What to Do if My Child has Seen Porn?

I vividly remember as a young boy discovering something like this and not immediately knowing that it was wrong. There was this feeling of guilt, this feeling that something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know what.  

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Wonderful to have you along as always. Today here in the studio, I’ve got Brian Sutter with us, as well as Jacob Feucht, and that’s a new name here to the podcast. So welcome, Jacob. Thank you, Matt. It’s good to be here. Jacob, since our listeners are unfamiliar with your voice, please do tell us a little bit about yourself. 

So I just graduated this last December with my master’s in social work, and I will be starting with Antioch Group in Peoria doing general work, but also, I do hope to specialize in working with men with sexual addiction. And so this topic is definitely near and dear to my heart for sure. Thank you, Jacob. 

There’s a lot to be said on how to prevent our children from viewing porn and a lot of time should be spent there and we do spend a fair amount of time there, but we want to address today’s topic, so they viewed it. Now what? What is the parental response? And I really appreciate that. And I think that our focus is fairly narrow today and I think that’s important to keep in mind. 

We’re thinking about, okay, now this has happened and maybe that’s really early in the process. It’s the first time you’ve heard or realized they viewed it. And how do you respond? Because that is a really tough spot for a parent to be in. And one that many parents, if not most, are going to find themselves in and to be thoughtful about how to respond. 

And I think the other thing I would just say with that is there’s many, I’m sure, listening that are going to be on the other side of that. And this isn’t meant to say, you know, to bring condemnation or shame, but more this is like, what have we learned and how can we use that learning and grow together in that. 

Jacob, you represent a generation who has lived internet and have walked through the days of that type of thing. And I think we would like to bring some perspective there as well for sure. Yeah. And for me, I also vividly remember the first time viewing porn. It’s something that‘s not easily gotten rid of, but for me, it was very much accidentally stumbling upon it on the internet. 

I was looking up some gaming website for a kindergarten girl when I was in school and it came up with the wrong website, it was something as simple as that. I typed in the wrong thing and there it was and quickly got out of there and said no. And then, decades later, you remember that moment I did that. Brian speak to the cognition side of this. 

Well, it is amazing the way the brain categorizes things and things that bring big emotion or are outside of our paradigm and it’s new, like that trips something in the brain and it really does hold on to it then and that’s part of the reason why a lot of times you can recall painful memories or really positive memories much more than just the day to day and there’s something that comes along with viewing something like pornography that really fires the brain up and therefore it becomes a very powerful memory and a very powerful image and stepping out of that can be really tricky. 

And I think one of the things to remember as well is the importance of God’s design in that. Because it was meant for good. It was meant in the realm of marriage, for the connection to be made between husband and wife, that it will not be forgotten that you can look at the beauty that God has created in your spouse and that can be seared into your mind. 

But when we corrupt it as the fallen world, it’s seared into our mind in a completely different way that these pornographic websites and these porn industries want it to be, because they want you to keep coming back. Whereas God wants us to keep coming back to our spouse.  

And so really, you’ve just expressed the power, acknowledged there’s the power here that we can all recognize that lies with our sexuality. And that’s been very much knit by God’s design. So, a parent comes to understand that their child has viewed porn, whether they pursued it or not. Let’s talk both hands here. What are some unhelpful ways that we sometimes handle this? 

I want to bring caution to that in this podcast. And then on the other hand, what are some helpful ways to engage that moment? One of the things I would just say, the tone of our conversation so far has been very much like, let’s raise the awareness and seriousness of this, which is very important. 

The thing that can move us into that is what we don’t want to do would be to panic or to move in to, just fear and so I think that’s the caution. Like how do we take this seriously and if we are taking it seriously, that we also don’t move into panic. So, that would be one example that fear can really take us down a road of like, oh man, you just told me this is going to be seared in their mind. 

So, what does that mean and what are they going to turn into? And then you hear stories of different things happening and that’s scary. Okay. So, Brian, you get a call from the principal at school who says, hey, listen, I want you to know that your son and some of the boys in his fourth-grade class got around the filters at school and they’ve been looking at porn. We want you to know that as a parent.  

Okay. He comes home off the school bus. What does that interaction look like to the point of fear and alarm because you’re probably have some of that going on. Oh, for sure, that’s gonna show up and even to notice that as you’re talking to the administration and our tendency in that is to want to figure out who to blame and then that we might start attacking them and like oh, I know my son wouldn’t, it had to be one of the others. 

And how did that happen? All that, or when I’m sitting and I’m talking to my son, like to just get really angry and upset. And, how could you, haven’t we talked about this? Do you know what this could lead to? And just like big emotion, intense, lecture. And then like, you’re not ever going to have a phone or you’re not ever going to have… All these sorts of things that in some ways have a degree of wisdom, but the intensity and how strong our reaction is, is a big deal. 

Okay. And so, I want you to go deeper, Brian, why is that unfavorable? What ill consequences might come out of that? Besides, it’s not good to lose your cool. Well, I think in general, the long-term goal in my mind would be, how do I engage in ongoing discussion with my son? That I can stay in a relationship with him and I can walk beside him as he learns how to recognize and manage his sexuality and the desires that come with that in a way that’s wise. 

And if that’s my goal, then I’m going to have to be able to keep relationships intact and it’s going to have to be an ongoing discussion. And if he learns from the initial reaction of dad’s just going to get… That was not fun at all. That’s not fun. I’m just going to get in trouble. I’m going to get everything taken away that I want. 

Then it’s much more likely he’s going to go underground and I’m never going to hear about it or he’s not going to approach me if I take that stance a lot of times. All right. And there’s another force at play here, Brian, and that is, I think very often we as parents desperately want it to go away. And so, if we don’t hear about it, we think it has gone away. It’s like, yeah, I dealt with that. Right. And that’s not helpful either. Exactly. Because then that moves us into another extreme that we don’t want to do and that would be just avoidance, right? Like to just say, I’m not going to do anything. 

And as long as they don’t talk to me about it or as long as I don’t find out about it, I’m just going to assume things are going well. And that’s the wrong assumption. We want to keep checking in. We want to keep talking and we want to say, boy, this is a challenging area. I’d love to hear, Jacob, your take on that. What advice would you have for parents?  

Yeah, I think that what Brian was hitting on is very accurate. What I have written down is shame, whether that’s the shame that the child is feeling, or the shame that the child is feeling directly from the parent. Even if the parent is not meaning to cause shame, that can come across that way. 

And it’s something that needs to be handled with patience and with love. Right. Can you say a little bit more about shame? What is it? What is shame? So, I think I’ve heard it said that shame is kind of a soup of emotions, right? It’s built up of guilt. It’s built up of sadness. It’s built up of anger. 

It’s this thing that keeps us from wanting to fully address what’s going on with ourselves. I feel shame and so we hide. Yes, we hide and so when a child comes to their parent or when a parent addresses a child on this issue and all they feel is that shame, that anger that punishment, then the child is fearful to come back to you to address that and so it causes them to hide from the parent. And when the parent is able to approach the child with patience and with love, they can try to avoid that shameful aspect and let them know that this is a natural issue, even though it’s something that we should be upset with and that we should not allow in ourselves. 

It is something that is going to happen, right? And so going around that shame and instead cushioning ourselves with love and with that patience to allow ourselves to understand that this is an issue. But it’s an issue that we can find victory. You perceive my question because my question was then how do you draw that out if that shame is present and I hear this beautiful mixture of serious and softness, which is such a beautiful mixture and hard to get right as a delicate thing. It is hard to navigate it and in that I think sometimes shame gives this picture of an identity and that is bad and in that there’s a lot of hopelessness and instead to be able to have that compassion. This is wrong or we want to you resist these sorts of things, but I’m with you and I care about you and I still see you as my son or my daughter and I’m for you and I want to walk beside you and this isn’t so terrible that I can’t ever talk about it and all of those sorts of things just can be a real powerful protector. 

Yeah. And I think that really brings out the word isolation to me and you know, Satan understands that isolation is the biggest part of this issue. He wants us to isolate ourselves, whether we are the one struggling with the addiction or if it is the parent, he wants us to isolate. And I think you mentioned earlier, Brian, that when you hear no news, you assume it’s good news and you isolate and you say, okay, it’s not an issue anymore, but Satan wants you to think that. 

Because this issue, even though there is victory, it is something that will last for the rest of that child’s life. They will have to continue to battle it. And that’s a part of his or her life, but that is something that we can’t just… assume that we should stop addressing, then we have to keep addressing it because otherwise Satan wins and making us think that we’re alone, making us think that we’re the only one with the issue. 

And I thinking of the ACCFS presentation on stewarding our sexuality, it’s so important to look at that and see how it builds community. And see how it shows us that there are other people struggling, that there are people who want to learn about this because that shows us there are people we can talk to, whether that’s a parent going to talk with other parents or a parent going to talk to a professional about this issue, or if it’s the child going to talk with other people who have struggled because it’s that experience that can really help us build to get to where we need to be. 

I really like that. And by doing that, you really profoundly love them which is going to be so important that they know that God loves them. Because in moments of this shame and guilt and difficulty, we really do question, am I loved? And so, reinforcing that now, we’ve really talked about wonderful, like the soft skills, the posture that we have towards our son and daughter. If we were to turn to the hard skills, what questions should I ask them? Should a parent engage and ask what they saw? What would your counsel be? And then where would you go from there?  

Yeah, I think those kinds of questions are helpful, I think, to have a sense of, okay, what was viewed? And how did that happen in a way that’s really focused on I want to understand. And if we can understand some of what happened that I think then gives us insight and how we might be able to intervene and be protective on the other side of things. So, there’s this, trying to understand and I think there’s part of it like what did you see and how did that happen? 

But also like the internal awareness of help me understand what that did to you or as you’d left like do you still see that and then that gives you again insight into what you might walk beside them with and help them navigate if you have some awareness of what some of those things are. And I think in that, I wouldn’t assume, especially a really young child, that they’d even be able to put language to that, but that would be part of the journey, like, helping them. 

Oh, how would you describe what it felt like, or did you notice anything in your body? And maybe it’s tightness in your chest, it doesn’t have to be anything sexual necessarily, but just helping them understand that. Because I think, in many ways, helping them navigate this, particularly if they’re young, is helping them regulate their emotions and be able to have self-control and restraint when something shows up that is either exciting or confusing in a way that has a powerful draw towards it. 

You’re kind of touching on it there of the fact that pornography and these images that cause a dopamine hit, that cause the raised dopamine levels can be so damaging to younger children. Getting in there early and asking them. So what did that make you feel can help you understand where they’re at and it can begin to help them build that vocabulary because at the beginning, like you said, they may not have that vocabulary. 

And that’s a scary thing, knowing that they’re discovering these things so early that we should start to work with them to figure out on both sides what this looks like in the journey to come. Well, vocabulary is critical in community. That’s when vocabulary is necessary, right? Yeah. As you mentioned already, Jacob, this thing is a master of isolation. 

So, it prefers no vocabulary. But vocabulary is required to bring it into community, which you’ve both well said, is part of the answer. So, boy, that does seem like an important piece of it. And, even helping them identify some of the thoughts that you might take a guess at. 

Like, I’m curious, what did you think I, as the dad, thought when you saw this? What did you think dad would say? What did you think dad would think? And bringing that into that discussion, because a lot of times, if shame is what shows up, that’s going to send a different message than what you actually thought. 

Or, if fear or any of those sorts of things is likely to send a message that’s not exactly what you would say, and then you can speak into it. So even if they say, it didn’t even cross my mind what you would think, well, let me just tell you what I think. Yeah. And help inform that conscience then. 

Exactly. You can direct it then. But what I hear you’re saying is really step into that prerunning role of directing that conscious conscience, correcting it. If maybe they’re having thoughts that are not truthful, to help bring correction to it. Yeah. Or even in that, like our human tendency is to blame. 

So, you’re sitting down. with your daughter and she says, well, my friend is like, okay, yeah, and maybe that’s true. And we can talk about that, but I’m curious, like what options did you have? And what maybe would have been wise, even though you maybe didn’t initiate it and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m still curious, like what you could have done and how do we walk through that together?  

Brothers, we’ve been really talking about this first-time exposure. And how we as parents engage that moment. I don’t want to unduly rise fear among our listeners. Speak to that. Speak to that fear. I think that one of the things that can be said is that this is a very common problem. 

But there’s a lot of help out there. Understanding that there is help, there is advice. There is hope of victory, I think is a very big part of that. I think too, one of the things I might think about is almost with every challenge, if we can look at it as an opportunity, like that we live in a world where there’s brokenness, there’s fallenness, and therefore there will be challenges. 

And so, our goal, as much as we’d love to, would be to remove the challenges, but I think that is to see the opportunity and the challenge and how can I engage that whether it’s this issue or whatever issue it is, how do I engage it with wisdom and come alongside as an opportunity to learn and grow? 

And I think if we have that mindset. There’s so much hope and so exciting in that. And that we’re not just trying to make sure they don’t view pornography. We are trying to help these young men and women grow into godly men and women who love the Lord and seek to live in a way that honors him. And, this is one of the opportunities that’s in front of us that is the mechanism where we get to teach and help encourage some of that. 

That’s inspiring. Suppose there could be some parental children relationships, all the tighter knit together more because of this because of this constant conversation because of the need because of the brokenness that it brings about because of the vulnerability and there are some special bonds between kids and their parents on this very issue. 

Isn’t that amazing? Yeah, this is a very intimate topic and God meant it to be that way. And so, through that, intimate relationships can be built when it’s dealt with in a godly way. Sure. And I think too, that one of the encouragements I’d have for parents out there and grandparents is you’re going to make mistakes, right? 

You’re gonna say something, you’re like, ah, maybe I shouldn’t have said it that way and all of that, praise God. God’s built us as humans as being very resilient. And so, the goal isn’t necessarily that we make no mistakes, but we just learn, keep trying and learning ourselves and engaging our kids with humility and just trusting the Lord’s working in that. 

I thought of Proverbs 22:6, which is bring up a child in the way that he should go and he will honor it. I probably botched that, but in that realm, the thought that our goal in this area should be the same as the rest of our parenting, right? Because this seems like such a big topic that is so different from everything else and that is because we’ve allowed sexuality to become a taboo word. 

A word that scares us and a word that feels more intimidating than other things. And it is, like we said, an intimate and intimidating topic, but God meant it to be normal and he meant it to be a part of us. And so, addressing this as just another part of parenting is a very important place to be just to say, this is a part of my child, just like any of their other behaviors and going into it to say, and God gave us direct instructions in the word of how to deal with this. 

And to go into it. Saying that I can bring up my child in the view of holy sexuality when the whole world is telling him or her what sexuality should be, I can tell them what God designed it to be and allow that to mold them into where they should be. There’s going to be bumps on the road. There’s going to be difficulties. And looking at my own life, there were a lot of difficulties. But now God has molded that into a desire to help other people in this journey. And that is something so beautiful, as you pointed out, that these issues God can turn into beauty. And there is an on ramp back into holiness wherever life is found, right? 

And I think we have to keep that perspective and God’s work in that. Thanks both of you for sharing. Thanks, each one for listening. Tough topic. Important topic. Maybe one that we wouldn’t always want to talk about. But, I think we’ve heard today the hope that’s in it and, yes, there’s some responsibility. 

But God is good and he’s well aware of the times and days that we live. He understands our challenges. And so, be encouraged by that. Thanks, each one.