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Comment by sathackr | Hacker News Reader

Trust. But verify.

Step-father of a 12 year old boy here.

We started monitoring his internet after we caught him looking at inappropriate videos on youtube.

He knows he is being monitored and I only block actual porn sites. Neither of us like it but until he has earned our trust back, the situation will not change.

I'm his parent, not his friend. My job isn't to make him like me, it's to raise him with proper values and protect him from the dangers he doesn't yet know exist or may not yet understand.

If I do it right, he will thank me later.

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When I was 15, I discovered Usenet and the various binaries subgroups. This was beyond what my folks understood was on the PC. Your son will access content beyond your current understanding as well. Additionally, you might have a monitor on the PCs you own, but you don't have a monitor on his friends PCs either. The monitoring game is already lost. You indicate a loss of trust, but it goes both ways. There's absolutely no way he's going to tell you anything now that you've dealt the monitoring card. He's not going to thank you in the future. He's simply not going to say anything about it.

I disagree, as we are not doing anything sneaky. He is well aware of it and it actually was his suggestion.

I often ask him for advice on how he things I should handle a situation, and after reasoning things out, he usually comes to the same or a similar conclusion as me.

He has impulse control issues, and while he needs to learn to control them, he also needs to be protected from any significant harm as a result. I'm okay if he gets burned because he touched the stove after I said it was hot. Some things he needs to learn the hard way.

I'm not okay with him getting 3rd degree burns because he was playing with a lighter and accidentally set his clothes on fire.

When I was growing up, I delighted in breaking all of the layers of security my parents loaded up the computers in the house with. I never relented when they tried to block something and they only escalated things, including physically locking away electronics (which also didn't work, I learned how to pick locks and gained access to electronics in other ways), then even further escalations ensued. The main effect of this was not that I couldn't access content they didn't like, but that our relationship soured to the point where I moved out two days after turning 18 and none of us spoke for a few years.

Blocking things will only encourage your son to try harder to get at them and to become more secretive with you, and will have lasting damage on your relationship, especially if you double down when he inevitably works around your blocks. You cannot control him, and he is not yours to control. Remember, your son is an entirely independent person who is growing up much faster than you realize.

Your story saddened me to read. Reminded me of one of my favorite poems:

  Your children are not your children.
  They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
  They come through you but not from you.
  And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

  You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
  For they have their own thoughts.
  You may house their bodies but not their souls,
  For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which
     you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make
     them like you.

My intent is protection, not control.

Each situation is different. Even though things turned out the way they did for you, can you say they would have been different if they had just allowed you to blatantly disregard their rules? Can you say with certainty that none of the stuff they blocked that you accessed regardless did not harm you? Could they have had the foresight to know for sure if you would or would not have been harmed?

I won't get into a discussion on whether things such as nudity or pornography are truly harmful, that's a can of worms. But they are not accepted in the society we live in, and my son has to be able to function in that society, with its rules, controls, and monitors. We have collectively decided on these and I would be failing as a parent if I didn't try to give my child the tools to function in this environment.

Would you care to elaborate on these things that your parents didn't like that were blocked? Did they explain to you and try to get you to understand why they didn't like them? And why you didn't respect them enough to abide by their rules(not saying that you should have respected them, they may have not deserved it)? It sounds like there may have been some deeper issues there.

>Could they have had the foresight to know for sure if you would or would not have been harmed?

There are endless things in this world that can harm your child. It's natural to be scared of these things, but folly to try and address them all. Each one you address adds another layer of restrictions to your child's psyche, but barely moves the dail on how dangerous this world is. The tradeoff is steep.

>I didn't try to give my child the tools to function in this environment

You didn't give your kid the tools to function around pornography, you did the opposite. You futily attempted to remove pornography from the equation entirely without giving your kid any tools with which to face it. He will seek it out and he will find it, you've only made that fact certain. Only now, you have become the adversary, and when your son does seek these things out he won't ask you for help in understanding them for fear of retribution for breaking your rules.

Remember this axiom: you cannot stop your kid from viewing this content. He is smarter than you. If you cannot block this content but try to anyway, all you're left with is the negative effects.

>can you say they would have been different if they had just allowed you to blatantly disregard their rules?

You don't respect your child's autonomy by setting these rules. You can make endless excuses for your rules being just, but step into your son's shoes. "Dad says 'my house, my rules' but it's not like I can move out." What is your kid's recourse in this situation? Again, if you think your filters are effective you're delusional. All you do is disrespect your child by doing this.

>Would you care to elaborate on these things that your parents didn't like that were blocked? Did they explain to you and try to get you to understand why they didn't like them? And why you didn't respect them enough to abide by their rules(not saying that you should have respected them, they may have not deserved it)? It sounds like there may have been some deeper issues there.

I would be happy to discuss this privately, my email is in my profile.

And making things forbidden won't encourage a 12 year old to find a way to get to it anyway? The hormonal boy will just say "porn is blocked here, I won't look at titties until my parents says it's ok"?

It rather works the exact opposite way, teenagers are way more likely to find disallowed things interesting.

So you're saying I should just let my 12 year old do as he pleases?

Just remove all of the rules? No rules, no consequences.

Sounds like a great idea.

Unfortunately real life doesn't work that way. I agree, the best way to make sure a 12 year old boy does something, is to tell him not to do it. Hell, that's about the best way to get me to do something.

But that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a rule with consequences. That's how our society works and he has to learn how to function in it.

I always give him explanations for each rule we have. He's free to ask any questions and I will do my best to get him to understand. He's free to disagree but he is not free to break rules we have set. Many of the rules he has were his idea as a result of a conversation with him asking him what he thinks we should do about a situation.

Is blocking it more because you don't want to think about him looking at it, or because you actually think he will be damaged by looking at it? I'm sure I found porn at age 12 (now 30). Did you not?

I have no problems thinking about him viewing it. Maybe because he is my stepson? I do not seem to have the typical aversion that causes most parents to prefer to just put on blindfolds and pretend their child isn't growing up.

I don't feel its appropriate. I certainly found porn when I was about that age(actually a bit younger) and feel like it had a negative impact on me in general.

> protect him from the dangers he doesn't yet know exist or may not yet understand

This is the big one for me. My job is not primarily to protect my children, it's to prepare them to be functioning adults. To that end, I protect them from dangers that they're not yet ready to face, while teaching them skills to recognize and handle the dangers eventually.

Have you discussed pornography with your stepson? If you haven't seen it already, https://fightthenewdrug.org/ is a good resource.

Absolutely, we've had several discussions about it, mostly surrounding the unrealistic expectations of women and sex in general that it promotes and its effect on emotional development of your brain.

It does no good to tell someone they can't do something without explaining why. I encourage him to ask questions when he doesn't understand something, and will never give "because I said so" as an answer.

My goal is for him to understand why these things are harmful while protecting him from them until he has the facilities to manage it on his own.

Just like a bike with training wheels. Teaching him to ride while protecting him from falling, until he can ride on his own.

"Inappropriate videos on youtube", like what?

I'm envisioning the breast exam from "Office Space". "Hey Peter, check it out, channel 9!"

I'm not going to give every example but a couple were some excerpts from Saw, some animated FNoF skits that I felt taught the wrong values. Some with some inappropriate sexual content. (As in sibling comment, I won't delve into the morality of sex. We could be here all day discussing that)

> Trust. But verify.

Give it as a gift. But sell it.

AKA, you are contradicting yourself.

> We started monitoring his internet after we caught him looking at inappropriate videos on youtube.

Yeah, that's a great move. You are uncomfortable with something, so you limit his freedom to perceive it. That's going to lead to a great relationship where he will trust you with real problems in the future.

> Neither of us like it but until he has earned our trust back, the situation will not change.

The thing is, you won't earn his trust back unless you stop that bullshit.

> My job isn't to make him like me, it's to raise him with proper values and protect him from the dangers he doesn't yet know exist or may not yet understand.

You being uncomfortable is not a danger to him, it's a danger to you, and you are abusing him to help yourself.

> If I do it right, he will thank me later.

Problem is, you aren't doing it right, and he certainly won't thank you later, at least not for that. He will keep a distance to you and avoid you for advice because you make him solve your problems, so you are not a reliable source of advice in his interest.

FWIW I did not downvote you.

I welcome criticism as it often helps adjust perceptions and behaviors.

It has nothing to do with what I'm comfortable with him seeing. As a parent I try to instill my perception of good values in my child, while allowing him to develop his own take on them. Everyone's values are different and what I value, you may not. But there has to be a framework of rules and consequences and he has to learn to operate in that framework, preferably before he is an adult and consequences are things like fines and jail.

You've made an assumption that the issue here is my problem with being uncomfortable with something, which I feel is not an accurate assumption. The rest of your argument is based on that assumption.

I'd be happy to discuss the accuracy of this assumption, perhaps I can learn something.

> As a parent I try to instill my perception of good values in my child, while allowing him to develop his own take on them.

So ... how does that "developing his own take on them" work if you prevent him from perceiving the world?

> Everyone's values are different and what I value, you may not.

And equally, your child may not. There is a fine line between helping your child navigate the world and decide what they value and why and forcing them to adopt your values.

> But there has to be a framework of rules and consequences and he has to learn to operate in that framework

Actually, no, and that approach to understanding interactions with the world is toxic, as it is essentially learning to submit to authority, rather than learning to live as a citizen in a society among equals who share a space.

Rules and consequences should be the last line of defence for a society as far as preventing anti-social behaviour is concerned, not something that teaches you how to live. You learn to live by understanding how fairness works, how reciprocity works, how cooperation helps everyone achieve more, essentially by understanding how to make society work. Because that is the only way a citizen in a democratic society can be expected to participate in defining the rules and consequences that then are enforced as a last line of defence against the minority who would otherwise ruin it for everyone. In a democracy, the citizens have to make the rules. You cannot make the rules by following the rules.

Following rules is not a virtue. Behaving in a way that is in accordance with a possibly hypothetical fair and balanced set of rules is. But you can't learn that by being forced to obey a rule that you don't see as fair or balanced.

> You've made an assumption that the issue here is my problem with being uncomfortable with something, which I feel is not an accurate assumption. The rest of your argument is based on that assumption.

Well, yeah, it is somewhat of an assumption, but it still seems likely to me.

I mean, what is the value that you are trying to get your child to accept by limiting what he can look at on the internet, and is there anything besides porn that you try to prevent him from accessing?

> > As a parent I try to instill my perception of good values in my child, while allowing him to develop his own take on them. > So ... how does that "developing his own take on them" work if you prevent him from perceiving the world? I only prevent him from perceiving what I feel is the most harmful parts of the world to an undeveloped mind. I solicit his input, and my reliance on that will increase as his maturity does. I wouldn't ask a 3 year old if they felt they should watch porn. But have asked my 12 year old that. And them for him to explain his answer.

>> Everyone's values are different and what I value, you may not.

>And equally, your child may not. There is a fine line between helping your child navigate the world and decide what they value and why and forcing them to adopt your values.

Agreed. One the many fine lines a good parent has to toe.

> > But there has to be a framework of rules and consequences and he has to learn to operate in that framework

> Actually, no, and that approach to understanding interactions with the world is toxic, as it is essentially learning to submit to authority, rather than learning to live as a citizen in a society among equals who share a space.

A valid point, but only if my execution was in a manner to be repressive or authoritarian. I don't use the 'my house, my rules' approach. I use the 'lets sit down and discuss this' approach. When he was younger I would always kneel down so that we were at eye-level with each other.

Mutual respect should be the driving principal for all behavior. I teach the 'Platinum rule' -- Treat others the way they want to be treated.

I mostly agree with the rest of the post. To answer your last question: "...is there anything besides porn that you try to prevent him from accessing?" -- Sites tagged by Sophos as VPN, proxy, ad networks, and malware. VPN and proxy as they can make the porn filter ineffective. Ad networks and malware just for the general protection of the devices.

Well, that mostly sounds good ... except your actions seem to contradict your words?

From what I can tell, he wants to look at porn, and he thinks there is nothing wrong with it. Whatever the conclusion of your conversation with him was, he is obviously not convinced that he shouldn't, at best he ends up expressing agreement because he is dependent on you. The only reason why he now does it without you knowing and without any possibility of discussing with you when he sees something that disturbs him is that you force him to, not because he agrees with you. You say that you are not authoritarian, but your actions say the opposite. Either you are exercising power or you are not, whether you dress it up in nice words, doesn't change whether it is authoritarian.

Now, you constantly repeat that you want to protect him from danger, and I guess some of your authoritarian behaviour may hinge on that. After all, authoritarian action is somewhat justified if you know that without it, harm will follow. The problem is that based on what you have written here, you don't know that. You have referenced some extremely unscientific ideas and sources and shown some biases that suggest that you are not rationally evaluating the actual risks and dangers of your child's wishes and your authoritarian responses, but are probably more acting based on your own emotional response. The danger that you are imagining most likely isn't there, but the damage that you do by restricting your child in order to protect him from this imaginary danger is real, both in that it is damaging his trust in you, and in that you are making him internalize that his probably perfectly healthy sexual curiousity is a problem that he has to fight against.

delete because I meant to reply to sibling, not parent

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