11 yr old girl and sexual behavior

Hello,
I am desperate for sound advice regarding my daughter. Her mom and I divorced 8 years ago. Ever since the divorce my daughter has been acting up for her mom but recently she has been making videos on her iPOD of herself dancing like a stripper, swearing, pretending to smoke, spreading her legs under sheets and showing her cleavage/bra. To my knowledge none of these have been posted anywhere. Her mom keeps giving her the device back within two days of these videos being discovered. Also her mom wants to hide the videos from me. Her mom was sexually abused by her father and when my daughter was two it was found that he touched my daughter but then he committed suicide so we will never know for sure. He was also abused so there is a long history of abuse in their family.

Everywhere else my daughter is a model child and is loved by everyone. I am having problems proving anything based on her mother's actions by lying and keeping things from me. This behavior only ocurrs at her home.

My mother still suspects that there is continued sexual abuse by my dauhters mother. What are the signs I should look for? Why is this only ocurring at her moms house? What steps should I take?

Thank you...

What is your custody arrangement? Can you make arrangements for your daughter to be interviewed and assessed by a child psychologist who has experience working with sexual issues? Someone with excellent credentials.

I don't know why this is happening at your wife's house, maybe because she can get away with it there. However, I'm pretty sure that if my step-daughter had been making such videos when she was 11 that I would not show them to her father. I would tell him about them. I wouldn't hide anything from him, but dad should not be watching his daughter act out in this way. It's not good for you and not good for your daughter.

However, the psychologist could view the videos and give you a judgment if this was sexual acting out that one needs to worry about or if it was some sort of age-appropriate curiosity and play. In past generations, many young girls did this sort of thing in the privacy of their room, without any video evidence of the squeezing of the chest together in an attempt to make cleavage. Girls dance and wiggle and look at their developing figures. Much of that is completely normal. The addition of video changes these innocent activities into something else.

With streaming of hard R rated movies and cable TV shows, YouTube and all the nearly naked selfies being posted by celebrities, 11 year olds today are being exposed to things that we didn't see until a much older age. I used to gyrate like a go-go dancer in front of the mirror in my room because that's what I saw on TV. Never had the nerve to do it at an actual dance. So ... if your daughter is dancing like a stripper, where is she seeing images of strippers and can that be changed? I mean, sweet Katy Perry and formerly sweet Miley Cyrus and wildly popular Beyonce can be highly sexualized influences on young girls without it meaning the young girl is being abused.

We just don't want our 11 year olds to act like that. It's hard for adults to even know what's normal for kids these days.

I really strong suggestly you start looking around for an experienced child psychologist to guide you through this, just to make sure. You can probably get a referral from her pediatrician or even your primary care provider.

Please do whatever you can to prevent your daughter from posting any of those videos on-line or sending them to friends. It will cause no end of trouble if she crosses that line. At age 11, impulse control isn't great. She might send a video to her BFF thinking it's perfectly safe. Then she and BFF have a pre-teen tiff and her video is sent all over.

if your custody agreement allows you decision making powers, I'd take the devices away. If she needs a phone so you'll feel safe, get her a cheap phone that makes calls and texts and does nothing else. She'll hate it, but she'll hate being bullied even worse if one of her videos gets out and goes viral in her social group. She really has abused her right to a phone that creates pictures and videos. It may be time for some tough love while you're looking for a psychologist.

You and you wife will have to cooperate on this and it may mean some calm, non-accusatory discussion, with the only topic being what's best for your daughter.

I wish you the best of luck.

I was hypersexual at that age not due to abuse but bipolar. I have a feeling this is because she's not able to process all the changes in her life. A child psychologist is the best choice. Has her mother talked to her about puberty yet?

Yes child psychologist is the best option which you can choose. It will definitely help you to some extent.

My first thought also was bipolar because hyper-sexuality is a symptom of that. IF it is bipolar, it could have manifested itself after the divorce because often difficult situations which effect stress levels will allow the disease to read its ugly head! Our 15 y/o daughter was diagnosed with it last spring and it became obvious to us that something was wrong 3 years prior to that, shortly after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Because your daughter was sexually abused as a young child and because of the divorce she also be dealing with PTSD, or a combination of bipolar and PTSD. I agree that she needs to see a psychiatrist for an full evaluation. By the way, our daughter was also 11 when symptoms started to appear.

Nancy

I still recommend that you seek the aid of a child psychologist to assess this situation and offer therapy if it's needed, largely due to the family history of sexual abuse. However ....

Since the concerned father first wrote his opening post, I have talked confidentially to the young women I know -- from teens to early 20s, with the youngest being 13. I asked them what they thought about this behavior.

They laughed at first and then felt very insulted when it was termed hyper-sexual. Every single one of them engaged in the same activities in the privacy of their rooms starting in their 'tween years, even the ones who went to parochial school or were considered Goody-Two-Shoes. Some of them got together with their girlfriends to dance and pose and imitate pop stars, taking turns videoing each other.

They pretend smoked, tried on swear words and swear phrases like hey, B**** and hey, you Ho and much worse things they heard in music videos, movies and from their parents. They squeezed their breasts together to make cleavage. They posed and danced in their undies, pretending to be Victoria Secrets models, actresses and pop stars. They spread their legs and twerked their bottoms like Miley Cyrus and did their best to copy Beyonce's dance moves and act like Iggy Azalea (I don't even know who Iggy Azalea is.) Some of them practiced diligently to perfect a completely blank, expressionless face, just like a runway fashion model.

Some of them started with their Barbie dolls, inventing dialogue between Barbie and Ken they might have heard in hip-hop videos or R-rated movies. They popped, locked and dropped it, wearing nothing but their undies. They pretended to be pole dancers. They saw all of this on YouTube and in music videos and on cable TV and they imitated it. Several admitted sneaking to watch their parents porn videos! They watched instruction videos on YouTube to learn the dance moves popular now, many of which of highly sexually suggestive.

None of them is mentally ill or sexually promiscuous. They all made videos and selfies if they had the equipment to do so. The older girls, young women really, said to take her devices away because impulse control is not great at that age and the urge to share with trusted girlfriends or post on the internet is huge. Some of them even videoed themselves discovering masturbation and the beginnings of pubic hair growth. They imitated the butt shots of the Kardashian clan, pulling their panties up to imitate thongs until they were old enough to actually buy thong panties to wear. This is now normal behavior.

All said if their mothers had discovered them in the act or discovered the videos they would have been mortified and punished. All said that if their fathers, brothers, grandfathers or other male relatives saw the videos or even knew about it, they would die of embarrassment.

So, I don't know. Medically, we know that puberty is starting earlier than in past generations. These activities seem to be common. What has changed is girls now have more explicit examples from movies, music videos and YouTube videos and other internet sources to imitate than ever before.

The ability to easily make videos and to send them to friends or post them on the internet has changed the entire scenario from being something done in privacy out of curiosity into something that can be dangerous.

So, find that psychologist and get things checked out. But maybe your girl isn't "hyper-sexual" after all. Just doing what girls do as puberty hits, with a lot of explicit examples for her to imitate in the privacy of her room. You do need to know if this is part of her normal development or if something worrisome is going on. I don't know any other way to do that except with a child psychologist who is trained how to discover if a child is being sexually abused or acting hyper-sexual without pushing a false answer into the equation. Do not skimp or try to save by getting a counselor or life coach or some other non-trained individual who does not have proper credentials.

I guess I have to say I'm glad I grew up in a simpler time and age when padded bras, go-go dancing, two piece bathing suits, smoking and looking at semi-naked pictures in The National Geographic were our worst temptations at age 11. I never even heard anyone say the f-word until I was 19 or 20 years old. Now six year olds say it.

Please look at your daughter within the context of what's normal within this current generation and culture, not what was normal even 20 years ago. I would hate to see anyone diagnosed and even medicated due to normal curiosity and imitation of things they see on the internet and TV, even the Disney Channel.

Yeah, it's amazing the influence of YouTube has had on this generation. She very well could be imitating' art', and god knows what the girls are talking about. Just caught my 11yr old sons friend' cracking a joke' about a certain type of sexual act and a certain drug.
(Mental illness...or omfg?)
I just had to have even more in depth discussions with my son over appropriateness.

I'd call CPS on her mother ASAP!