The Request

Four years ago:

My husband and I walked through the front door smiling as we chatted.  We had just returned from a “date night”.  My daughter, Hannah who was twelve at the time, must have been watching for us. She flew down the stairs and threw herself into her father’s arms, sobbing. 

I love my child, but she can be a bit over dramatic. This could easily be because her brother looked at her funny or because her best friend didn’t immediately respond to a text.  So, instead of reacting with alarm, I looked to my oldest daughter who followed Hannah more slowly down the stairs.  A quirk of my eyebrow and she said, “Let her tell you.”

By now Hannah’s dad had gotten her to calm down and we both asked, “What happened?”

I will spare you the hiccupping and half sentence ranting and boil it down for you. 

Hannah had been texting with a boy from her former school.  After a few back and forth messages, he asked her for naked pictures.  Let me repeat that, a twelve-year-old boy asked my twelve-year-old daughter to send him naked pictures of herself!

I was livid, but I wasn’t sure where her tears were coming from.  Taking a deep breath, I asked her what she did. 

“I told him no, that’s gross.”

He responded in a way that most adults could see coming but completely blind-sided my daughter.  He called her some very bad things, told her how ugly she is, and of course questioned who would ever want to see anything of hers.  Then he repeated his request.

She still said no.

We did our job as parents.  We had a conversation about why he responded that way. We made sure she understood that she did the right thing, not only by saying no, but also by telling us.  We emphasized the fact that she wasn’t ugly and he said that not because it was true but out of anger.  More importantly, we told her how smart she was to say no and stick to her answer.  By the time we were done she was smiling and happy again.  Now the ball was in our court. 

My daughter had attended a charter school the year before and transferred to a mainstream middle school.  This boy had also moved to another school.  All we knew was his first name and his phone number.  Unfortunately, before we got home, my oldest daughter had called it and given him an earful, so he had blocked our number. 

As much as the mother in me wanted to crucify this boy, the educator in me also understood that yelling and blaming would not fix anything.  Someone needed to talk to this boy, to explain why what he did was wrong and to make him understand the ramifications of his actions.

Ultimately there was little we could do.  We asked around about the boy, but no one knew anything other than that he’d moved.  We called the phone number but he just let it go to voicemail.  In the end, we were left with mixed feelings; impotence because we couldn’t settle things with this boy, yet so proud of our daughter for being confident enough to say no and mean it and then tell us about it.