Hi @dailystress and thank you for sharing what you're going through. It sounds like it has been difficult navigating your daughter's mental health challenges this year, and that finding these explicit images she's been sending has been quite confronting for you as a parent.
You mentioned that your daughter has been seeing a counsellor throughout this year. Has she been finding it helpful? It can be incredibly difficult to open up an honest dialogue with your teen about their mental health, especially if they're feeling irritable or angry a lot of the time. If you're interested, feel free to check out these articles on asking questions that encourage your teenager to talk, effective communication, and supporting your teen through depression which might give you some ideas on how to talk to her about what she's going through.
As for the sexually explicit messages that you've seen on your daughter's Instagram account, I can definitely appreciate why this might be difficult for you to see as a parent. It can be very difficult to monitor and encourage teens to use social media safely, especially if they are engaging in sexual behaviour online that they might not want to talk to their parent about. Does your daughter know that you've seen these explicit messages? If not, how would you feel about having a conversation with her about what you've seen?
The eSafety Commission has some great resources on the potential consequences of sexting, and you can find some of our tips on how to talk to your teen about sexting here. These conversations can sometimes be tricky and a little uncomfortable, but can be an important way of ensuring that your teen knows the risks of sexting and can weigh up the consequences before choosing to send these kinds of messages to someone else online.
Hang in there, @dailystress . You're definitely not the only parent going through this at the moment, and we hope that you can find some solace and support by connecting with others in our online community.
