I found disgusting sexts on my 12-year-old daughter's phone.

“I was in the car waiting while my daughter was at a drama lesson and her phone beeped. And it just kept beeping. I turned it off because I was trying to do some work, and as I reached down to look at it, a string of messages came up.”

I want to lick… 

F*** me in the… 

Hoe (misspelt), bitch, dirty slut.

This is how Angela Mollard discovered that tweens are sexting, and that they’re sexting her 12 year old daughter.

If you’re clutching your pearls, you’re not alone. Who knew 12-year-old kids called each other dirty sluts? Is sexting the new normal among teens and tweens?

Angela recently wrote a column for News Corp about how she reacted when she found these dirty texts. We were so aghast, we had to invite her onto This Glorious Mess to hear how she handled it.

“They were basically foul. They were disgusting… I didn’t know who they were from,” she said.

Perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the messages weren’t part of a conversation. Her daughter wasn’t even there. And as more and more filthy messages rolled in, it became clear someone had snatched the boy’s phone and was sending the messages.

“You don’t like this sort of graphic ugliness directed at your perfect little child,” says Angela.

Angela said she wanted to crawl into a hole and just ignore it, but she knew she couldn’t just be a bystander.

Sure, you’ve probably had ‘the talk’ but how the hell do you talk to a 12year-old about sexting?

As usual, Andrew Daddo chimed in with an absolute nugget of wisdom which we suggest you pass along to your kids:

“If you’re sitting there looking at a picture you’ve taken of yourself, and you’re thinking, ‘I wouldn’t show my parents or grandparents that,’ DON’T SEND IT.”

To hear more about how Angela navigated the sext talk with her daughter, listen to the full episode below.