I agree with the others here that porn is a small side issue.
As a parent I would be much more concerned about the iPad with a cracked screen.
Let me ask you this. If you have bought your son an iPad and you did not see it around after a week or so, would you ask where it was? I know I would, and I would be real interested in the answer. Don’t you think that it is safe to assume that the other parent would also be like this? So if the other parents aren’t raising holy hell with their child, you have to ask why. I can think of three reasons.
They are brain dead / their child is a superb liar (at 14? :rolleyes:)
They don’t give a shit (possible, but really?)
They did not buy the kid the iPad
Number 3 is what worries me. What if the other kid stole it? That makes your child a guilty of possession of stolen property.
Secondly the screen crack. Assume for a moment the unit was bought by the other kids parents and screen was cracked when your son got the unit. What are the odds that when it comes back the other kid will say your son broke it? I’m guessing they are pretty damn good the other kid will throw your kid under the bus.
If it were me I would be all over finding where the iPad came from RIGHT NOW, and returning it to the rightful owner. If the screen crack comes up, may I suggest that his Christmas presents get returned to pay for the damage?
Once you have the iPad straightened out you have to work on him following the house rules (no expensive toys unless you know about them)
Now back to the porn. 14 year olds will look at porn. Get used to it. I like and used an approach similar to malkavia’s with my son.
The only other porn talk you need is the one that happens if, Og forbid, you walk in on your kid wanking. Then, much like when he was three, the only correct “talk” is, “Oops! My bad! Carry on!” while you close the door and die of embarrassment in the hallway.
Or if you find a pop up of a chick with a horse, you might want his Older Male figure to have a quick word with him about how he probably shouldn’t expect his date to Homecoming to be up for that, and that most porn isn’t a realistic representation of adults having sex (and that the real thing is much better, if less shocking!) But honestly, he probably already knows that.
Well, my kid is only 5, so I have this wonderful world to look forward to … but here’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
Teens don’t wanna talk about their wanking with their parents. God know, I didn’t when I was a teen. Such would be, at the best of times, horribly embarrasing.
What my parents did (I’m now convinced) was adopt a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy - together with, I’m sure, a certain amount of selective blindness.
Technology makes this all so much more complicated, because one can, if one wishes, find out everything.
The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve effectively set up a system so that if he wishes to access porn online, he has to break the rules. Maybe in future (perhaps not right now, because you don’t want to be seen as rewarding bad behaviour) simply announce that, as a 14-15 year old, he’ll be trusted to use the home computer unsupervised and without paternal controls? Then he can view porn when you aren’t around, and you can pretend not to know he’s doing it … without the necessity of sitting him down, squirming in embarrasment, and giving a “now, about your wanking to porn …” speech.
I suspect that you could discuss this with him in terms of honesty and trust, and say you are way less concerned about the sex/porn aspect, in a way that would help steer your relationship in the direction you wish it to go. Look at this as an opportunity. All you can do is try. And as I’ve said, I always found it preferable to strive to appear honest, sincere, and caring when dealing with my kids.
I’m thinking if worst comes to worst Paul can pay for the replacement iPad. He has money in a bank account, although without me he does not have access to it. Then we can figure out how he will earn the money back, and depending on what we discover about the true “borrowing” situation, visit some horrible punishment upon him.
I did consider getting him a Playboy subscription for Christmas…
I, for one, think it’s better this way. Back when I was little, us kids knew how to access pornography, even though we had no internet. We just hung out at the home of the kid with the deadbeat parents. That way, not only could we watch Backdoor Sluts 9, but we could sneak cigarettes as well.
And, I’m all for your ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ style, but I’d add an ‘in plain view’ statute. If CTRL-H yields a cornucopia of copulatory cookies, then the youngster needs to be yelled at until he stops/becomes more discrete until it appears he has.
As an aside, I am fascinated by the largely liberal attitude towards porn. My parents’ attitude was “there’s no need to ever talk about it because no kid of mine would ever watch anything like that,” and you can predict how that turned out. In retrospect, though, I wish I’d seen less. I wish they’d have sat me down and told me, man-to-man, that even though they respect my…development, to try not get too carried away with it, or I might regret it.
It’d be easy to go to switchboard.com or some other site and find out where the kid lives and their phone number. Does your son realize that?
Anyway, call the parents and ask if their kid has an iPad. If he does and further inquiry results in their kid admitting that they lent it to your son, give it to the kid’s mom. If not, you’ve got bigger things to worry about than porn (but it sounds like you already know that).
The only other thing I can say is good luck. I’m not looking forward to dealing with stuff like this as my son gets older.
Here we don’t block access to porn. I know they’re going to look at some point, so it may as well be at home. I check the browser history on my son (11), and although it’s sometimes shocking, it hasn’t devolved into bestiality or other gross stuff.
I secretly looked at my Dad’s Penthouses back at that age.
Porn is secondary to stolen iPads. Get him his own iPad and stop asking questions. He’s normal, as far as I can tell.
I’ve learned things from this thread; that boys still will go to great lengths to get porn and that iPads and iPhones are being passed around as porn access devices despite the wishes of Steve Jobs.
[hijack]
Three Frenchmen were discussing the meaning of savoir faire.
The youngest Frenchman says “Savoir faire is when you walk in on your wife and her lover you say pardon me.”
The middle aged Frenchman says “Oh, you are close but you don’t quite have the meaning of savoir faire. Savoir faire is when you walk in on your wife and her lover, you say pardon me, continue.”
The oldest Frenchman just shakes his head and says, “You are still just a bit off. If you walk in on your wife and her lover, and you say pardon me continue, and he continues, that my friends is savoir faire!”
[/hijack]
Mrs Beetle, I know you believe that the Ipad was not stolen…and you are much closer to the situation than I am.
Even so…I bet you $20 the Ipad was stolen. The exception being that your son has enough disposable income to easily afford an Ipad…then I can believe he spent his own money so he can have unmonitored I-net access. However, since Ipads are freakin expensive, I doubt this is the case.
First of all, Paul broke the rule about informing you about borrowing expensive toys…if, in fact, the thing was legitimately borrowed. So he doesn’t get the benefit of it at all. Even if he “can’t remember” where his friend lives, that iPad gets locked up, and Paul doesn’t get to play with it until YOU can return it to his friend’s parents. Not his friend, but that friend’s parents. Take Paul with you when you return it, and tell the parents that Paul had it, but he’s not allowed to borrow expensive things unless you know about it. Preferably, do this in front of Paul’s friend as well.
Paul needs some other consequences for this behavior, too. Maybe he loses some privileges. For instance, he’s not allowed to be on ANY computer at home at all unless you or your husband are in the same room with him, for a couple of weeks. He might even be completely grounded from computers until and unless he needs to do research for school work. Or he might be grounded from videogames for a while. He might also need some extra chores around the house to keep him busy and out of trouble. There was an old saying that “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” I’m an atheist, but there is some truth to that saying…people who are idle, and who can’t find something constructive to do, will sometimes find something harmful to do.
I don’t know what sort of talk you should be having about porn as a sexual thing, but Paul needs to learn and understand that a lot of the porn sites on the internet are just crawling with viruses and other malware, which can be difficult to impossible to remove.
Just out of curiosity, what will your reaction be if you do contact the other parents and they say “Oh yeah, little Johnny spent the week at his aunts house in Florida and said [your kid] could borrow it…the screen? Yeah, Johnny dropped it the first day he got it, right down the basement stairs. Johnny’ll be back next Tuesday, [your kid] said he would bring it back over then”
Would everything be OK then?
I’m just wondering if it’s possible the friend DID legitimately loan it to your son, he only kept it hidden so he could surf for porn without you knowing. In which case, it’s no different then sneaking Playboys into the house.
I’ll say, “Well, that was really nice of Johnny, but Paul’s not allowed to borrow things like that without letting us know about it, so I brought it back and here it is! Thank you…and also Paul says Johnny’s been using it to wank over women who love horses.”
… but here’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
