WWYD? Cyberbullying lesson over steps?

[mustardseed2007]

DS is in scouts, a small group that meets after school every other week. I'm not normally there b/c they get the kids from the bus line and meet for an hour or whatever and then he goes to after school care. 

Yesterday he came home and told me that the mom that leads it showed them a picture of a momo monster. He was able to explain that it's a japanese statue that's not real. he said it's in minecraft, peppa pig and roblox. I've read about this some and read about it more last night. From what I'm reading, the challenge is an urban legend but the image is showing up online. That kind of thing is why I don't let my kids play games on the internet with others and I don't let them watch youtube or youtube kids. 

Here's the thing, he couldn't communicate to me what she was trying to teach him about it. He said a kid in scouts cried when they saw it. He's one of two 1st graders in scouts and there is a kindergartner in there too. The other kids are 2nd and third grade. 

In my opinion, DS would have gone possibly his whole life without ever seeing these images if she hadn't shown them to him because of the way we manage screens and his internet access. Would he see something awful in the future? I'm sure! But not this year, I think. 

I emailed her in very neutral way asking her if she could share what the lesson was b/c DS didn't seem to have absorbed the lesson other than he said it was very creepy and scary and that he doesn't ever want to learn the play minecraft (all true things). I mentioned that sometimes at school he doesn't get the whole thing of what a teacher is talking about right away either and I asked her to help me by adding context. 

Her response was that she talked about cyberbullying at the end. It was not planned but "somehow the subject came up." She went on to say that she isn't the kind of parent who is rainbows and sunshine or sugarcoats things. That it's a shame we live in a world where we as parents need to be proactive. She ended with apologizing if he was scared as that was not her intent. 

Am I wrong to be concerned here?
How do I cap this off with her? She's a volunteer and does the lessons for scouts all on her own b/c of when they hold the meetings. She's a nice lady. But I think I understand what happened here, and her approach for my kid was the wrong approach. 

[waverly]

This momo has been discussed in my other group. Apparently it pops up in normal kid videos and tells them to do awful things like suicide and taking all the pills in moms medicine closet, and don't tell your parents or I will kill your whole family. It's next level creepy. Some of the moms showed their kids the picture, and their kids freaked out. I think only a couple had actually seen it. I chose not to show the image to my kids because it made me scared, and I thought it was creepy. I asked DS about it, and he said he has never seen it nor have kids at school shown him. My kids do not watch you tube or play online games either.

I would be upset that she showed them the image because it is very scary and would give some kids nightmares. I am not sure I would be that upset to pull him forever from scouts, but I might say in the future please do not show scary images to the kid without parental permission. It is not their place to discuss this with the kids. It is the place of the parent. If a kid brought it up, they should have said yes they are scary things out there in the world and if you have more questions please ask your parents and re-directed the conversation to the topic. I think there is a place for a planned cyber bullying lesson in scouts, but not for that age group (yours is in K, right?) and one that is planned instead of spur of the moment and doesn't involve scary images.

[2chatter]

I don’t think she should have shared the image - the WHOLE point of the explosion about the image is to prevent kids from seeing it. She’s also not well informed - the “challenge” part of the story has fallen apart. That would be my comment - something like - where current events are subjective and perhaps evolving can you please avoid sharing them with the boys? This isn’t about screens and your kid possibly never being exposed for me - gold star, that approach would irk me as a leader even delivered factually with good intentions because there are too many braggy parents here and I don’t see you as one - it’s about her buying into the panic and then oversharing with children without sufficient research. Maybe give it a couple weeks before diving in to dramatic memes, leader lady.

I’m the wrong person to ask. I just stepped down (yesterday) from leading middle’s Bronze award for GS because parents are special snowflakes that want my schedule to be what’s most convenient to their kids. It’s the schedule communicated at the start of the year. One parent went so far as to say my not having a meeting on a Sunday “isn’t fair” to her daughter. Sorry, I am not at work on Sunday and need to spend time with my home bound child - who is a WAY bigger priority than your kid whose schedule changed. Sorry you overschedule your kid. So I took the put up or shut up approach and someone else (of the complainers, TBD) will lead the second half. I don’t think the complainer expected me to agree so now wants to convert the next meeting to a parent meeting on Monday. Unsurprisingly I am not available Monday, so they will meet with me on Wednesday. These parents need to stop making the world meet their kids. But that’s not at all what you are doing and I would pursue it with that leader.

[twinmomma]

I think it was definitely overstepping for her to actively bring it up and conduct what sounds like a poorly planned lesson on it. If she wanted to do a lesson on internet safety and cyber-bullying, then a heads up to parents ahead of time, what would be covered, etc. would make sense to me. That way I could prep my kids appropriately before hand and know how to follow up with the conversation after too. That's not really a topic you just drop on little kids.

[librarychica]

I don’t think this was a lesson that needed teaching to a bunch of young kids and she didn’t go about it well, so I would be annoyed. But I don’t know what else she can do at this point. She has apologized, she made a mistake, she will likely think better of it in the future. At this point, unless you’re going to offer to plan units yourself, I don’t know that you have many options. Maybe ask for a heads up if the topic of cyber safety is planned for future meetings?

[waverly]

2chatter , as far as the scouting, are you OK with parents opting out of non mandatory events?

I got some pushback for not attending a fire station tour which was the same time as DS's basketball and not attending a animal shelter tour which would be a 1.5 hour drive for me on a weeknight at 5:15pm.

I figure if you email me and tell me I have 3 days to say yes or no, then I better say no because I don't have time to check with my neighbor to see if she would take her and it's a big ask to have her check her out of aftercare and then drive the hour back and forth anyway. I mean if you need an answer that quickly then I figure you are not really caring if I can make it. Otherwise they would give us a week or 2- understanding that council events are different, but for troop events.  Also if it is mandatory or for a badge you would let me know, right?

And in K, I don't yet have a huge group of people sitting on the sidelines to drive my kid places, and I have an H that is gone all week.  75% of the moms are SAH or work part time. 

[2chatter]

waverly - I am pretty laid back. I don’t make anything mandatory except a reasonable amount of participation. One girl didn’t attend the sleepover to kick off the award - I sent her work to do on her own. One girl doesn’t come to meetings and I asked her mom for her “homework” so I can share her preferences. The mom never provides it. And this is where I get pissed. No way are ten girls all going to be available. The schedule doesn’t change when your child’s schedule changes. I was planning to lead a meeting MY OWN child cannot attend. So it takes some serious cojones for these moms to be like “make this more convenient for me”. They can eff off and I pretty much said that. I’m totally out of bandwidth to care. I got this all set up and they are more than halfway done. If someone else wants to lead the fun and easy part, awesome.

What mattered to me is that this is done properly. No half A projects and no parents doing the work. So, mission accomplished.

I’m focused on the next award in two years being individual or small group. DD will only be allowed to partner with a couple of girls handpicked by me for not having high maintenance parents and not being annoying and/or incompetent. I’d prefer she do it solo because then she can do something much bigger because there isn’t any scheduling chaos.

[mustardseed2007]

2chatter, not wanting to be that parents is what is making me want to approach this the right way. I also do volunteer things and get complaints from uninvolved people, and it pisses me the hell off, too. She's single handedly making scouts possible at this school and she deserves credit and consideration for that.

And I know you're right about that approach "my kid would never see it" even if true is going to fall flat (and what do I really know about the future! The point of cyberbullying is that parents are caught off guard about what their kids do online).

[waverly]

2chatter , OK good. So far we have attended every monthly meeting, pancake breakfast, hometown holidays, window painting, sold cookies and did the mandatory cookie booth.

We've skipped caroling which was optional, and a dance class which was the same day as the mandatory cookie booth also optional, and now these 2 things because they are on weeknights and have schedule conflicts.

[waverly]

Feb 28, 2019 11:00:58 GMT -5 mustardseed2007 said:

2chatter , not wanting to be that parents is what is making me want to approach this the right way. I also do volunteer things and get complaints from uninvolved people, and it pisses me the hell off, too. She's single handedly making scouts possible at this school and she deserves credit and consideration for that.

And I know you're right about that approach "my kid would never see it" even if true is going to fall flat (and what do I really know about the future! The point of cyberbullying is that parents are caught off guard about what their kids do online).

For me it's more that it was not age appropriate to show the image and scare 5 year olds, nor in the curriculum of the scouting lesson they were working on that day.

Some parents have chosen to show their kids at that age, but it was the parent who decided not a scout leader.  And most that did show their kids, they were pretty frightened, which makes me think yeah it wasn't really age appropriate overall. 

[sdlaura]

I’m not sure what I would do exactly, since the damage has already been done. But I would be really angry about her doing that. There’s an expectation that adults volunteering for things like that will show good judgement, and that was not good judgement.

[2chatter]

I think the thing that bugs me about the leader is this isn’t a good “ripped from the headlines” kind of thing. It’s buying into panic. I was teaching at a University on 9/11 and the initial reactions from some of the kids really messed me up. True colors and all that, but in your case I want to know that the leader has better judgment, and think it would totally be in line to ask for more time and more caution when there are hot topics.

I would figure out what most bothers you and articulate it as a follow up. Totally fair.

[justcheckingin73]

It was not her place to discuss that or cyber bullying unless that was part of that day’s meeting. I’m not sure what you can do other than what you already did. Her comments about not sugarcoating things gives me huge eye rolls. It’s not her place to determine that for the other kids. Plus, she could have discussed the topic in a general way without showing the picture. 

I asked DS and DD about this Momo character and it scared both of them when they saw the picture. DD didn’t know about it but DS said he had heard about it but didn’t know what it was. After some research, I read that the initial contact is through What’sApp and kids answering texts from someone who then hacks their device? I’m not sure if I have that correct but neither of my kids have What’s App. Nevertheless, DS has been so freaked since I showed him the picture and talked to them about it, he hasn’t touched his iPad or gone on Fortnite. I guess that’s a good thing but I don’t want him to live in fear, even if the the outcome is something that’s good for him (less screen time).

[madringal]

Feb 28, 2019 10:36:22 GMT -5 2chatter said:

I’m the wrong person to ask. I just stepped down (yesterday) from leading middle’s Bronze award for GS because parents are special snowflakes that want my schedule to be what’s most convenient to their kids.

That stupid Bronze award is 100% of the reason I stopped volunteering in DD1s GS troop.  Sorry parents are jerks.  

[2chatter]

madringal - I confess I don’t run it 100 percent to GS methods with all the paperwork. I only do the paperwork at the end. And I prohibit the kids from doing money earning activities and parents donate instead as I am not doing all the paperwork to earn money. My time is worth more than all that hoop jumping. In a perfect world i would not donate the most because these parents get my time for free but it has always been me front running the cost.

For silver the kids are old enough to do the admin work if it’s that important to them. But no way am I dealing with that craziness.

[covergirl82]

It was a good idea to talk with kids about bad things they might see online, but it was a bad idea to show them the image and scare them. I talked with my kids yesterday about the 'Momo Challenge'. I asked if they had heard about it, or had seen anything scary recently on YT Kids or Roblox. They both said no. (I refused to share the image with them, but I said it was a scary looking girl with black hair and big eyes.) If DD had seen it or if I had showed her the image, she seriously would've had nightmares for weeks.

I did tell the kids that because I can't watch YT Kids or Roblox with them 100% of the time, and because I'm aware of really bad things like this going around (I had been contemplating deleting those apps for a while, just because I think they were negatively impacting my kids' behavior, but the Momo Challenge, whether urban legend or not, was my deciding factor to delete them), that I needed to delete both those apps. Surprisingly, they both said ok without any fight.

I think that scout leader should've thought more about how to share the information, knowing that all kids handle those types of things differently, and parents may have a specific way they want to communicate these types of things to their kids (especially when it comes to specific details).

[mae0111]

Feb 28, 2019 12:30:48 GMT -5 covergirl82 said:

I think that scout leader should've thought more about how to share the information, knowing that all kids handle those types of things differently, and parents may have a specific way they want to communicate these types of things to their kids (especially when it comes to specific details).

This.  100%.  People talk to their kids differently, and understand how their child is going to react to something scary.  She shouldn't have addressed it without getting some feedback from parents.

If it came up in the group, she should have encouraged the kids to talk to their parents about it, and then emailed all of the parents and told them that it was a topic of conversation during the meeting.

All that said, I have no idea how to address it with her.  I'm sorry - no good advice.  

[mustardseed2007]

I can add that I've literally seen 4 facebook posts on this momo thing in 2 days. I think panic is accurate.

I'm going to thank her for caring enough to try to address cyberbullying with them, and I'm going to commiserate that her group of boys is lots of different ages, which makes answering questions like that on the fly difficult. But I'm going to ask her to talk to us before showing them scary imagery to explain a point.

[cosmowife]

I would have been very angry about this. It wasn’t her place to make this parenting decision. My son is very sensitive and absolutely would have been affected by seeing the image. Heck, I’m affected by seeing certain images and can’t get them out of my head for a long time.

I asked my son about the momo stuff while trying to keep the discussion open. It came out that the only bad stuff he had seen were youtubers playing Minecraft that occasionally slipped and said a bad word. He assured me that he doesn’t watch their videos anymore. So I guess we are doing something right. I don’t think anyone has actually produced evidence of these videos with momo spliced in the middle - at least I know that I haven’t seen any proof yet.

[sandandsea]

Cyber bullying is an important lesson but I don’t think sharing a picture was needed. We’ve talked to ds about momo. He’s also a first grader. It went something like this “if anyone on the internet or in real life tells you to do something you don’t think is right what would you do? That’s right. You don’t do it and tell an adult. “
We told him that some had people put mean and bad things in videos and we want him to be smart and think for himself when watching videos. Don’t do something just because someone told you to. We talked about a couple of examples (not extreme). No scary pictures were needed and he got it.

[k3am]

Interestingly enough, the whole Momo challenge? Likely a hoax. There's no evidence that any of the challenge actually exists, no one has a copy of these videos, and no adult has been able to track down the WhatsApp or FB messages that are supposedly happening. It's like those stories you were told about why you shouldn't flash your headlights at an oncoming car without their's on. Urban myth.

So the fact that parents are suddenly freaking out about allowing their kids access to something that's potentially damaging? That's a good thing. We SHOULD know what our kids are looking at and we SHOULD be having those discussions.

And to the scout mom? She needs to check her facts before she starts contributing to mass hysteria.

[mommyatty]

Okay, so after having read this, I came home Friday from a work trip to an absolutely hysterical DD. An asshole kid at school who comes from frankly a shitty home told her about Momo. But because the kid is a budding sociopath who likes to terrorize other kids, she said if you saw this video even on accident, it would make you do horrible things like kill yourself.

MIL, who is an idiot, decided to google what it was with DD standing there, so then DD saw the picture and absolutely lost her flipping mind. She wouldn’t stay in her own bed and lay next to me in our bed, shaking like a leaf for 2 hours. Like even now, she refuses to be alone. She wanted me to stay in the bathroom with her this morning when she took a bath. I refused. She slept alone last night, but only after more crying and saying her tummy was sick so she needed to sleep with us. Tonight she went to bed with no fuss, but I’m hanging out upstairs so she doesn’t freak out again.

I want to kill this kid and my MIL. I would have taken a tire iron to the scout leader. Seriously.

[waverly]

Right?! Momo is a hoax with the intention of getting people to share the scary picture. It’s not the made up internet thingy scaring the kids it’s the parents.

[shakinros]

My school district sent out a letter today warning parents about the dangerous Momo Challenge and asking us to report it immediately if anyone saw it. I actually felt embarrassed on their behalf while reading it. I can’t believe they sent out such a thing.

I don’t always love a tiny school district. But I do love that when you write the administrators (as DH and I both did, right away) they respond. Same school official sent another letter like 10 mins later clarifying that momo is likely a hoax.

[mustardseed2007]

It's all over the internet, it's just so totally extra. I'm sorry your daughter was so scared mommyatty.