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Having just finished the article, I have to strongly disagree with you, I think they did a great job parenting. Giving their son unrestricted access to pornogr

Having just finished the article, I have to strongly disagree with you, I think they did a great job parenting. Giving their son unrestricted access to pornography was a smart thing to do, especially considering, as explained in the article, he could get it either way. If your child is smart and educated about the potential dangers associated with online sex chatrooms and the like, there are only benefits to reap. Pornography does the world a load of good. In countries that are sexually liberal, and where sex is not as taboo as it is in other countries, the population has less sexual crime. The opposite is true of sexually repressive countries. Why this is so shouldn't be difficult to understand. Pornography gives sexually charged males an outlet, one that does not involve raping and abusing women. What matters most with respect to porn, is not whether someone has access to it, or even the sort of porn they watch, but their own character, which determines how they react to it. Or would you have preferred that they block his internet access (a futile endeavor as explained in the article), made him resent and rebel against his parents more, and forced him at the age of 9 to turn his sexual drive and impulses toward the underage girls around him? Turning off the porn doesn't turn off natural sexual urges, if anything, it ensures they're at the forefront of his consciousness. Any honest person with a penis can tell you that. For a child in his position, he turned out remarkably well. This should not be surprising considering the excellent parenting he received. They didn't give up on him, they home-schooled him and taught him well, and they gave him freedom to learn from his own mistakes: Alex took the therapist at his word and walked out of the office to go live with his girlfriend. He was 15. I reported the incident and the therapist to the Department of Human Services and called the police, who monitored Alex from the distance. Two-and-a-half difficult days passed before Alex returned home, his body language meek and his words—to me, at least—repentant. He barely spoke to his father. Down the road, Alex realized how blessed he was to have such great parents: A strict vegan, Alex had just apprised me of new research on latent carcinogens in poultry as well as the news that he was to receive the award for the university’s Outstanding Computer Science Student of 2010. Holding a corn chip midway to his mouth, he said, “I appreciate all that you do for me. I know I couldn’t have come this far without you.”

deleted 16y ago
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ams6110 16y ago
Letting a kid learn from his mistakes is one thing. But they did not educate him on the dangers of online chat rooms: they admit they had no idea what he was doing or looking at in his basement isolation. And letting the lice-infested homeless craigslist woman come live with them? I can't see any way to spin that as a good idea. "He's going to do it anyway" is a common rationalization among weak-willed parents who don't have the backbone to lay down the law.
- itistoday 16y ago
  they admit they had no idea what he was doing or looking at in his basement isolation. I can't say I blame them. The mother also admits she knew nothing about porn at all, and thought that he was looking at still pictures. This is not surprising considering his parents most likely grew up with exactly that, still pictures and perhaps VHS tapes, not the stuff we have today. Sure, they could have done a better job, but I maintain the route they took was better than killing off his access (which they actually tried to do, see the comment made by the dad after the story, they eventually realized it was futile, and I think they would have saved themselves a lot of heartache had they approached it intelligently from the start). And letting the lice-infested homeless craigslist woman come live with them? I can't see any way to spin that as a good idea. Well, another thing to consider is that a lot was left out from the story. It may very well be they didn't know how he found here. Again, from the comment made by the father: And then there is the matter of the homeless woman. Again, we did not simply let this happen. For months the police, the courts, and an entire team of medical professionals who were not mentioned in the story were involved. We all agreed, after months of agony, that the approach we finally took was the least of a multitude of evils. Everything that happened over this period of time, and with all of these people, is left out of the story, again, to save Alex embarrassment.
  - lotharbot 16y ago
    > "[stuff] is left out of the story, again, to save Alex embarrassment." Judging from many of the comments here, leaving out a lot of that stuff makes Alex and his parents come off looking worse than they probably were. The full details might be unnecessary, but mentioning the involvement of "police, courts, and medical professionals" in making the decision would have drastically improved my perception of the parents and the kid. The parents could have done a better job, but that's true of all parents. It's a difficult job involving a lot of judgment calls and a lot of mistakes. IMO the article would be greatly improved if they were more direct about those mistakes and about the struggles they went through in making those decisions. To put it another way: if my kid had that condition, I wouldn't ask for advice for the pushover-parents and out-of-control kid as described in the article, but I would ask for it from the hard-decision parents and struggling-but-eventually-grew-up kid as described in the comments.

deleted 16y ago

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ams6110 16y ago

Letting a kid learn from his mistakes is one thing. But they did not educate him on the dangers of online chat rooms: they admit they had no idea what he was doing or looking at in his basement isolation. And letting the lice-infested homeless craigslist woman come live with them? I can't see any way to spin that as a good idea. "He's going to do it anyway" is a common rationalization among weak-willed parents who don't have the backbone to lay down the law.

itistoday 16y ago
they admit they had no idea what he was doing or looking at in his basement isolation. I can't say I blame them. The mother also admits she knew nothing about porn at all, and thought that he was looking at still pictures. This is not surprising considering his parents most likely grew up with exactly that, still pictures and perhaps VHS tapes, not the stuff we have today. Sure, they could have done a better job, but I maintain the route they took was better than killing off his access (which they actually tried to do, see the comment made by the dad after the story, they eventually realized it was futile, and I think they would have saved themselves a lot of heartache had they approached it intelligently from the start). And letting the lice-infested homeless craigslist woman come live with them? I can't see any way to spin that as a good idea. Well, another thing to consider is that a lot was left out from the story. It may very well be they didn't know how he found here. Again, from the comment made by the father: And then there is the matter of the homeless woman. Again, we did not simply let this happen. For months the police, the courts, and an entire team of medical professionals who were not mentioned in the story were involved. We all agreed, after months of agony, that the approach we finally took was the least of a multitude of evils. Everything that happened over this period of time, and with all of these people, is left out of the story, again, to save Alex embarrassment.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  > "[stuff] is left out of the story, again, to save Alex embarrassment." Judging from many of the comments here, leaving out a lot of that stuff makes Alex and his parents come off looking worse than they probably were. The full details might be unnecessary, but mentioning the involvement of "police, courts, and medical professionals" in making the decision would have drastically improved my perception of the parents and the kid. The parents could have done a better job, but that's true of all parents. It's a difficult job involving a lot of judgment calls and a lot of mistakes. IMO the article would be greatly improved if they were more direct about those mistakes and about the struggles they went through in making those decisions. To put it another way: if my kid had that condition, I wouldn't ask for advice for the pushover-parents and out-of-control kid as described in the article, but I would ask for it from the hard-decision parents and struggling-but-eventually-grew-up kid as described in the comments.