Action Most Likely Harmless
Q. My wife and I recently discovered that our 13-year-old son, on two separate occasions, went into our 10-year-old daughter’s room and cut up one pair of her panties. Our third child knew about it, and our son asked that he not tell.
Thinking this a bit weird, our first inclination was to call a therapist. Since then, my wife has had insomnia. When she does sleep, she has bad dreams. She tells me she feels violated herself and has expressed the feeling that our son is a “stranger” who is capable of even more outrageous things.
Is my wife overreacting?
Should we get our son into therapy?
I suppose you need to know that he has apologized to his sister, seems genuinely remorseful, and has accepted his punishment, which amounted to being grounded for a month.
A. I’d say your wife is overreacting, but on the other hand, it’s important that neither of you underreact, either.
A young adolescent male’s sexual curiosity is to some degree undersocialized, meaning this age male has yet to learn to say “no” to some of his sexual impulses. For example, he may know that something (i.e., cutting up his sister’s underpants) is wrong, but his sexual feelings are often so urgent, so all-consuming, that they override the admonitions of his conscience. As a consequence, the young teenage boy is likely to express his sexuality in ways considered downright bizarre by adults.
Indeed, if an adult male cut up a little girl’s underwear, he definitely would be considered perverted, sick, and perhaps even a menace to society. Such “diagnoses” do not apply, however, when the perpetrator is 13 years old.
If your son had physically violated his younger sister, if he had exhibited no remorse when his act was discovered, if he persisted in destroying her underwear in spite of being punished, significant concern would be warranted. None of those apply; therefore, I’d certainly keep an eye on the situation for some time, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
Along these lines, I do not think he would profit at this time from seeing a counselor, but if you would feel more secure if he (or the two of you) spoke to a professional, then by all means make an appointment.
The act of vandalizing a sister’s underpants at age 13 or thereabouts is not predictive of bizarre sexual behavior later in life.
I’ve talked with many responsible, well-adjusted male adults who have admitted to having had some very strange fetishes during early adolescence. (Which is not to say that some fetishistic teenage boys don’t grow up to be sexual deviants, but this is probably more the exception than the rule.) Keep in mind that the young male teen is less mature and generally shorter than his female classmates and can’t even “get the time of day” from them. These fetishes are, generally speaking, a harmless way of channeling a lot of pent-up sexual energy.
Your son did something inappropriate, but relatively harmless. He has apologized and been appropriately punished. Now it’s time for the family to move on.