You punish your kids for swearing on the Internet???

The BBQ Pit
1

In this thread here, Plan B is asking for advice on a NetNanny type programme to monitor her kids internet usage.
This particular quote here, however, is especially noteworthy:

Are you trying to turn your kids into paranoid malcontents and/or social outcasts?

“Oh, I can’t look at that amusing webcomic, since Mummy will yell at me. She doesn’t like me looking at things withy naughty words in them.”

“I can’t play online games, because Mummy doesn’t like people using naughty words in them and will punish me if I threaten another player or use bad words”.

Plan B has said that her eldest child is 14. If you actually believe a 14yo doesn’t know any naughty words, I have a bridge in Sydney for sale that you might be interested in.

I respect her right to insist her children do not swear in the house when actually talking to other people- but spying on their internet usage, not to make sure they’re not being exposed to Midget Lesbian Goat Porn or Racist hate mongering websites, but to actually spy on everything they say or do so she can punish them later is just, IMO, fucked up beyond belief. I don’t know whether it’s out of a desire to protect her kids from “The big bad world” (in which case she’s got even more issues than appearing like a paranoid control freak herself) or not, but the whole thing smacks of wanting to completely control your kid’s lives and can only lead to problems later, be it when your kids are too afraid to talk to you about problems they’re having because they’re scared of you, or else they deliberately start to cause problems just to spite you- or God knows what else.

Kids should always feel that their parents are there for them- and the worst thing for a child to feel is that they can’t trust their own parents.

There’s a lot of scary stuff on the net- I’m not denying that, and I’d have no problem if you just wanted to install software that would prevent your kids from seeing porn or KKK websites- that’s a perfectly reasonable thing for any parent to do, IMO. But wanting to spy on them like Big Mother is, well… it’s just not cricket.

I’ve never pitted another poster before, and it’s not something I relish doing, but really, the linked thread is incredibly disturbing and I think Plan B needs to be called out on it, even if it does mean every mother on the board gangs up on me for daring to criticise one of their number.

I don’t know Plan B from a bar of soap, FWIW, but I can only speak from my own knowledge and experiences when I say that instituting a Ministry of Internet Communications Monitoring And Follow-Up Punishments is a very, very bad idea.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I can see a mob of angry parents with pitchforks and burning torches gathering nearby…

2

*Supplementary: I don’t know if Plan B is male or female- my overall impression is that the poster is female, hence the use of “she”.

However, I apologise in advance if Plan B is, in fact, male. And before anyone says “but Plan B plays football!”, I knew plenty of women that played football as kids, so it didn’t count as enough information to make a call one way or the other.

We now return you to your regular pitting…

3

I think you’ve totally misread Plan B’s post, although I don’t blame you, it’s not very clear. I don’t think he’s punishing his kids: I think his kids are getting into trouble with some other authority figure for stuff they’ve posted online. Maybe on a school-related bulletin board? Or perhaps with whatever ISP the household uses to connect to the internet? I’ve heard of parents getting into trouble with AOL because their kid flamed someone in a chat channel.

4

We’ve gotten banned from AOL for that - and other equally minor and stupid “offenses.”

5

Even if that is the case, the desire to install “Blackwatch Plaid” or “The Cover Of Rush’s Seminal Album Moving Pictures”-level security monitoring on their home computer to spy on every. single. little. thing. Plan B’s kids do on the net is pit-worthy in itself.

6

That quote doesn’t say anything about swears.

7

I’m not really prepared to comment until this quote is clarified:

Where is this “zero tolerance hot water” coming from? School? Police? Plan B? If it’s an outside source, like school or DCFS who are concerned about her kids for some other reason, and their jurisdiction includes computer use (like computers at school, for example), I could sort of see where Plan B is coming from, wanting to make sure her kids aren’t getting in trouble with someone else. But if this is just her own rule, then yeah, I think it’s a bit much.

WhyKid was into porn for a while around the 10 year mark. I first started by explaining to him that
A) most women don’t enjoy the sorts of activities he was seeing - that is, “that’s not what sex is like for most real people, son”.
B) Mommy doesn’t like turning on the computer in the morning to find pop-ups of Biggg TITTTY CHxxx and Cum Guzzling Sluts!!!111one
C) porn sites are known for viruses
D) porn, like alcohol and drugs, can be used by some people in moderation, and others get addicted to it. Like most potential addictions, I think it wiser for him to make those decisions when he’s older.

He continued his porn searching, until the whole system locked up for two weeks from a particularly bad virus (the guys at the virus sites were really excited about our New and Exciting Virus and asked me to send them copies of the files :smack: ), and I got a little more shrill in my screeching, and finally declared Porn Off Limits on Mom’s Computer, Dammit!

I simply told him that I would be checking his cookies and browser whenever I felt like it, and he was welcome to go wherever he wanted to, but that we’d have interesting discussions if I found anything I thought we needed to talk about.

I think the threat of having another prOn discussion with his mother was far more effective than any software I could install. :smiley:

8

I understand trust. I understand communication. I understand talking to your children.

That said, I also understand locking the liquor cabinet, placing your porn on the top shelf in the closet under your sweaters and perhaps putting “Nanny” software on your home PC.

None of them is guaranteed to stop your child from drinking, flipping through old Playboys or going to SkeevySite.com but you balance your communication with some proactive precautions.

9

This is EXACTLY the approach my parents took with my younger brother and I, and as you say, it worked considerably more effectively than any software could- even my Dad said “Son, you’re smart enough to disable any censoring software we’d install, but I also know you’re smart enough to know that (insert what WhyNot just said), and you know you can always talk to us if you’re concerned, uncomfortable, or have any questions about anything you find.”

I realise that more info may have been needed on the direction the “hot water” was coming from, but the whole tone of the post gave me the distinct impression that it was simply Plan B’s “house rules”, hence the pitting for that aspect of the post in the linked thread.

10

My kids don’t cover their tracks and I’ve given up on monitoring where they go and what they say, but that’s the good thing about older (16 and 21, as if she’ll EVER move out) children. I might’ve kept a closer watch ten years ago but, as they NEVER covered their tracks so a simple monitoring was easy, inobtrusive, and pointless since my wife wrote off the minor infractions as “experimenting.”

11

I don’t think Plan B deserves to be Pitted, but I’m also puzzled as to what he or she meant with “If my kids curse or threaten via the Internet there’s a permanent record, and two of my kids have already gotten into a little bit of hot water over it.” Do you mean they were trolling on a message board and got flamed or something?

12

Wasn’t there a whole series of pit threads a little while ago about how people wanted to cancel their AOL service and the customer service people wouldn’t let them? Problem solved.

13

What a waste of your first pitting of a member. You pick a poster who keeps an eye on his/her children on the internet? What there were no members who tithed to little or spilled a little stew at the soup kitchen to rake across the coals?

Heres some tips for you:

  1. When quoting a member to pit, include the entire quote. As mobo85 pointed out, your problem with her isn’t in the quoted part.

  2. Don’t ramble on incoherently.You jump from place to place, saying different things, that it is hard to follow exactly why you’re so pissed.

  3. Don’t ascribe motives or actions to a poster that are not there. I saw nothing in the linked post that ever indicated that they would take it to the extremes you so idiotically protray.

  4. For the love of Cecil, don’t play the stupid martyr card before you even get one response. Inanity like: “even if it does mean every mother on the board gangs up on me for daring to criticise one of their number” and “I believe I can see a mob of angry parents with pitchforks and burning torches gathering nearby” is pathetic.

Other than those minor flaws, it was a dumbass pitting.

14

Perhaps you should re-read what you quoted. Plan B would like the children to know that their usage can be monitored and may be periodically checked - NOT that every move will be obsessively reviewed later. That seems fair and reasonable to me. Frankly, I find it refreshing to see a parent taking steps to supervise their children’s internet access instead of calling for nationwide censorship of everything in the name of protecting the children. It comes back to “My house, my rules”; if a parent doesn’t want their computer and their internet service used by their underage children to access materials that they think are inappropriate, then it is both fair and reasonable to install software to restrict that. Morality aside, other posters have pointed out that porn sites can pose a security risk to the computer which is sufficient reason alone to justify the enforcement of a ban on such sites.

For the record, I also I doubt any parent is under the delusion that their child doesn’t know “bad” words, but if they wish to discourage their use then that is their right. Plan B’s post suggests that there are other factors at play here, and that their words have been used against them in the past. This makes the situation rather different.

15

You missed this quote:

Personally, I am grateful that at least one parent is monitoring the little bastards. I think it’s foolish to let kids that young unsupervised onto the 'Net anyway. And as for the swearing, she has a legit reason.

16

I’m sorry, I skimmed the thread, but somehow missed **WhyNot **had been there first. Sorry, sorry.

17

I can kind of see the point of the permanent record because if the kids are stupid enough to use their real names then future employers, etc. could go and look up what they said. I am embarrassed for stuff on the internet I posted 8 or 9 years ago when I was 13 or 14 about videogames that would make me look foolish to employers if they type my name in google. Of course, the kids could just be told to not use their real name.

18

Maybe it’s a chat log and the kids are saying stuff on there that the operators are keeping track of.

19

I think this is funny, considering how hard it is to voluntarily cancel AOL service. I guess the key is to swear at other members instead of the customer service people.

20

Yeah, it’s funny. Although the problem is that we keep getting temporarily locked out, not 86ed forever. I keep trying to get my family to cancel AOL, but they’re stlil not sufficiently motivated.