I had the ‘Porn’ talk with my little brother and warned him today

It's good you didn't shame shame him but I've been rethinking my attitude to porn and masturbation lately. Masturbation is probably not so bad as long as the person isn't addicted to it. The porn industry is unethical but so are many other industries. It is unrealistic but so are movies. I think real problem is if you get addicted to it. Not everyone who looks at porn gets addicted, just like not everyone who drinks alcohol becomes an alcoholic.

I would worry that you may have caused him to set himself an impossible goal of not looking at porn ever again. He might fail and start thinking less of himself. I've done that myself, I relapse, people tell me I shouldn't relapse so I beat myself up for relapsing. For me going completely without porn is impossible right now that's why I've changed my goals.

If I were you I may have told him looking at it now and again is ok as long as he doesn't look at it everyday or that looking at it doesn't get in the way of school or work.

 

your little brother is going to thank you later in life, it might not have an effect on him now but if he doesn't heed your advice he will thank you and curse the day he didn't listen.

I hope he doesn't have to curse the day. much strength to your little brother.

 

That's great as bigger brother!

 

I would like to have brother like you.

 

Oh no I'm not saying you did that, I'm saying other people do. (speaking from my own experience) That's why I said by contrast because you didn't do that - you did the opposite of that. That's why I liked your OP. Of course I think other people do react because they hate that about themselves, never recognized it as a problem in themselves and they never took the time to have a dialogue like you did, or think in terms of the long term ramifications.

 

Thought I'd revisit this one as I'd posted about this earlier in the thread.

Found some slightly stronger stuff on my son's iPad/iPhone yesterday so decided to have a chat with him about it. Nothing really getting into porn genres but it was obvious it was something he was getting mute curious about.

Have to say, my experience new in this whole thing was a massive help and it felt really good to be able to talk to him about it thinking I could be preventing some longer term issues he's not even aware of. Nut often as a parent we get to say that with such personal experience.

It was a careful chat and not getting into too many details of escalating addictions, warped sexuality etc. Just a good general "porn isn't real life and can give you a wrong idea about what sex, love and relationships are really like". It was obviously an awkward one for him but hopefully he's now feeling a but more comfortable to talk to me about it too.

Nothing wrong or unusual about what he was looking at, for a 13 year old boy to get curious about what naked women are like is pretty natural I'd say.