Posted by:
Beth
(
)
Date: July 27, 2014 01:57AM
I was the asshole kid that told everyone that Santa Claus isn't real. In kindergarten.
My 14-year-old son did not wake up one day knowing foreign words that mean "porn." He and his friends talked. They go to school and they talk. They walk around and they talk. They go to McDonalds and they talk. They're a friggin' adolescent cabal.
If a kid is determined enough, they will find a way to do *anything*, and you won't have a clue because they are not miniclones of us. Don't want them to watch porn? Keep a desktop computer in the living room with the screen facing the couch. No laptops and no smartphones. And be near the computer every second your kid is home. Not feasible, right?
W/r/t cursing. Once a kid works up the nerve to say ish in front of their friends, they might not curse around you, but they're going to curse, and the world will not end.
I got lucky in the booze department because my son and his friends were a bunch of nerds. The kids came to my house to play video games. I played with them, I talked with them, and one of them came out to me as gay - it was a trial run to see how an adult would react. It was an honor to have his trust.
I write all this to say that they respected me because I respected *them*. I told my son that if he's ever impaired or can't get home because his ride is impaired, CALL ME! I will pick him up, no questions asked until the next day. I told him that there isn't anything that he will do that I haven't done or that someone I know hasn't done, and part of my job is getting him out of a fix. That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences, but tell me what's going on before it gets out of hand so we can deal with it.
Sometimes I received TMI that lead to me saying, "Why did you think that xxxxxxxxx behind the library by a girl you kind of like but your best friend *really* likes was a good idea?" Throw in her best friend liking my son, and I was like, "Dude. Of *course* everyone is angry with you. And I'd rather you not get arrested behind the damn library!" But that was the deal we had. The situation was spiraling; we worked it out.
His behavior was completely out of my control. If a kid is cool with the punishment, they'll do whatever they want from the time they learn how to lie. Luckily, my kid thought I could read his mind, so he told on himself. All I could do was tell my son why I thought something was a bad idea, what will likely happen if he did it, and what I'd likely do when I found out.
We talked about porn a lot. I mean blue in the face a lot. [Insert testicles joke HERE] You know what I realized? There is nothing I could do about it except tell him why I didn't want him to see it. I told him about some of the horrific things he might find, and that I was afraid he'd find them, and those images would never leave his mind. I told him what was completely off limits and worthy of me trashing his computer. We talked about people involved in sex trade and that he must keep in mind that those are human beings he's watching. We talked about how it's natural to be interested and curious about sex and all things verboten and adult, but that he had to be careful. And then he told me he was watching cartoons for Pete's sake.
We didn't talk about right and wrong. He had a firm grip on that. We talked about reality. He learned from me, and I learned from him. We're still learning, and he's 24.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2014 02:01AM by Beth.