My kids have an active life online; they are penguins and power miners and sparkly unicorns. They chat, tell jokes and go to other player’s pretend houses. And I trust them.  But I’m nervous, the boys search YouTube where you are always one click away from something  horrible and I have heard that Facebook is becoming popular in the 10-year old set.

And then I came across the top 100 search terms by kids. Guess what was in the top five for boys?

For a while, my oldest son was pretty sheltered child. Just like many parents of first-borns we kept a close eye on his media consumption: his choice of TV shows was heavily monitored, the chosen movies were hotly debated and researched, and the music was child-friendly.

And then he made friends. And the problem with his friends is that some of them have older brothers. And those older brothers love inappropriate movies, video games and music. It was those same older brothers who have taught my sweet young thing how to work an insult, and even about the birds and the bees.