Well, after much agonizing, we decided the best course of action was for my dh to take him out to dinner, one on one, and discuss the whole thing with him. He talked not only about the behavior itself, but also the nature of healthy relationships, girls in general, trust, and the legal ramifications of some of the things he was doing online. Dh felt that it was a very constructive conversation, and boy, would I have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that restaurant, b/c both dh and ds are men of few words with normally questionable communication skills. We felt it would be far less mortifying if I stayed out of the discussion this time around- that a man to man set-up would be more comfortable and constructive, and it turned out to be the right call. We also decided against a software approach, not wanting to create an adversarial environment of paranoia and mistrust. Having said that, dh has been back on ds' computer w/o his knowledge since then, and was happy to discover the behavior had stopped completely. Ds knows he is not to delete the history, and dh being a techie, ds knows he cannot fool him. Anyway, in general his all around disposition seems somehow lighter, and he no longer spends time with the door closed, hiding from us. I am attributing it to experimental behavior, and thankfully for now, the crisis has been averted. Our eyes are opened, though, and will remain so . It's a never-ending vigilance, but man, I have to say, with a girl as cute as Desiree, I'd keep her on a VERY short leash. My ds is bigger than my dh- he's basically the size of a man- he can defend himself. A girl, I'd be much more paranoid. God help us all when Corey gets to be his age.
Good luck and keep me posted. |
I'm going to PM you.