Some time ago, one of my teens discovered the 'on demand' feature on our local television cable. My husband and I had a cow but she assured us that she was only accessing the 'free' kid stuff. We also wondered why we suddenly had this 'on demand' stuff....we were sure we hadn't ordered it, so a phone call was made to the cable company. We were reassured that this was just a feature they had added to everyones cable at no charge. So, we really didn't think anything more about it....the one teen that seemed to use it to watch non-stop runs of her favourite teen shows was enjoying the freedom of seeing her favourite shows, and we 'thought' that that was as far as it went...........until we got our cable bill in yesterday's mail...........'somebody' had ordered three movies......three movies!!!!!!!...it gets worse....these movies cost $10.49 each!!!!!!! and it gets worse.......but to fill in....we immediately grilled 'the teen' about what 'she' had done...she denied it...we were sceptical...then we looked at the date....it was the day that new little grandbaby had been born.......no one had been here all day...except for one teen........Ben had wanted to go to school that day instead of going to the birth........they were going on a special school trip....he didn't want to miss it.......then he came home to an empty house, we were all at the birth......
Let me tell you about Ben.....Ben's birth parents were both developmentally delayed plus his mother drank alcohol and did drugs while pregnant...so, as the saying goes...'you do the math'...Ben is a six year old in the body of a seventeen year old young man......Ben ordered three 'adult' -(use your imagination) movies......I was in despair, I was angry.....angry that he had done this, in despair that these pornographic images were now in his damaged brain, angry that these movies had been played on my t.v., in my living room, in my house..(I felt like I needed to disinfect everything), in despair because Ben gave me this blank, 'deer in the headlights' look when I told him that I couldn't give him the money for his next school trip because I have a $35 dollar charge on my cable bill that I now have to pay....he doesn't see what he did wrong....that's the sad part........
.......the only good thing in this whole mess is that Ben actually was able to figure out how to do these 'technical' things on the t.v,....normally you would be pleased that a kid that still needs someone else to comb his hair for him would be able to do something technical like that.....unfortunately, you can't celebrate it.
So, today we call the cable company and see about getting the 'on demand' stuff off the cable.....teen that likes watching her 'free' shows is going to be angry but even though we have told Ben that from now on he can't watch t.v. when we aren't home - how can you reasonably monitor that- and even though we've told him that he can't use the 'on demand' stuff any more, even the free stuff.......we know he'll do it again, if it's available to him....once the exposure to pornography has happened, they will go back to it......
Whatever happened to 'Leave It To Beaver', 'My Three Sons', 'the Donna Read show'......programs you didn't have to be careful about your kids watching when you couldn't be around.......
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