Caught son experimenting...how to react? (5 years old, safety, engaged, sleep)
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GonetoAU, thanks for your kind reply, I will fill Mom in. That last line about your kids made me laugh, and a little sad. Bill and I, over our 20 monogamous years together so far, often watch parents with kids with a yearning wistful wondering what it could have been like had we been able to choose our sexual/romantic orientation.
It was a little more difficult for me, being christian. I was so angry at God for doing this to me, lol! Later I realized I had to have faith and trust God made me this way for a reason I couldn't understand....yet. Do I understand now what god had in mind? Yep, I believe I do, but will leave off hi-jacking this thread for now!
respectfully -Doug of thosemeninlove
Last edited by thosemeninlove; 02-02-2010 at 05:56 PM..
GonetoAU, thanks for your kind reply, I will fill Mom in. That last line about your kids made me laugh, and a little sad. Bill and I, over our 20 monogamous years together so far, often watch parents with kids with a yearning wistful wondering what it could have been like had we been able to choose our sexual/romantic orientation.
It was a little more difficult for me, being christian. I was so angry at God for doing this to me, lol! Later I realized I had to have faith and trust God made me this way for a reason I couldn't understand....yet. Do I understand now what god had in mind? Yep, I believe I do, but will leave off hi-jacking this thread for now!
respectfully -Doug of thosemeninlove
My friend,
have you ever thought of adopting a child and giving him/her a loving and stable home?
Thanks, theliberalvoice, both sets of parents along with our siblings wanted us to do this, but we felt it would be unfair to the child facing the bigotry of adults...as the years peeled away, attitudes changed, and now in Canada it would be fine. However, we consider ourselves, at 55 and 52 , to be too old for parents as we feel kids deserve parents that will be fit enough to take care of them, rather than the other way around, lol! That said, a wonderful thing happened. When we finally married last summer, my sister and her husband asked us to be formal god-parents and legal guardians of their two kids. We've become favourite Uncles and the kids' confidantes - things they won't tell Mom and Dad they tell us (and usually we sit Mom and Dad down and tactfully explain what we found out.)
So you're looking at two real live...here comes...Fairy godfathers. So now you can say they really do exist.
Doug - sadly ironic that one of the most important qualities in a parent is selflessness and your selflessness is what keeps you from becoming a parent. Sounds like you have some lucky nieces/nephews/god-children.
Gosh, GoneToAU *BLUSH* this fairy godfather at least got his kids' book published and (a jawdropper for me) it's in the library. Fairy godfathers are still poor though, lol!
I avoided saying anything because I don't really see it as relevant and suspect that it would have (and will) be a distraction, but my wife and I have very progressive views on relationships, sex, monogamy, kink, and the like. We have never really communicated these to any of our children, and to a degree I regret this. My religious friends constantly instill their believes about romance and sex in their children, very specifically communicating what they want their children's sex lives to be, but I have never shared with any of my children what I truly believe.
Well, there you go. You apparently are not aware of it, but you certainly have been communicating your beliefs to your child.
I've always wondered why regressing to animal sexual behavior is called "progressive." Progress to where? Something to think about. In higher order humans, the brain should be engaged even during physical or sexual pursuits.
Your son's behavior is not normal, and can, and probably will, result in social/legal problems down the road. For his sake, please re-examine your values and beliefs. At least consult with a medical professional.
One does have to wonder if this young child (an 11 year old is a young child) has not experienced something in his short life that has brought on this kind of experimentation with other boys.
An 11 year old is NOT a "young child." A 6 year old is a young child - an 11 year old is an adolescent, with all the hormones, drives, and emotions that entails. (Many - as I was - are already biologically capable of being fathers! Not that they should be, of course.)
What we have here is a disconnect between biology and modern society that has created a difficult and confusing gap for adolescents - and BOTH sides of the gap have moved from their more natural positions.
Basically every ancient or primitive society you choose to study will pin the age of manhood at 12-14 years old. Sounds ridiculous to us now, doesn't it? Ironically we still use some of the old coming-of-age ceremonies - a Jewish boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah at 13 - but then of course we continue to treat them as children until the new socially-approved age of adulthood (18...ish).
Imagine a 13 year old boy with the full responsibility of the law on him, required to pull his own weight and allowed to choose a wife (with all the bump and grind that entails!). It's unthinkable now, because society is far more complex and the need for education so much greater (tribal Israelite boys did not spend years learning calculus!), and it is a rare 13 year old who is ready to step out on his own anymore. So we've unnaturally delayed adulthood by half a decade.
At the same time, puberty is coming earlier. For various reasons (mostly nutritional), puberty in those same primitive societies happened around 13-15 years of age. The average age of puberty has dropped like a rock since the 1800's - now we have kids going through puberty around 10-13 years of age!
Imagine that - back in the good old days when the Bible was written, you had adolescents becoming adults and often getting married off just as they began the throes of puberty.
Now? Kids hit puberty and must deal with the hormones, drives, desires, and emotions of adulthood while not being considered adults for another five to eight years! On top of it our moral codes are still based on those developed 2,000 years ago - it's a lot easier to "wait until marriage" when people are married off right as their sex drives kick in!
Obviously we can't go back to our earlier definition of 'adult' due to the complexity of modern society, but at the same time we need to understand that adolescents are no longer children in the usual sense of the word, but rather people in a quasi-adult state that is difficult and often confusing for them. We need to handle this rationally rather than with knee-jerk moralism.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chattypatty
Your son's behavior is not normal, and can, and probably will, result in social/legal problems down the road. For his sake, please re-examine your values and beliefs. At least consult with a medical professional.
Sorry to disappoint you, but that behavior is not out of the ordinary. Not universal by any means, but normal nonetheless.
I posted my own personal experience earlier in the thread. If anyone cares for more anecdotes, I'd point to the Jackinworld website (a site which as you might guess is geared towards discussing masturbation in all its forms). They have an interesting Biographies section wherein people discuss their sexual histories. I'd say at least half of them had some mutual masturbation experiences with peers as they were learning about their developing sexuality. (Granted, this sample is biased towards people who'd seek out a masturbation-related website! )
Like me, they all seem to have turned out alright, socially and psychologically. You're right about the potential legal issues though (I too brought that up earlier).
Hey there. I can only imagine how tough and confusing this must be for you as a parent, and to be faced with a situation as tough as this 1. Let me just say before I continue that I'm not giving any advice or making any suggestions- I'm just talking from my own experience, and from my own opinion.
I have a totally different perspective in relation to the comments I have seen on this post, so maybe this will help.
My perspective is similar to that of your sons, because like him- I had a very similar experience, although I was aged 12.
It all started for me at school when I was 12 years old. I went to a rather small all boys school, and the friends I made were very close ones at the time.
My one close friend approached me one afternoon, and told me he needed to ask me something. He went on to explain that he had been experimenting with a guy that was at school with us, and not that that guy had left, he had no 1 to experiment with before. Long story short, he asked me if I wanted to experiment with him...
I can still remember my instant reaction was "no ways" , "never" etc, but my curiosity got the better of me.
Before I carry on here- I just want to tell you a bit about myself first. I was a very shy young boy, and had few friends- but the friends I had were close ones. Although I knew a little about sex and what it was all about, I only realized as I got older, that I really didn't know a lot about it at all!! I knew what sex was, but I didn't know what it meant, what the consequences were, or even how the deed actually occurred- especially with another guy. With that said, I also knew that I was a bit different to my friends, in that I was not shy around girls, and they never seemed to intimidate me like they seemed to intimidate my friends. Instead, I was intimidated by boys. I would get butterfly s in my stomach around a few of my friends, and would sometimes struggle to talk to them- it was the weirdest thing!
Obviously getting older, I now realize that its because I have never liked girls in the way that my friends do, I liked boys that way. Yes, I didn't know it back then at the age of 12,( although in some sub-concious kind of way- I actually did know) but I am gay. At the age of 12 I had heard the word gay before, and had an idea of what it might mean, but I never fully understood what it meant to be gay, and certainly didn't characterize myself as being gay at all.
Going back to when was 12, like I said- my curiosity got the better of me, and I told my friend that I wanted to know more about what he meant. The more he told me, the more interested I became, and eventually- "things happened". I'm not going to go into detail here, but the first couple of times, it was just a sort of "show and tell" encounter, but naturally- things progressed...
In the beginning, my friend and I were doing exactly what your son was doing and honestly- It was nothing meaningful at all, in fact it was very innocent. All I knew was that it was fun, it felt good, and the thought of getting caught and the fact that we shouldn't be doing this made it even more exciting.
The more we continued over months, the more things we started experimenting with. Again, I'm not going to elaborate, but let's just say that things went pretty far. I just want to reiterate again at this point, that we knew what we were doing, but not fully, and for the most part it was still very innocent, we didn't really know what our doings actually meant, what the consequences were etc.
It continued between us on and off for about a year, and we both enjoyed it. We both learned from each other and at the time, we thought of it as just silly little schoolboy fun.
As we got a little older through the year, and started to learn more about sex though various school subjects, things started to slow down between us. We began to realize that what we were doing was not right, was out of the ordinary, was not actually safe and could go very bad if people found out what we had been up to. My friend also started to realise that he did not enjoy doing what we were doing anymore, and after a while, we agreed to stop.
Again, just a few points here. We were young, we were innocent, we didn't have a full understanding of what we were doing, and for the most part- it was all curiosity and experimentation.
Coming back to the present day now though, there are a few things I would like to say looking back on the experience.
I myself am gay, I always have been as far as I can remember, even before the experimentation began. I did not turn gay, I always was gay. Secondly, my friend was the one that instigated the experimentation. As I said, I was a very shy boy, and prehaps even more innocent than my friend. If he had not suggested the experimentation, or even told me about what he had done with another friend of his before me, I would probably not have done anything with another guy untill late high school years.
With that said, my friend who started this whole thing came to realize that he is in fact straight, and that's why, towards the end, he stopped enjoying our encounters. Weather he is truly straight or not I will never know, but he definitely does like girls, and has had a few long term relationships with them.
Looking back on that part of my life, do I regret it? Absolutely not!! Was it difficult and confusing for me? Absolutely!!
I am currently 21 years old, and only within the last 2 years did I actualy come to terms with the fact that I am gay, and that I accept it. I only told my closest friends that I am gay about 8 months ago- and that has been awesome for me. They have all been very accepting, and they all have told me that they actually kind of knew in any case. However, I have not mustered up the courage to tell my parents yet- something that really frustrates me, and makes things extreamly difficult for me- but I'm not going to get into me being gay now- I thing that is for another post.
What I meant from above is that both your son and you as a parent are extremely extremely lucky to have such a close and open relationship! Keep it that way!!! I wish I had that with my parents. I'm sure that honesty is a tough thing to hear for you as a parent, and even for your son- but believe me, it is so much better than your son second guessing himself and what your reaction will be. That can make him question himself ( and THAT is a tough thing to figure out) and that relationship you have may become clouded with defensive and confused lies about himself. Just don't let that happen. It just makes finding yourself so much harder when you second guess initial feelings, emotions or instincts( something that I did from the age of 12, right up to the age of around 20- TOUGH years those were. Really tough!
But something else that has happened- we were never caught together doing anything, so we never had the chance to talk about it with an adult_ something I feel we definitely needed back then, and something that would have made MY life a lot easier and less confusing considering I was gay and needed help realizing that I was. But then again- that could have made things worse for me, friends or adults could have found out that do not understand homosexuality, and that could have confused me and made things even tougher. However- considering your close open relationship with your son, what I would want looking back on it now, if I were him- would be for you to discuss things with me BUT not in a pressuring way, just in a supportive way so that when I was ready, or felt that I could talk to you about something- then I could. I'm no parent, so how you keep your son's trust and keep that honestly between the 2 of you, I would not be able to say- all I can say is keep it!!!
Something else I would also like to share, is that the friend that experimented with me- well him and I are no longer good friends. We are cival together, and can hold a convisation- but things are arkward, and we will never be as close as we were. He still to this day does not know that I am actually gay, and this is because of a few reasons: we are no longer very close, we don't see each other at all(we don't have the same friends), and I don't trust him with that information. I realized as I got older that if what we did as kids got out, and people heared about it- society would be very quick to lable us all sorts of things without even having an understanding, so I hope that he( like I do) has an understanding that we can't talk to people about what we did. Its a strange secret to bear, and something a bury deap in the back of my mind- not because I'm ashamed of it, but because I worry what people might thing about it.
So, ill end off with this last part:
Your son is very young, he is starting to become curious about his body- like we all do at that age, and he is starting to experiment with things. Maybe your son has a better understanding of what sex is and what it means that I did at that age, but I doubt he does. I think for the most part, as with me, its still very innocent and meaningless.
If your son is gay, that's great!! If he is straight, that's great too!! I'm sure he will have an idea of where his orientation lies at the age he is now, but he is far to young to fully understand that now.
if I had the relationship I had with my parents like you do with your son, I would imagine I would have told my parents at around 15 that I thought I might be gay. But again, your son may not be gay- he may be like my friend who, for him, was purely an experimentation thing.
As I said, I don't regret what I did as a kid, and if I had my life over, I would probably do it all again. In a way it helped me realize who I was( although it took years) because if that hadn't happened to me, I might still be struggling with what my orientation is. It hasn't affected me negatively, or positively that I can really think of. It was a part of my life where I was young, innocent, didn't really know what I was doing and didn't mean anything. Health wise, I came away with nothing wrong( std's, mentaly etc) BUT!!!
This is what motivated me to write this comment, this BUT!!!
As I said, we started off very slow, doing silly little things, but as time progressed and our curiosity grew- what we did progressed to, and we went pretty far. We all know that this could have gone quite bad. We could have given std's to each other, my friend may have had multiple partners, we could have hurt each other, etc etc. All these things would be my worry if I were in your shoes, and I think the best way to confront your son about these potential problems, is to talk to him about it- something you seem to be able to do( you are so lucky! And I am jealous I don't have that relationship with my parents) in a child friendly way, you need to explain to your son that he might find new ways of making himself feel nice with his friend, and that these new ways can have serious consequences for both of them if they are not careful.
I would also like to say, that you CAN'T stop your son from doing this. Stoping him from sleeping over will not stop him from finding a time and place to experiment. I remember when I was experimenting with my friend, we allways made time, and allways came up with a way to continue. but yes, from the point of view that you don't want anyone else to catch them in the act- that could be a partial solution I guess, but what about when they are at school? Or other places together? They may still be caught by someone else that is not as understanding as yourself. So.... For this reason, and I can't believe I am going to say this now. It is going to sound very very very wrong... But it may be a good way to ensure that your son stays safe... What I would maybe suggest is that you talk to your son, and come to an understanding of privacy, and what a closed door may mean. If you can both respect and trust each other that one must knock on a closed door before entering, then what I am about to suggest may work... (Again- I'm not too comfortable suggesting this, but it is most definitely a safer way for yourself, your son and his friend to handle this experimental phase) like I said, if your son trusts you will respect his privacy, then he may agree to your suggestion that if he wasn't to continue experimenting with his friend, then they should both understand that they can do it at your house, in private and no where else. At least this way you are around when this experimentation is occuring, and you have an idea of what might be going on. If they don't have this trust, then like you fear- they experiment in different places, and be caught by people who will not agree with or understand- which can cause horrendous confusion, guilt, psychological trauma to both boys involved.
I know that this sugesstion is totaly obscene and seems very wrong, but I don't know of another way for you to have at least some control and trust over what your son does.
With regards to the other boy- this is something I can't answer. you can't let the other boy know that you are suggesting that you son and him only experiment at your house, because if this comes to light with his parents, then this can get very complicated and irrational.
Would I suggest you tell the boys parents? Again I can't answer that. That can cause huge problems for him! His parents might not understand, they may be homophobic, thay may blame your son, they may blame you, they may tell people and make both your son and your life extremely difficult.
What it boils down to, in my opinion, is that you need to be open and honest with your son, do your best to keep him open and honest woth you, and you both need to form a deep level of trust and understanding with regards to this subject. If you can make your son understand what he is doing, what it means and what the consequences may be, and what might happen if they are caught by someone else- then I thing that that is the best you can do as parent. At the end of the day, your son is acting on something that, at least for the time being, feels right. He may regret it in the future, it may have helped him in the future. At the end of the day, even at such a young age, he is trying to find himself- and yes, he is going to make mistakes on the way like we all do.
Its a tough situation!! I wish you luck, and I would just like to congratulate you on how you are handling this. Great parenting! I hope this has maybe given you a little bit of light on what your son may be going through, and can help you with decisions that you need to make about this experimental phase of your son's life as a parent.
Unknown User, I found your experience enlightening, but please be aware the original post was written in 2009. That doesn't mean it won't be helpful to somebody else, but the OP has likely moved on.
I was ridiculed for my answer to the OP back in 2009. lol.
But someone got me a rep point for it. Thanks!
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