Ronald Reagan is one of my favorite presidents (if you said Clinton or Kennedy, why are you still reading my blog?) anyway, one of my favorite quotes is "trust, but verify"
Now I will get to my story, Emily got a kindle for Christmas, one of the reasons was because it is difficult to shop for Emily (she honestly doesn't ask for anything). So we thought she might like a kindle for fun and for possibly reducing the poundage of all those textbooks. She likes the the kindle and so far has a couple games on it, can watch Netflix and her scriptures are on there. Well, she took it with her on Sunday, since that is her scriptures now.
On Wednesday night Scott stopped by the church to fix a printer and someone in our ward (yes, the same one that has been worried about my daughters chest) approaches Scott and this is the conversation:
Sister Bertha Better than you: Emily seems to really like her new kindle.
Scott: Yeah, she does.
Sister Bertha Better than you: How do you keep her from downloading inappropriate things?
Scott: Oh we do.
Me (when he gets home and tells me about it): What the &@$!?$&@. Is she serious?
After my husband casually tells me about this, and I have given my opinion, I turn to Emily who is sitting there playing bubble buster on said evil device "Emily, don't download porn to your kindle". "Oh, OK" she says.
I know people who don't have the Internet, or don't allow their children to get on the Internet because of the all the "bad" things on it. In my opinion these people are either cheap or they don't trust their spouse. Technology isn't a fad, I don't think that someday Emily is going to be sitting around trying to explain to her granddaughter what the Internet was. All these wonderful advancements are just like anything else, they can be used for good or they can be used for bad. Avoiding them doesn't prepare our children for anything but failure.
See, Scott and I have the opinion that if you take the mystery out of something it loses a lot of allure at the same time. This is our opinion about guns, money, sex, drugs and the Internet, when it comes to our children and we are brutally honest about any questions they have. Plus, if you never give them the chance to be trustworthy, how do they become it?
When Emily was 12 she did get lured into a chat room, and thankfully we found out about it before anything happened. She was shut off for a few months then filtered for a few more. My children know at anytime their Mom will check their text messages, or that their Dad can track any and all pages even thought about by their computer. In fact the other night at Texas Roadhouse, Emily was very tex-tracted and so I snagged her phone to see what was so interesting, "hey, what about privacy?" she joked, "privacy is for people who pay their own cell phone bill" I told her. She just laughed and said, "There's nothing exciting in there Mom". She was right.
So that is pretty much our opinion until proven otherwise, we will trust but occasionally verify.
This morning just as she was leaving for school I spotted Emily's report card from Seminary, straight A's and excellent attendance for the last 2 1/2 years. Then she told me, "I'm a little tired this morning, I stayed up late to download some porn, inappropriate video games, and watch some R rated movies, I think one of them was called Hellboy". Then she gave me a little smirk. I was so proud... I thought she would never get the hang of sarcasm!
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