On Sunday 09 April 2006 03:08, Ronald Wiplinger wrote [off list, complete with CEO business card and spam prevention protocol instructions. On balance, I think it is appropriate to reply on list.]:

Vince Littler wrote:

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On Saturday 08 April 2006 16:44, Ronald Wiplinger wrote:

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My son, 13 years old, likes to play on-line game. For the sake of the school, I have to limit it. If I just ask him to turn off the computer, he will certainly tell me that he needs the computer for school.

You are totally wrong! 1. it is a LINUX question, if you like it or not !!!

Classifying your question is your choice. Classifying my response is my choice.

2. what I restrict or allow on MY network is the responsibility of the network administrator (that is me). If you do not like it, don't respond to it!!!

No, I am happy to answer. If you put stuff in my inbox, don't be too offended if you get an answer.

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It's a familiar question, and you are a good deal more open about it than many - I have several times seen it, without a child being mentioned, and someone replies and mentions 'your child' - at which other posters say 'what child' - and then it turns out to be a child who is being controlled, sometimes a 17 year old. And then the thread goes sour, when someone says 'perhaps you should not try to exercise control in this way' and the original poster says 'who the hell are you to tell me how to bring up my child?'

Again, save this bullshit, THIS has nothing to do with Linux!

No, it has to deal with solving your problem. Your problem is getting your son to learn responsibility in using the internet. Your problem is not with administering your network. If you did not have a son, you would not be posting your question.

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At 13, you might think it is appropriate to do control by technical means, but then you will need an exit strategy over the next few years during which you will be working through all the things you need to work through now, only a few years late, with a more resentful son. Or you could let him leave home, go to college at 19, never having exited from this control at home, and he will not have learned self discipline, with predictably bad consequences.

Again, that is the network admins task, here we discuss LINUX technical solutions.

If you don't like my contributions, then you don't have to post your problems. Why should I post a technical solution, if I think it will make your real problem worse? You are supposed to be grateful for all input ;P. And if you don't like a response to your parenting problem, then don't post your parenting problem. After all this is a LINUX technical list ;P. Unless you went to a parenting list first, and they gave you this as the solution.

Looking at your email address, you may want to look at BBC news about the Internet in U.K. Maybe your passport shows a too young age to understand it now. Keep this email and reread it when you are mature to have a child in the age of 13.

Actually, this is a fairly usual reaction. It tends to reinforce my initial premise that your issue is that you are too controlling as a parent. What really gets you is that I am challenging your authority in the home. Of course, if you felt secure about it, you wouldn't react, but then you probably wouldn't be posting, and definitely not here. A controlling parent decides on a technical solution to their parenting problem, and is told its a parenting problem. Then said parent throws a tantrum and [without fail] asserts their own maturity as a parent against the respondent. Of course if you had it sorted as a parent, you wouldn't be posting, so perhaps some humility is due. And just to get to the core of the real problem, it's issues with the parent component of the parenting relationship. You are a CEO. Again, it fits a pattern, it is often people who express their own position confidently who raise this particular question. They really don't like it when their 13 year old flexes his will against the CEO. And having their weakness exposed on a mailing list really gets them going. I hope for your son's sake you get your attitude sorted and you can lighten up enough from being a CEO to actually engage with your son doing his school work, without actually controlling what he hands in. [Next post from RW: Even more anger, direct challenge to state my own parenting credentials, some expression of desperation over the need to control his son, in case he does not turn out to be a CEO and in every respect the image of his father. Sorry, I am stereotyping, but it really does go with the territory of controlling a child's internet use by technical means. Previous experience is that if I post a response to this one, a new ID is created and a load of abuse is then delivered in a misplaced attempt to 'get even', which really exposes the motivations. Plus the subsequent stalking. But I put up with it, because on this issue, my sympathies are with the child. Of course, it is totally unfair to tar you with the behaviour of someone else, so let's leave it there.]