I really do have mixed feelings about spying on children. That seemed like a good idea, and I got the function but I've never used it.
But he offered to install a function on her computer that would tell me what Websites she had been visiting. He said the controls were very crude and dumb: for example, they would block anything coming in on the Internet with the word 'breast' in it, even if you were trying to research 'breast cancer.' This did indeed sound dumb, so we didn't get the controls. I asked the young computer guy who comes over to periodically not solve the you-keep-getting-kicked-off-the-Internet-in-certain-rooms-of-my-house problem if I could get parental controls on the computer. My baby has always been a private person, and not loquacious. 'What he did was send an assault over the computer, and that's wrong, and-'. The whole computer-and-teenager thing was way, way out of my league. She's smiling, but she says 'Yes' in the same tone that she might say, 'of course' or 'duh.' She was shocked. I never know anything about the latest computer attractions. I could have been more on top of these ever-changing computer entertainments, but I was still making rules about television-watching and cell-phone use and text messaging.
