My Child Would Never

[RoyGBiv]

Is this you? Have you ever begun a sentence with that phrase? If so, are you delusional?

This is half rant, half advice, but let me preface by saying I have a child. She is seventeen. I think the world of her. She's intelligent and wise for her age. She's graduating from high school a year early. She's received full scholarship offers (room and board) from several different colleges. She's been recruited by Ivy League universities, again with offers of scholarships. She's not pregnant. She's never been arrested. She's a good kid.

And I would never, ever, not for any reason ever say, "My child would never ..."

I know my child has drunk alcohol. I know she's smoked illicit substances. I suspect she's done other things of which I'm not aware. I also know she's seen porn. Do I approve of this? For the most part, no, I don't. I also know I can't stop it, and I know the only way I will have my opinion of her activities heard and considered is not to condemn her outright but to listen and then offer that opinion, which I do. Whether she abides by that opinion is another matter, not something I can control, but I will by reference repeat that she's a good kid for all the reasons stated above. I trust her, even in her mistakes, to make good decisions eventually.

I work for a cable company. My job is primarily one of "problem solver." That leads in all kinds of directions, but one of them is billing. One thing our cable company offers as programming is adult-themed movies (okay, porn, but not really porn because I live in one of those states in which only "hard-R" movies are allowed, which is to say "cable porn"). These movies are expensive, about $12 each, which is a subject in and of itself since you can drive from where I am about two hours south and purchase "real" porn, and the total cost of the trip plus one porn movie would be about half what the typical "cable porn" viewer spends per month on these movies. At least once a week I have someone come to me asking/complaining about charges for these movies. The claim they didn't order them. In those cases in which the person asking/complaining is obviously telling the truth about their own viewing habits, the question of whether they have teenagers invariably results in an answer of "yes" with an addendum, but "My Child Would Never ..."

So here's a clue. Yes, Your Child Would. Yes, Your Child Does. Fourteen year old boy who knows the default PIN code that you haven't bothered to change despite repeated attempts by employees of our company to suggest you do? Yeah, he ordered it. Yeah, he watched it. He did other things while he watched it. Girls are not immune. Don't ever even attempt to say, "But my child is a girl, she Would Never ..." Yes She Would.

Those who complain and demand "My Child Would Never" are also dominantly ultra-Christians. I know this because they tell me, not because I assume. "My child has been raised in a house of God, and 'My Child Would Never...'"

If you ever find yourself on the verge of saying this, stop. Think. Consider. You're wrong.

Now, having said all that, I will note that I have discovered instances in which the billing was wrong. The way these cable boxes work involves a periodic "polling" of the box to determine if PPV movies have been ordered and charges for them being added to a customer account. Some people have figured out how to order a movie, avoid being polled, and when they return their box, that box has stored a number of purchases that then are not cleared by the equipment warehouse. When the box is reissued, polling takes places, and a customer who never ordered a thing gets charged. Here's another hint. This is easy to see for a billing rep with any level of experience at all. I can tell you the day and time the movie was ordered, and I can tell you the day and time you started using the box. When the time of the purchase is prior to the time you were issued the box, the obvious conclusion is that the previous renter of that box rented the movies. I can also tell when someone goes on a wild chase and doesn't have a clue what it is they are really doing, or is just on a wild porn binge one night, such as when half a dozen (or more) of these movies are ordered all at once. Perhaps that was done intentionally by someone with too much time (ahem) on their hands. Perhaps not. Regardless, I'll credit those charges ... once ... without any further questions. I once credited an account for $700 worth of these movies because he a) seemed genuinely confused about the charges, b) admitted his kid might have done it, c) he allowed me to block access to these movies, and d) I willingly give credit to admitted mistakes.

That box been in your house six months? You have a teenage (or near teenage) child? You refuse to allow them to be blocked? Those movies all ordered from one box either when you weren't home or after your normal bedtime, which you already told me about even thought I didn't ask, as though that were "proof" that the movies weren't ordered? You start the discussion by screaming at me about cheating you? Don't even try it. Your Child Would.

And your child would drink and would smoke and do other drugs and would steal and would paint that obscene slogan on the side of the school gym. Stop being delusional.

[MoseyWalker]

1. my child

got drunk and smashed his car into a telephone pole. He hasn't had a drink or a toke since.

hmmmm. maybe I should have smashed into something a few years ago!

kids are, and will always be, kids. I worry about the ones who don't get into some kind of "small" trouble.

peace

[RoyGBiv]

2. Me too ...

I actually was more worried about my daughter before she got caught drinking a couple years ago. All hell came down upon her for that -- in an intelligent way, but still. However, I actually felt better knowing she had done something she wasn't supposed to be doing and got caught, felt better knowing that she wasn't so incredibly smart that she could go forever without being caught. The Perfect Child never is.

[MoseyWalker]

3. We were the perfect children!

now, if we could just get our kids to listen to us............

thanks for the post!

[Dangerously Amused]

4. Well written. As always.

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

5. Heh, I've had this conversation with other kids about their siblings. . .

"Well Johnny would NEVER. . ." Wanna fucking bet?
I just have to put my head in my hands and roll my eyes.

[Nikia]

6. I think even "good" teens and preteens are curious about porn and sex

My sister and I saw porn and watched with a few friends. We were all ages 10-14 and girls. Nothing happened and some of the girls swore that they would never have sex if that was what sex was really about. Maybe boys would react differently though.
On our senior class trip, I was in a room with girls who ordered a porn movie because the others had never seen porn. Some were interested in the lesbian scene because they hadn't been sure what lesbians did during sex. Like my younger experience, none of these girls started masterbating or having sex while watching the movie.
I don't really think young people watching porn because they are curious about it is really that unusual, even if the kids aren't having sex or using external stimulus to masterbate.

[Lyric]

7. When my son is a teenager

I have no doubts that he'll do a LOT of things that I'd never expect. Hell, I did. I was one of those "perfect" types--gifted program, honor student, never had a detention in my life, always had my nose in a book. I still sneaked a beer or two, a porn movie or two, and tried cigarettes. My parents would never have suspected it, either. I was the "good one", lol.

I do know this for sure--I'd rather know that my teenage son is watching a porn movie and satisfying his hormonal urges manually than to have him placating his hormones with unsafe sex in some parking lot. I have every intention of having a very frank talk with him about such things when he's 14. I'm even willing to buy him a movie or two, as part of a deal that means he won't be going out and putting himself into potentially dangerous and unhealthy situations.

I suppose some other parents might be appalled at that, but I'm not looking for society's approval. I just want to keep my kid safe and healthy. Sex is normal. Masturbation is normal. Getting rid of the shame and stigma of the latter very well might lead to less of the former, in teens.

[RoyGBiv]

8. The hell of it, from my perspective ...

...that being the perspective mentioned in the OP, is that I can't have a rational discussion with people and can't suggest anything approaching what you're saying, as wise as those words may be. All I can talk about are technical issues and billing issues. I can't suggest that sexual curiosity is rather normal for teenagers and that it's not an indictment of one's morality for that curiosity to have manifested itself in such a way, or anything of the sort. At the same time, the other person is doing nothing but accusing and denying and talking about everything but the technical and billing issue. The entire interaction is one between people speaking from two completely separate frames of reference, theirs a moral one at its base, mine technological and financial and absent any true moral component. That creates a barrier through which actual communication is impossible. I would like nothing better than to start these discussions with something like, "Yes, I understand. This happens all the time. Little Sally or Johnnie got curious and did something without your permission. No problem. I'll credit that from your account and help you block those movies from showing up in the future," but it never goes that way because that's an "accusation" on my part, and I can't do that. The other person has to admit at least the possibility of responsibility before we can get to that next step, and it rarely does, because My Child Would Never ...

The point of my mentioning that is related to the point you made in your last sentence. Various aspects of our society are too often based on adversarial relationships or relationships that become adversarial due to the personalities of those involved, and communication becomes impossible. I suspect that those who are most adversarial with me are also adversarial with their children. They say what they want to say and hear what they want to hear, and the other party to the discussion doesn't really matter. Those in the deepest depths of denial about the realities of their own personal universe or family and thus in denial about the realities of the world itself are, seemingly paradoxically, the first to accuse others of what they deem depraved behavior. And they pass this lesson on to their children. Stay in denial, and you can get whatever you want and believe whatever you want to believe, and nothing is every your fault, and the world really is out to get you, personally.

It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. It becomes a conspiracy theory of vast proportions. At the end of these encounters I'm often on the verge of saying something like, "Yes, sir/ma'am, rather than simply raise your bill to get more money out of you, our board of directors got together and decided that you, yes you were the personal winner in the jackpot to be screwed with, and we decided to charge you for something specific that can be traced and that would embarrass you and make you come down here and spend an hour yelling at one of our employees -- because god knows that's why we hired them, to sit and listen to people yell all day long, which of course is the best kind of productivity -- and you, personally, are going to be our continued target to pay our salaries and bonuses this year by us continuing to charge you for movies you never ordered. Yes, that's so much easier to believe than the possibility your 14 year old kid got a case of the hormones and decided to watch some naked people having sex."

[acmavm]

9. I learned recently that you can buy a 'package' of porn movies

at once. The 'package' in question consisted of four of 'em.

My son teaches me something new every day. But he has four grown sisters. And they were pretty good at acting like angels but being pretty crazy.

I learned about acting out and kids going for the gusto at Notre Dame Academy. I was in that school, a Catholic girls boarding school with some of the wildest women I ever met. The rest were destined for marriage or the convent immediately after graduation. But it was the wild ones that proved that a kid will do anything if they think they have a chance to get away with it. And if it's fun, or they think it will be fun, they'll do it regardless.