Your child cannot see the person at the other end of the computer. There is no way for children to know who they are talking to. The paedophile will start an innocent conversation with your child. They are very good at posing as young children and are up to date with what children like, are interested in and the latest trends. At first, the questions will be innocent and seemingly harmless.
Having worked in the field of mental health as a professional counsellor for the last 10 years I have had to deal with the concept of “addiction” more often than not. The last 4 years I have also worked on a daily basis at an inpatient alcohol and drug rehabilitation clinic. What I came to understand was that some of the core behaviours of an addiction problem really seem to be universal to almost all of the behaviours we might categorize under the word addiction. Whether we are talking about obsessive and compulsive behaviours such as eating disorders, compulsive gambling, alcohol and drug abuse/dependency, sexual compulsivity, or any other phenomenon where the word “addiction” comes to mind, we see a certain number of behaviour and thought patterns which look almost exactly the same in each of the abovementioned behaviours.
