It's the best thing I've done for S14. We had some pretty profound conversations about awkward topics because the class brought up analogies that made it safe for us to discuss, like using songs to talk about values.

If you get an app to prevent S11 from looking at porn, he will find a way. He's learning from peers and online what is normal, so he needs you to guide him through this, so he knows what his choices mean long term. 

[Eco]

Check out Secure Teen

I installed that one, it seems to have most things covered.

There may be a connection between his interest in porn and despising girls... .?

probably so and the fact that his mom isn't involved and he has said many times that his mom " doesn't want me " and it didn't help when I got involved with my daughters mom. It was just another negative female figure in his life that seemed to reinforce that females are bad and bring pain and sadness. I constantly try to get him to see that its not a gender thing that its not that girls are bad or boys are bad but peoples behavior is what can be hurtful.

I felt out of my depth with any conversation about sex and girls with S14. I enrolled S14 in a class at a local church last year. They have a non-secular but values based class called Our Whole Lives (OWL) that teaches kids everything about sexuality. And I mean everything. I think the churches that use this curriculum are United Church of Christ, although again -- no religion in the curriculum if you aren't about that.

Good idea I will look into that, I already had the " talk " with him and tried to get him to see sex from my point of view. I'm very old fashioned and hold sex as something very important and meaningful not like changing a shirt like a lot of kids see sex these days.

If you get an app to prevent S11 from looking at porn, he will find a way. He's learning from peers and online what is normal, so he needs you to guide him through this, so he knows what his choices mean long term. 

Yeah I'm pretty sure he will, He is a lot like me when I was at that age. There was no wall tall enough to keep me from getting what I wanted good or bad unfortunately. I had to learn the hard way, I hope my son has more sense then I did

My hope in putting a app on his phone is to slow him down a bit until I get a handle on things