Another Justin story

So you already know that Justin, my 11-year-old, is funny and a deep thinker. He's also very into video games. And since he's the youngest he just might get a little more ... freedom than the older two did when they were his age. I'm tired. Don't judge me. 

When I saw this tweet the other day, it really resonated. It's hard to know how to parent our children through this digital landscape, one we are so unfamiliar with.

It reminded me of something that happened earlier this week. Justin was in the basement playing video games. He came upstairs crying (it is not unusual for Justin to cry in a day). Sighing heavily, I asked him what was wrong. "Well, I'm probably kicked off the x-box now. We'll have to delete my account." 

He went on to tell me that while playing X-box live, he beat a competitor in a game. Allegedly, that person started trash talking Justin, calling him "the p-word, the s-word, the b-word." According to Justin's version, that was all of it. He logged off and came upstairs. 

But that mom intuition told me there was something more going on. 

About an hour later, Greg got an email from Xbox. Justin had indeed been suspended for 48 hours. As we dug deeper, we were able to see that Justin had a little more interaction with the person than he initially reported. According to Greg's research, Justin had written "What do you want, you little bich." 

We were properly horrified. We cooked up consequences and let's just say, the kid was lucky he was fast asleep. 

Still, though, we couldn't help but chuckle in his misspelling of a curse word. Somehow, we were comforted by this. He was still had enough little boy in him that he spelled a simple bad word incorrectly. 

The next day I was ready to have a stern talking to with Justin. I picked him up from his after school activity. "Justin, we need to talk about this X-box thing." His cheeks flushed. "So Dad was able to see that you were a little guiltier than you told me last night." 

I could feel his heat start to rise. "What do you mean," he asked. 

"Bud. You wrote, 'what do you want, you little bitch," I explained. 

I was ready for denials, apologies, tears, anything. Except for his actual response. 

"I didn't include the 't'!" he cried indignantly. 

Turns out, this not-so-innocent-after-all kid had intentionally left the letter T out in order to try to evade the censors. After I recovered from the surprised laughter that was threatening to bubble up, we had a conversation about how intent is more important than spelling. It's a lesson I truly couldn't have anticipated. We also talked about bad choices and how even though he was provoked, he shouldn't have used that bad language. We talked about our family expectations and that in our house, we don't talk like that (at least not to strangers). I reminded him too that he should never write anything that he'd be embarrassed to explain to his Grammie. 

Which brings me back to the tweet. These conversations around social media are so important. In the last month I've seen several instances of "great" kids doing not so great things on social media. Rather than banning it, though, I think we have to talk to our kids. 

We have to teach them how to be safe, just as our own parents taught us how to be safe when we first started riding our bikes across town. And then, when they break those boundaries, we punish accordingly. If I rode too far, my mom didn't throw my bike away. She grounded me for a short period of time and made me earn her trust back, and she lectured me like crazy. 

So that's where we are now. Earning trust back in small steps. But listen, bich, you best believe I'll be doing a lot more monitoring of his chats from here on out.