Should I be as upset as I am? Re: Inappropriate TV

[npmommie]

We were visiting relatives out of town.
My brother's ds who is a teen but is mentally disabled ( he is probably more like a 7 yo) was there.

the kids were playing and then watching sponge bob on demand, well my mentally disabled nephew was looking for something on demand and put on a porn movie, my 7 yo ds saw about a minute of it until I just happened to check in to see why I couldn't hear sponge bob anymore.

my ds looked horrified!
I quickly turned it off, and found out what happened, my ds told me he came into the room and my nephew put down the remote and left the room and said " there is nothing on on", my ds saw what was on right before I came in to check.


My brother says my nephew definitely didn't know what he was doing. he said he cannot read at all. Nothing.

then...



my nephew told me his mom watches "those kinds of movies" when he is staying at her house. ( they are divorced).........

so I don't know what to think about all of that.

but I am very upset my ds saw that. I was caught so off guard I didn't even know what to say about it.

I get even more upset the more I think about it.
please tell me my kid will not be scarred for life

oh I wanted to add, we have the parental controls set up on our tv and cable viewing.
afterwards......I did set them up on this relatives tv ( they asked me to after this happened).

ETA, this was a hardcore porn movie, a group sex scene, nothing left to the imagination.

 

[Hannathy]

Chances are your son has no idea what he saw. He probably just thought it was people without their clothes on making noise (I"m guessing what was happening....) Most 7 yr olds don't know about sex, they may know it takes a Mommy and a Daddy to make a baby but they don't know the gory details.
He won't be scared for life and will deal with it however you did. If you got upset he'll know something about it was wrong. If you just said oh this isn't anything we should watch, who would want to watch this, lets put Sponge bob back on he has probably forgotten what he saw already and doesn't think it is any big deal. Probably cares more that he had chocolate ice cream while he was there than that dumb TV show.

This is a good time to stress if you are ever anywhere that something comes on the TV or someone is doing something you don't feel comfortable with then you should leave or come get me if I'm there. This plan said to him over and over will stick so that when he is visiting a friend and they find a gun he instinctively knows to leave or when he is a teen and the party is getting out of hand in the back of his head he knows to just leave if it doesn't feel right.
So see you can feel better and chalk it up to a learning lesson for his teen years.

 

[eliza61]

We were visiting relatives out of town.
My brother's ds who is a teen but is mentally disabled ( he is probably more like a 7 yo) was there.

the kids were playing and then watching sponge bob on demand, well my mentally disabled nephew was looking for something on demand and put on a porn movie, my 7 yo ds saw about a minute of it until I just happened to check in to see why I couldn't hear sponge bob anymore.

my ds looked horrified!
I quickly turned it off, and found out what happened, my ds told me he came into the room and my nephew put down the remote and left the room and said " there is nothing on on", my ds saw what was on right before I came in to check.


My brother says my nephew definitely didn't know what he was doing. he said he cannot read at all. Nothing.

then...



my nephew told me his mom watches "those kinds of movies" when he is staying at her house. ( they are divorced).........

so I don't know what to think about all of that.

but I am very upset my ds saw that. I was caught so off guard I didn't even know what to say about it.

I get even more upset the more I think about it.
please tell me my kid will not be scarred for life

oh I wanted to add, we have the parental controls set up on our tv and cable viewing.
afterwards......I did set them up on this relatives tv ( they asked me to after this happened).

Your kidding, right? scarred for life, for seeing 2 minutes of a porn movie?
What's going to happen when your 7 year old ask about the facts of life, like where babies come from?

children emulate their parents. if you freak out - he'll freak out. If you act like it was nothing that big and explain so he can understand, chances on he won't even remember it.

How are you going to handle him seeing violence and sex on TV? on the internet, at school? The best defense against what we don't want our kids to take in and the best offense to let our kids know what our values are is to talk openly and calmly to them.

 

[Jennasis]

Scarred for life???

Come on now. Let's be reasonable. He'll be fine. As for the nephew's claim of what mom watches, you may have to take his claim with a grain of salt. It's possible his mom watches porn, but it's also possible that she watches normal movies with sex scenes in them and he cnnot discern the difference. Here is a great opportunity for you to discuss with your brother putting parental controls on his television, and NEVER let the tv be the babysitter.

 

[OceanAnnie]

npmommie, I understand where you are coming from. I would be very upset too. That kind of thing could look violent to someone so young, not knowing what they saw. I think your DS would probably be confused and disturbed by what he saw.

Not to minimize it, but there are times in kids (and adults) lives where things don't compute, but life marches on and some things become a fading image/memory in the rear view mirror.



ETA- I really have a hard time with the nephew "accidentally" finding "that" channel. It seems to me, he knows more than he's given credit for knowing. I wouldn't let your DS be alone with him any more. I'm sure you have already decided that.

 

[stichy]

2 minutes of porn is not going to scar him for the rest of his life. I would be more concerned with the fact the your newphew's mom watches porn with him around. Have you said something to your brother about that fact?

 

[aprilgail2]

I doubt he will be scarred for life!! I wouldn't be happy that it happened but it did and now you can either use it as an opening to talk to your son or not. I remember my godson came home from 1st grade with a picture of two people having sex out of a porno mag some kid on the bus had and was handing out pictures from! He walked in the door and said "what the heck is this" LOL. ALways something interesting happening on the school bus!

 

[C.Ann]

Since you caught it right away, I wouldn't worry too much - I don't think there's any long-lasting harm done..

As for your nephew, (based on your description of his mental capabilities) I wouldn't automatically assume that his mom watches porn.. Just because he said it, doesn't make it true.. But then there are those who will automatically believe anything - not taking the time to think through what a mentally challenged child might consider porn..

Perhaps you could mention to your brother that he might want to put parental controls on his tv as well - to prevent any further accidents..

 

[MushyMushy]

I'm far more concerned about the random violence kids see at that age rather than some sex and nudity.

He'll be fine.

And I'm with C.Ann. I wouldn't automatically trust what comes out of the nephew's mouth. I'm not saying he's lying, but you know how kids are -- they take things out of context or get them mixed up. Or they flat out lie.

 

[npmommie]

npmommie, I understand where you are coming from. I would be very upset too. That kind of thing could look violent to someone so young, not knowing what they saw. I think your DS would probably be confused and disturbed by what he saw.

Not to minimize it, but there are times in kids (and adults) lives where things don't compute, but life marches on and some things become a fading image/memory in the rear view mirror.



ETA- I really have a hard time with the nephew "accidentally" finding "that" channel. It seems to me, he knows more than he's given credit for knowing. I wouldn't let your DS be alone with him any more. I'm sure you have already decided that.

Yes, I absolutely decided none of my kids will be alone with him in the future.

It was disturbing to me to see it

2 minutes of porn is not going to scar him for the rest of his life. I would be more concerned with the fact the your newphew's mom watches porn with him around. Have you said something to your brother about that fact?

Yes, I immediately told my brother what nephew said.
nephew told me his mom watches it when he is in bed ( or at least she thinks he is), he must have snuck a peek, assuming it is true.

oh and I should edit my original post to say this was not just two people having sex,
this was hardcore porn, a group sex scene, and NOTHING was left to the imagination if you know what I mean.

 

[Hannathy]

this was hardcore porn, a group sex scene, and NOTHING was left to the imagination if you know what I mean.

But your 7 yr old doesn't know this! I hope! To him all they were were people without clothes wrestling around doing who knows what. So unless you tell him what they were doing or that it is bad because you flipped out he won't think twice about it. He has no context to put it in. Kinda like babies aren't scared in Haunted Mansion because they have no frame of reference.

 

[npmommie]

But your 7 yr old doesn't know this! I hope! To him all they were were people without clothes wrestling around doing who knows what. So unless you tell him what they were doing or that it is bad because you flipped out he won't think twice about it. He has no context to put it in. Kinda like babies aren't scared in Haunted Mansion because they have no frame of reference.

LOL, NO he doesn't know! I didn't really think of it like that, that it looked like wrestling around.
I asked him that evening what he thought about what he saw and he said it was "so gross"
I did flip out a little at the time because I was so shocked to see hard core porn action going on and then I couldn't get the darn tv to turn off right away!!!!

don't know if I should approach the subject again, or just let it be.

 

[NC State]

I would be very upset if it happen to me. I wonder why a parent would even allow this station on TV. You can block those stations out. I couldn't hold back on asking why the parent allows this, you have every right to ask, it happen while your child was there.

 

[phorsenuf]

Don't you either have to pay monthly for those stations or pay them as on demand? How could he just turn it on?


I would just let it go at this point. If you keep bringing it up it's just going to pique his curiosity and go search it out to find out about it. I'm willing to bet he isn't even thinking about it any more.

 

[Carly_Roach]

I would think the only way your child would be scarred for life would be the memory of how his parents handled it. Kids at that age already think sex is gross. Compound that with a parent who had a Title I meltdown about the few seconds that sex was on the screen and continued to meltdown about it for days afterward? Yeah, I can see issues in that child's future regarding any sexuality situations.

Look, it happened. Don't make a big deal about something that you can't change now. But do keep it in mind so you won't leave your child alone in that kind of a situation again.

To answer your original question, I don't believe you should be as upset as you are. But I'm not you and wouldn't have handled the situation the same. I think if I'd have come into the room and if I had a right to do it, I would have simply stated, "Oops. Not ready for primetime players right there!" and changed the channel. If the child had come to me later and wanted to discuss what he/she saw on the TV, that would be the appropriate time to answer questions and explain our values.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I'm sure he'll be ok.

As your kids have more and more exposure to the world, they're going to come across things that aren't things you'd choose to expose them to. How you handle it is going to be key to how they react to it both now and in the future.

I know everyone's different in how they handle things, but I always took the approach of openness and honesty with age appropriate explanations and little emotional reaction. Kind of like it was just a fact, like anything else was. It worked for us.

We talk about everything, whatever comes up. We've had some pretty interesting conversations over the years. But nothing's really shocking to them now and I love hearing them able to think critically about things, especially where they're in middle school now and seeing things going on like sex and drug use, expulsion, smoking, etc. Preparation for this definitely didn't come too early.

 

[AustinTink]

I'm far more concerned about the random violence kids see at that age rather than some sex and nudity.

Sex and nudity in an R rated movie is one thing. The imagery in a hardcore porn movie is disturbing even for most adults to see.

Op, you are justified to be upset.

 

[OceanAnnie]

Sex and nudity in an R rated movie is one thing. The imagery in a hardcore porn movie is disturbing even for most adults to see.

Op, you are justified to be upset.

I think you are justified to be upset too. I'm sure you were disturbed by what you saw, and to witness your DS seeing it too! Ugh.

On the bright side of a dark cloud, you did make a positive decision.

I'm curious, what was your brother's reaction to what his son saw and did? From what you posted, he didn't seem too upset? Maybe I'm wrong. But you can get clues about how he perceived the whole thing from how he handled it. And that would shed some light on the situation.

 

[Magpie]

I think seeing something like the twin towers coming down probably scarred a lot more people (kids and adults) than any kind of sex scene, no matter how graphic, ever could.

I've taught sex ed to 5th graders. I've had to answer questions from them about incest, rape, sexual violence, knives put where no knife ought to ever go... and why? Because their parents watch Law and Order, SVU, Criminal Minds, all that crud. And they don't think twice about sheltering their kids, or even explaining it to them, because it's on Prime Time TV.

So two minutes of a porn movie?

I would have just laughed and said, "Guys, you don't want to watch this stuff! It's nothing but sex." Then turned the channel to something more appropriate.

As for your nephew saying his mom watches this stuff at home? I'll bet you anything she's watching prime time crime shows, and he just doesn't know the difference.

 

[DebbieB]

I wouldn't bring it up unless he does. 10 or 15 years from now, you'll have a good laugh about it! When my brother was young, he came home after having sex ed in school and told my mom he could never do that with a girl! Flash ahead a few years and I came home to hear him and his girlfriend in his bedroom with the bed springs bouncing! I guess he got over that.....