My daughter’s curiosity got the better of her last week and whilst at a friends house she looked up my website. She has been listening closely it seems and has gathered I go by the name of Liandra Dahl for all things adult entertainment related.
So she googled it and found my website. Of course her and her friend could see nothing apart from the splash page telling under 18′s to sling their hook. Let me just make that clear as clear can be; My daughter and her friend did NOT see any adult content.
Whew…did I go on a roller coaster of reactions when her friend’s mother told me she had found that they had been looking at my websites splash page in her internet browser history. There was fear about why my daughter had tried to look at my website at a friends house and confusion as to why she had shown it to another child. There was also frustration with both my daughter for putting us at risk by looking and showing my website to another child, and with the parent of her friend for not supervising internet access or having a parental filter on the internet.
Luckily for me my daughter was at the home of a beautiful Brazilian feminist woman with a PhD in physics who was quite capable of grasping the difference between the normal curiosity of children and some heinous act of over exposure for her child, by mine, thus indirectly by me. As the kids could NOT see any adult content this is the reaction I would hope for but you never know what to expect where these things are concerned.
So here is how it unpacks as to why this happened. My daughter was naturally curious and I needed to give her more information before she went looking for it where she shouldn’t. My daughter had to do this at a friends house because in our house we have a filter on her internet access so she can not access adult sites plus she can only use the internet where I can see her for half an hour per day. I am very protective of my child on the internet and I do my utmost to ensure she is not exposed to adult content. Not all parents are as educated as I am about the internet…or about child curiosity…or about how those two things can clash inappropriately and my daughter exploited some unmonitored unfiltered internet time at a friend’s home to try and take a look at my website.
Luckily for me I was the only one horrified about the event. My daughter’s friend told her mother she thought I was very brave to be naked on the internet and her mother told me she was certain my daughter wasn’t trying to look at anything sexual or to show anything sexual to her daughter but just looked at the splash page. In addition to that she told me she totally respected what I do, was thankful for the information on parental internet filters and also for the opportunity to discuss these topics with her daughter and with me. Phew…lucky this parent was an awesome, intelligent, rational, open minded, sex positive human being…very lucky.
So in the end this potential nightmare led to some great outcomes all round. The other parent involved learnt from me how to put a child protection filter on her child’s internet. I learnt that it was time to give my daughter the opportunity to ask me more questions about what I do and to explain in vastly more detail why she is not privy to the inner workings of it at all. I learnt to discuss issues of internet access with parents who’s houses my daughter will stay at. I also learnt that if my daughter is staying at someone’s house I should be certain I can be open and candid with them about what I do so that my daughter will never be in a position to have to lie for me to her friends.
I am very open about what I do. My whole family knows and all my friends do as well. However I am not so open with the parents of my daughter’s friends. I thought this would be best for her but I have now decided otherwise. I seriously doubt this situation would ever arise again but if it did, or something similar, I don’t want my daughter to be caught in a hostile home with people who are shocked and horrified to discover what I do. So I outed myself to the parents of her closest friends and overwhelmingly and unanimously got a positive and mature response back. Seems to me my daughter has good taste in friend’s and their parents plus I now feel just a little lighter about being open, honest and proud in every part of my life about what I do.
p.s. Parents I recommend using a filter http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/ it is the world wide web and if your child isn’t old enough to do world travel then they shouldn’t be unsupervised and unfiltered online. You can manually choose sites to allow also. http://www.scarleteen.com/ is a great one to direct your teenager towards and of course Dodson & Ross also.






