A Teen Behaviour Post that all parents should read.
We would like to share a story of knowledge and education, especially for us (D1(myself) and D2) as first time parents for those teenage years, and more specifically, the transition into the first year and beyond of secondary schooling, for our child, J1. This is intended to share knowledge and insight, so that someone else may be able to Watch Out For Your Teen Behaviour.
A Brief Introduction.
For us here in Queensland, Australia, the move into year 7 last year involved handing over an M1 Macbook Air (or a laptop reaching similar abilities), to our child for the purposes of their education. We could have been supplied one by the school at a nominal fee, we however chose to go the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) route instead.
Also for the purposes of their independence, and to allow communication between J1 and Us, and also the friends, we supplied a Samsung mobile phone. This was politely given to us for this purpose from a close relative with a heart of gold.
This was on top of the access to his own ipad which he has been able to use since before he was 2.
We have other rules also for the ipads, etc, such as not during school weeks, only a certain amount of time maximum per day, completed chores, and things like that.
Setting up the Contract and Boundaries.
D2 and myself created up a contract for J1, in relation to the technology. We went through every single line of it with him, and sat there to explain everything, as simply as possible, and to a level understood by J1. We know it was absorbed cleanly, as this kid is a superhero with reading stuff, and being able to spit it back in your face 10 years later, word for word. He can tell you about books that haven’t been touched by him for ages and about conversations had years prior, and this is becoming very apparent as we see his interactions with the twins, J3 and J4.
Back to the unfolding story..
This contract (linked HERE), which I will also post in this story for any future ideas from other parents (without any personally identifiable information of course!), was very clear, with all the added verbal explanations, from Our point of view. We had it on lockdown – or so we thought..
Anyway, J1 had commenced the first year of high school and all was seemingly going great. He had make plenty of new friends, grown stronger with some of his old mates from that awkward year 6 time, and just generally been great at adapting. His grades were good and consistent, and his teachers spoke highly of him at the couple of parent/teacher interviews we attended.
Noticing Change and the checks We started.
We are not certain when it started, but somewhere in the early 2nd half of the year, there was more attention paid to the grumpy morning boy who seemingly couldn’t ever get enough sleep.
On top of that, the devices never seemingly needed to be charged as often. (As a rule, and as part of the contract, they were to be charged in the parents main area, as also applies to the ipads for all of our J clan)
We felt that maybe it was time that we had a look into the matter. After all, we did put it into his contract regarding our ability to do checks of this nature.
So the searches began..
Uncovered during this time, was lots of attempts at downloading Windows based installers for games, vast amounts of late night Youtube videos of bug wars, a large amount of online game histories, and lots of anime porn.
On top of this, were the hidden games disguised (renamed by J1) to resemble innocent sounding files – “School”, and “Stuff”, among others.
Also was the deleted items. Files of various natures simply disposed of into the Trash.
Effectively, nearly all of the contract rules were broken.
..denial – Part 1.
So he was shown what we had found. Initially, there was complete denial. The excuses like, “I don’t know how that got there”, and, “I don’t even know what that is” flooded at us. Finally, after much explanation that searches for specific items yield specific results, and the browser and computer logs showing it had indeed been done whilst the device was in his possession, we were able to obtain the actual truth.
For all of this, we then commenced active blocking of games sites, and anything else we could think of via the modem. I will supply this list in this post (linked HERE). We also put into effect more strict rules. The laptop and phone was to be handed back to us at the end of each school day, and we started to properly implement the services of the Family Link apps.
Now we were back on course.
With a head full of knowledge on how that sort of stuff, including the blatant lying, can affect the lives of not just him, but also us, as parents, and as a family, we settled back into the proper routines of school and home life.
Ears pricked to alertness.
It was around September I think, when we received a call from the deputy principal of the school..
We were informed that our child quite possibly had video footage of a fight that had occurred on the school grounds. A meeting was set up with Us, J1, and the deputy principal present.
It was then, that we were informed, of a much more serious situation that our child had become entangled in.
It seems that him and his girlfriend had been exchanging nudie pix, and her grandma had seen them and called the school. With the texts that we were shown, it was most certainly a two sided event, even though it was only the multiple sentence responses that we were shown. All of the girls texts had been deleted out of the conversation, presumably by herself or her grandmother, presumably to proclaim innocence. She was a grade above J1, but they are both under the age of consent in the eyes of the law, so those pictures exchanged were indeed child porn. With the phone account in D2’s name, needless to say, we were very highly concerned about the matter.
So we confiscated the phone. And we went through it. Sure enough, our boy had sort of saved himself a little by saving a couple of the pictures he was sent. So it wasn’t just him sending explicit images, it was both of them. But at the same time, he had also used his own shovel to dig his own grave by deleting all of the conversations with the girlfriend. And the ones between his mates, most of them were trashed too.
Massive Information Loading.
When he got home from school that day, there was a very big talk about this entire situation, from the initial video recording of the fight (which in reality was just a hug and scuffle between 2 of his mates), right up to the reason for the meeting with the deputy principal. For starters, he had broken our contract again.
Then there was the fact that both of them had been distributing child porn, because essentially, in the eyes of the law, that is what it is.
He was made very aware that there was still a very real possibility of the police coming to talk to him about the matter, and also it would likely affect D2, as she is the owner of the account of the phone. For an adult, these things usually lead to jail time, even if it isn’t physically in the adults possession, it is still in the possession of an account that the adult is responsible for. Then there was the talks of the Sex Offender Registry, where it would likely be that we would each end up on there for something as simple as this. The full consequences of what this would mean for him as he approached young adulthood and beyond was also explained.
Drastic Measures
Then came the punishment. We didn’t want anything like this, so that phone was deleted, scrubbed, deleted, and scrubbed again, and then it was set up as a “dumb phone”. No camera, no access to google searches or anything like that, no ability to save or view images or videos, you name it, we removed it. All it can do, even to this day, is make phone calls. Oh, and the calculator still works. And if necessary, at any moment, we can lock the phone completely via the Family Link app. If he comes to us asking for permission for a specific image or file we are able to approve or deny it with relative ease.
During the remainder of the school term, J1 did not have a phone. Nor for most of the end of year holidays. For such a serious breach of our trust, again, there had to be very firm consequences. In a way, it was his jail time.
As for the outcome, thankfully, neither the grandmother, the police, nor the school took any further action. It was all dealt with in a sensible manner, because as with everything, there is always two sides to the story.
That is the main lesson to learn I guess. Once you get through all the initial lies and explanations, the truth does come out. And it is important that they learn to trust what you as parents do with the truth. Be firm, but be fair. This is especially true for households that contain multiple children.
Preparing For The Future
Going into a new school year, we have had numerous more conversations about things like this, and have also had our sex talk with him. The one that involves respecting people and their bodies, especially your own. We also made it extremely clear, that although we have supplied an entire box of them for him, there really is no need to go out and rush into anything where he will need them, but we have made it known to him that he has a box of condoms available for him. They have a super long expiry date, so like we said, no rush.
Putting our trust in him, is also him putting his trust in Us.
..Watch Out For Your Teen Behaviour..
Uh Oh!
As an update after the first school week, the unimaginable happened..
I was initiating some updates for the macbook on sunday evening after all of the Jays had been put to bed and noticed that there was a game installer (Minecraft Education) still mounted on the device. I know it wasn’t there prior to this, as the previous weekend i had also been performing updates to get it ready for the new school year.
Anyway, J1 was queried as to why it was there, and sure enough, I had left it in the downloads last year. He had just tried installing it, even regardless of the “No Games” policy.
I opened the Safari History in his account, and all these sites were visible in the account. Multiple games sites, numerous ‘Chat with..” AI chatbot pages, and also, you guessed it, porn of varying natures. Oh, and there was also the new email accounts he had created..
This kid was immediately woken up and kicked out of bed, and asked to explain his actions.
He didn’t have access to the laptop on the days in question, as they were the weekend days. He was however, able to use his ipad during these times. And that was what he had been doing.. hiding out in his room looking up all of this garbage.
Fortunately his devices are on the same account, and sync. And he does not have account privileges to delete any of the information from any of the devices.
Small Truths
When asked as to what he was doing, he did admit to doing the wrong thing. When asked why, especially due to all the recent happenings and talks we had just recently had, his answer was that he didn’t know why, but he was disgusted with it. We queried him if that was the case on every occasion, and yes, he apparently was. When asked why he kept on doing it then, his response was that he didn’t know.
So we started asking him about his awareness of the dangers of (ab)using devices and technology as a whole. About how it can endanger our entire family, and things like that.
His demonstrations of his awareness was… unsettling for want of a better word..
Whilst he does know about things that could happen, there seemed to be a little bit of an “I don’t care” or “immunity” response about it. Take for example, Us pointing out that all of his younger siblings are in almost the same area as him when he was doing all of this stuff. His response was that they were not in the same room as him at the time.
More Groundwork and Punishments
Once we were almost done with our conversation with him, the talk was steered towards punishment.
So now he gets to commence, for the foreseeable future, his punishments.
This includes the phone, macbook, and ipad.
He has been completely banned from using ipads for a long time. And when he is finally allowed to use them again, it will only ever be under direct supervision. No more hiding out in his room with it. That will be a permanent thing..
Also, will be only very limited internet access. We understand that it is needed for the purposes of school and hobby research, and that is all that will be allowed. There will be no video sites accessible without permissions being granted, no access to those AI chatbots, and there will be daily checks, whenever it is used.
The phone will need to be handed back to us again at the end of each school day, and of a weekend, it will not be in his possession. He will be allowed to check it and respond a few times a day, but that is all.
The macbook is only for school, and it too will be handed back to us each and every day. It can get packed for school, along with the phone, of a morning as we are walking out the door to take them there.
Also off the table are things like sleepovers with mates and all of that stuff.
And there will be lots more outside time, both during the day and also the evening, each and every single day moving forward.
Parental Guidance Thoughts
D2 and myself had a bit of a chat about it after we sent him back off to bed.
More so, what we could try to get him back on the right track again. We have established some ideas of erotic novels, and maybe even some super softcore adult oriented magazines.
He will even need to read any and all articles we find that involve discussions regarding pornography addictions.
It is completely normal to have desires, and in fact, it is encouraged. When it is of a clean and acceptable nature.
However, when it crosses a line to endanger and potentially expose the younger ones to it, well before their time, something drastic has to be done.
And there is no need at all for a soon to be teenager seeking out porn online of any nature, nor for them to enter into any adult oriented chats or activities.
Its a long way back to the top..
..Watch Out For Your Teen Behaviour..
As a sidenote, here is the extra information we are providing.
THE CONTRACT:
First Mobile Device Contract
I, _(insert child name)_, understand that using these mobile devices (phone, ipad, laptop) is a privilege, not a right. In order to be permitted to enjoy this privilege, I agree to the following:
I Understand..
[_] The devices belong to my parents, they are not mine. And they may take it away or look at it at anytime.
[_] My parents are trusting me to be responsible and look after the devices to the best of my abilities, trying my best not to lose or break any of them.
[_] There are restrictions in place on the devices and lock out times are between 9pm and 6am on school nights.
[_] There may be adjustments made to this agreement as needed, while we all learn and adjust to child device usage.
These will be noted down as new information points under the appropriate section, and all parties will be informed.
I will..
[_] Keep the devices charged.
[_] Share my chosen passwords with my parents.
[_] Use the devices in a responsible manner.
[_] Answer when my parents call or text. If I miss their call, I will call them back as soon as I discover they have tried to contact me.
[_] Ask before downloading apps or games.
[_] Notify my parents IMMEDIATELY if I receive or discover anything inappropriate.
I will not..
[_] Delete, or attempt to delete, anything on the devices.
[_] Use devices during family meals.
[_] Participate in bullying or rude behaviour, or use unkind language. If I wouldn’t say it in person I will not send it.
[_] Use any of the devices to take inappropriate photos or videos of myself or others. This includes anything you’d be embarrassed to show your parents, grandparents, or teachers.
[_] Use the phone during school, unless needing to contact a parent. The phone is to remain in the schoolbag on silent or vibrate mode only.
[_] Complain if my parents ask to see the phone.
[_] Adjust any settings without permission.
[_] Share my number with strangers.
[_] Answer or respond to texts or calls from unknown numbers. And I will let my parents know if any unknown numbers do attempt to contact me.
[_] Bug my parents to put games on the devices.
_______________________________________________
Child’s signature
_______________________________________________
Mum’s signature
_______________________________________________
Dad’s signature
______________________________
Date
Blocked Websites:
Games related sites (more will be added as we research them):
- addictinggames.com
- agame.com
- aiwigame.com
- arkadium.com
- asia.wargaming.net
- craftnite.io
- crazygames.com
- fog.com
- freegames.org
- freeonlinegames.com
- gamaverse.com
- gamearter.com
- games.aarp.org
- gamesgames.com
- kirka.io
- kizi.com
- klook.com
- lagged.com
- new.gg
- parade.com
- playbelline.com
- poki.com
- shellshock.io
- shellshockerss.co
- twoplayergames.org
- ufreegames.com
- wargamer.com
- warthunder.com
- wellgames.com
- worldofwarplanes.com
- worldofwarships.asia
- yad.com
- yandex.com
Other blocked sites (more will be added as we research them):
- youtube.com (direct supervision only)
- talkie-ai.com