Last Updated on June 25, 2014 by HodgePodgeDays
Tonight I’ve sat and written up a review of some swim pants and edited some pictures of them ready for posting tomorrow. Fairly standard blogger behaviour I think you’ll agree.
What was different tonight is I looked at the images I was going to use of my three year old son, stood on the beach in his swim pants, just being himself and I thought very hard if I should use them or not. I called hubs over for a second opinion and we had a fairly earnest chat about the images I would use of our son.
The pictures are in no way shape or form erotic. He is wearing baggy, nappy type swim pants and nothing else, he’s not posing seductively, he’s not doing anything which might entice or titilate.
I can’t get inside the mind of a paedophile. I can’t imagine what someone sexually attracted to children might find a turn on, but I think even paedophiles might struggle to find them erotic. So tonight we’ve had our first ever “but what about the paedophiles” chat.
In a previous job, I encountered a couple paedophiles trying to be rehabbed in the community. They were sad, lonely boys, intensely weird and probably destined for a lifetime of unhappiness. They’d been badly damaged by years of abuse during their own childhoods, and their idea of what was “normal” behaviour was horribly warped. My point is, unlike most of the angry mob, I have encountered paedophiles in the real world.
Would I let these boys anywhere near my son? Over my dead body. I do everything I can to protect my son from all the dangers of the world, always finding a balance between being protective without being over protective. Never wrapping him in cotton wool, but always being one step behind him if he needs me.
I can protect him as much as anyone can from abuse, but I think it’s important to remember that there aren’t more perverts and paedophiles these days, we just are more aware of them. Online is a different ball game of course, but he’s three and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I don’t hold with all this hysteria about no photos of the school nativity or sports day just in case they fall into the hands of a panting paedo. I’m sad to say that I’m sure paedophiles can easily find more erotic images than my son in baggy pants, or a shepherd in the nativity, or the three-legged race at sports day.
So publish and be dammed! Tomorrow, pictures of my boy in baggy swim pants will be on the Internet.
I agree with everything you said. My brother has taken the opposite line and it makes me sad. His wife has decided there are no pictures allowed online of their daughter. I feel sad about this because I would love to show off my beautiful neice, especially as I am going to be her god mother.
It’s so difficult, it’s such a grey area you don’t know what to do for the best. Thanks for commenting and congrats on being a godmother x
I post pictures of my kids online (age 14,12 & 7) on my blog since going self hosted & disabling the right click function, the odd Instagram & Twitter post too! I allow them to be on school publications but am not comfortable with other parents at school play etc uploading my child’s image to Facebook! I only ever post a pic of my children & if the older two don’t like the image then I crop them out of it!
I guess as the kids get older they tend to voice what they do and don’t want posting online. My boy isn’t yet at the age where he cringes at pictures of himself, but I know later on when he is we’ll be trawling through things deleting things together. Thanks for commenting.
Interesting post. I was thinking about this recently too for a different reason – a man snapped a picture of my 3 year old on his phone when we were in town. It happened v quickly, I’ve tried to think of an innocent reason for it but ultimately it really creeped me out. As my husband and I discussed it, we realised that a) anyone with a long lense can be taking pics of our kids without us knowing, b) I am posting pics of her on FB (albeit with the most privacy I can set) and c) it’s really sad that these thoughts pop into our heads now. I don’t know the answer, I think it’s a personal thing for every blogger to decide. I post her pic on my blog but never show her full face and the blog itself is anonymous – this satisfies my desire for some privacy but still means I can have some lovely photos of her on the blog!
Yes that freaks me out too. A group of Japanese tourists were taking pictures of my son at a tram stop last year, that felt very weird, but all I could do was hide his face and walk away.
It’s such a fine line, I guess the only answer is to do what you’re comfortable with.
To be honest, and from what I know about paedophiles, children don’t need to be in a state of undress for them to be targets. Swim shorts or otherwise,”, paedophiles view the innocence as a sexual catalyst. There’s only so much we can do I protect our children, paedophiles aren’t going away and I’ll be damned if I’m locking my boys away from the outside world on the off chance they might be looked at by one.
Exactly the attitude I’m taking. Excellent comment. Thank you so much for commenting Sophie.