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.