31–40 of 81 posts
I really liked the clause about no porn. If this mom wants to run her family with Victorian-era iron fist then by all means but trying to stop a 13 year old boy from getting access to porn in 2013 is laughable.
In the USA, it's illegal for a porn site to show him porn until he's 18 anyway.
I want to admit up front that I am not a parent, nor am I a teenager -- I'm just a twenty-something caught between the two age groups. When I wanted something when I was young, my parents treated me somewhat like an adult -- if I wanted something, I had to either save up money for it, or ask for it on special occasions (birthday, Christmas, etc). If I owned it, they also respected my ownership/privacy over it. Becaus…
With a list like this I would hope that the kid wises up soon and forgoes the device. It's not worth the pain that's going to come when an inside joke via text is seen by mom and all hell breaks loose. Greg is going to have to set some of his own boundaries as he goes into High School, they will be more valuable than an iPhone ever will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it was in the UK it'd never happen anyway, unless the kid buys fake ID and sends the info to the network to enable adult content. "You must not use this phone to falsely identify yourself as an 18 year old."
Depends what network you are on. I'm on 3 and you have to opt in to the filter, it is not enabled by default on contracts.
There are too many parents in the world today, who give their kids a new cell phone and keys to a car and turn them lose in the world without any sort of guidance.
Most of these rules just seem common sense (manners, self-respect, etc.), but they need to be observed and passed down. Some of these rules are good for adults as well as children (don't live life glued to a screen). A couple of them expand the responsibility and trust between a parent and child, and provide a system of checks and balances (trust but verify).
The only 2 that I would state differently are 4 & 5. If you trust your child with the phone, also trust that he or she will be responsible enough to respect time (or location) limits (not only that, but as holders of the account, you could see whether the device was used after certain times for certain activities).
I know I see things differently, because I am a parent. And I hate to use this phrase, but "my house, my rules". That doesn't give my wife or I the right to be dictators, and we aren't, but it is our right to have certain rules and expectations for our children. We impose rules based on values we think are important (manners, self-respect, respect for others, etc.), and when our kids move out then they can decide what values they think are important. Kids (esp our 5-yr-old) don't have to like the rules, but they do have to follow them.
I really liked the clause about no porn. If this mom wants to run her family with Victorian-era iron fist then by all means but trying to stop a 13 year old boy from getting access to porn in 2013 is laughable.
In the USA, it's illegal for a porn site to show him porn until he's 18 anyway.
Reductio ad absurdum also works well, for particulary stupid rules.
This seems a little harsh to me. Everyone takes their phones to school. Everyone sends texts at school. The ship has sailed. If you're the one without the phone, you're the weirdo that nobody will talk to. This mom should have gotten her son a leash instead. Then at least the power play would have been obvious to everyone.
"No porn." Thanks mom! I'm mortified for the kid.
Our society is set up in such a way that porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. Heaven help us if they do censor the net.
He probably thought he'd get to play Angry Birds under his superman blanket. (Remember reading comics with a flashlight?) Instead he got an obligation and an emasculating letter. "Don't say anything you wouldn't say in public" probably would have sufficed. He can't even throw it under a bus for what it represents, because it isn't his. It's hers, and she's loaned it to him... :\
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA, it's illegal for a porn site to show him porn until he's 18 anyway.
And how on Earth is this rule enforced? I'm genuinely curious. Even if it's something like asking for SSN if IP addresses s from US, it would be bypassed easily by a simple proxy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I learned a different way. My parents were neither super open nor super repressive. Instead, I had a good system where my cousins would guide me by sitting down with me and talking through whatever was going on at the time. It taught me the right ways to behave but more importantly, I reached these conclusions through my own reasoning with guidance when I felt I needed it. These rules are pretty silly and disrespectf…
Which is pretty justified, in my experience. There's a reason 13-year-olds are called "minors"; most of them are not yet mature enough to make good decisions on their own, so guidance is necessary. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but the mother certainly knows her child better than you or I do.