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This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

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Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#51

Post by cheald »

tikhonj wrote: post #15

Maybe it's just me, but I've always found rules this explicit in anything but a formal setting distasteful, regardless of how reasonable the rules are. This is one of the main things that pushed me out of university housing after freshman year. Rules everywhere, for everything! My favorite living and working conditions are those where there are no rules simply because they aren't necessary--a very productive sort of…

The difference being that startups are populated by mature and self-responsible adults, not 13-year-olds in the middle of getting their asses kicked by puberty.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#52

Post by onetwothreefour »

sp332 wrote: post #21
Xero wrote: post #9

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.

LOL.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#53

Post by jlgreco »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #38
wib wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No porn." Thanks mom! I'm mortified for the kid.

Boy, am I glad my Mom didn't have a "no porn rule." I'd have been really confused about my body and people's behaviours. (I also would have been in a totally different field; turns out optimizing a 386 for fast porn teaches you everything you'll need for your career.) I might have even turned to religion. 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…

I agree, though I think a "no porn" rule is just as likely to backfire on a parent by driving a child away from religion. When religion is just that thing that forbids doing things that you don't want to do anyway (murder, steal, build a cow out of gold in your backyard, etc) it is easy to never bother putting any thought into it one way or the other. But when you tell a teenage boy that his biologically hardwired desires are evil... there is a good chance that kid is going to start wondering what exactly the purpose of that rule is and how relevant it is to his own life.

It could go either way I think, but it is a very polarising thing to impose on a young adult.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#54

Post by dhimes »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
sp332 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn never came up in a conversation with your parents? I don't mean on a regular basis but... even once?

Not really. My parents knew that regardless of any rules or restrictions they would place on me, I'd find a way around them and watch porn anyway. So the subject was never brought up.

My father had equally pragmatic rules about alcohol and drugs. He made sure I was educated about the effects of drugs. He made sure that I knew that my mind was pretty awesome and putting it at risk is stupid. (He also knew that kids do such things- but try to be smart about it.) He told me my grades had to stay up and I couldn't lose my job. And he said that if the police came to the house and knew my name- if I was somehow involved enough in something and didn't have sense enough to get away- I would lose all of my freedom. Guilty or not. And if he ever caught me driving under the influence- the same.

I had a lot of freedom, and I made some mistakes, but overall it worked out.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#55

Post by cheald »

sp332 wrote: post #47
vy8vWJlco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy, am I glad my Mom didn't have a "no porn rule." I'd have been really confused about my body and people's behaviours. (I also would have been in a totally different field; turns out optimizing a 386 for fast porn teaches you everything you'll need for your career.) I might have even turned to religion. 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…

porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. I'm not exactly an expert at either porn or in-the-flesh sex but... I've always been given to understand that they are quite different.

Relying on porn to teach kids about sex is about as reasonable as relying on the Twilight movies to teach them about how to have healthy relationships.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#56

Post by GuiA »

sp332 wrote: post #47
vy8vWJlco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy, am I glad my Mom didn't have a "no porn rule." I'd have been really confused about my body and people's behaviours. (I also would have been in a totally different field; turns out optimizing a 386 for fast porn teaches you everything you'll need for your career.) I might have even turned to religion. 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…

porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. I'm not exactly an expert at either porn or in-the-flesh sex but... I've always been given to understand that they are quite different.

Porn is vast. You can find videos of pornstars exaggeratingly copulating, like you can find amateur videos of two 20-somethings having perfectly regular sex.

Both, if seeked out by the teenager, are a subset of a perfectly healthy sex-education (much more so than the very politically correct discourse that passes for sex-ed in the US these days).

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#57

Post by sp332 »

GuiA wrote: post #56
sp332 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. I'm not exactly an expert at either porn or in-the-flesh sex but... I've always been given to understand that they are quite different.

Porn is vast. You can find videos of pornstars exaggeratingly copulating, like you can find amateur videos of two 20-somethings having perfectly regular sex. Both, if seeked out by the teenager, are a subset of a perfectly healthy sex-education (much more so than the very politically correct discourse that passes for sex-ed in the US these days).

But how would an uninitiated teen know which ones are exaggerated and which are "regular"? It seems like watching porn would,not be,as stimulating as real sex, so people would seek out exaggerated videos which are not as, um, "educational".

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#58

Post by awakeasleep »

JohnsonB wrote: post #28

This is not the way to teach a kid responsibility, with a list of seemingly (to a 13 year old) arbitrary and draconian set of rules. Let the kid save up his own money, buy the phone in person, and be responsible for it. That's exactly how it works in the adult world and fits perfectly in this situation, seems like a fitting way to teach responsibility. This mom just seems like a self-aggrandizing control freak.

It will teach the son how to live outside a set of rules while representing himself as abiding by them, though. And that is an essential part of life in any civilized society.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#59

Post by enraged_camel »

dhimes wrote: post #54
enraged_camel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. My parents knew that regardless of any rules or restrictions they would place on me, I'd find a way around them and watch porn anyway. So the subject was never brought up.

My father had equally pragmatic rules about alcohol and drugs. He made sure I was educated about the effects of drugs. He made sure that I knew that my mind was pretty awesome and putting it at risk is stupid. (He also knew that kids do such things- but try to be smart about it.) He told me my grades had to stay up and I couldn't lose my job. And he said that if the police came to the house and knew my name- if I was…

I think that's a really good model for educating the kid, because it's actually a representation of how society at large works. We have lots of freedom, but if we abuse that freedom then we lose it. Driving licenses can be suspended or revoked for breaking traffic rules, hefty fines can be charged for misdemeanors, the individual can be imprisoned for more serious crimes, etc. Props to your dad.

Re: This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone

#60

Post by kristm »

cheald wrote: post #49

A 13-year-old is not an adult. The fact that the mom is giving her 13-year-old a $600 piece of hardware at all obviously means that she trusts him with some degree of responsibility. An internet-connected pocket computer is a very powerful device, and it'd be ridiculously irresponsible of her to not set out some kind of guidelines that helps to ensure that he uses it responsibly and "inside the rules". It's called pa…

I don't think that the people who commented above are "armchair parenting." They're speaking in the position of the 13 year old kid. And we are all definitely qualified to pass judgement as a 'teenage' version of ourselves.

'A 13-year old is not an adult.'

- This probably varies per culture. My personal opinion is, if you treat someone as an adult, they will behave like an adult. If you treat them as a kid, they will act as a kid.

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