The d00d versus parental controls...

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I won't lie. I'm so damned proud of my son it is ridiculous to try to put into words.

That said, I'm going to have some challenges.

So recently my 7 year old evil genius* came to the conclusion that Club Penguin's restrictive chat system (which was changed years ago to protect against hate and predation) wasn't going to work for him... so he went and found a pirate server that hosts the games chat system in the old style... which is just unrestricted typing chat.

This devolves UBER QUICKLY into a bunch of children being *#&$ing horrible to each other... and... other people just creeping around... being... creepy.

And of course the d00d isn't socially very agile or aware, and is managing to be awful AND creepy.

Upon the discovery of this there is the first talk about why this is not ok... and it seems to get through. Just to be safe, I edit his windows hosts file and redirect the URL of the pirate club penguin back to local host. It is a protected, hidden, system file... I figure, that will hold for a few years.

It was less than a month ago. He hacked it, and deleted the offending redirect, and got back to his site.

There was the revisited talk, which, barring unforseen circumstances, will stick this time. I had to have him explain it back to me (which made it back with dire warnings of Evil Penguins... shrug... good enough)

This isn't the first control fail we've had... recently I realized he had gotten around commenting restrictions on youTube... which I set on HIS computer with MY account... restrictions which are effective enough to prevent ME from posting comments on my OWN computer...

I got a TRS-80 CoCo III for my 12th birthday and I have every reason to believe it saved my life. I won't cut off his hands. The fact that he is running hacks at 7 that I learned in my 20s tells me 2 things: He'll keep me sharp, and he'll be WAY ahead of the curve when it comes time to get a job (by which I mean takeover the world).

*(he is named after Lex Luthor, "evil genius" is sorta what I was envisioning from the start, and shouldn't be construed as an insult)

Today, he is hacking your filters and reroutes ... tomorrow, he will be launching the family dog into neighborhood orbit.

So, THIS is how Steve Jobs' parents must have felt.

I wonder if there is a relatively safe hobby that could be "accidentally" described to him as a distraction?

Can you find a more positive use for his talents?

Steve Jobs did not write one line of code in his life; it's really best not to generalize, the truth is that multinational conglomerates really can take on the persona of their monarchs. I'd be one obscenely rich coder if I had a penny for each time I was incongruently compared to Jobso.

Last edited by cberg on 21 Jul 2014, 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This IS positive. The kid will be working in digital forensics by the time he's 18.

Edit: I may be biased, but you should let your son loose on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Corporate distros imbue accountability whereas hacker distros incite chaos.

I was thinking something forensic, or really anything else. But the OP said his 7 year old son was awful and creepy and got other children being horrible too.....that's positive?

Good for the d00d!
Sorry, but my policy is to support evil genius children.
It's not necessarily so bad to be awful and creepy online to other people who are also being awful and creepy.
The controls won't work if he is motivated, as he is.
Each time he subverts one, he will learn something new for next time.

I don't think his child started the creepiness. He hacked into something that had existing creepiness and added to it.

I would be proud of his skills, and it sounds like you handled the rest of it. Awesome!

I will rephrase.

I would feel very proud. But, I'd also be afraid. Because now, he's a cute little 7 year old, but he's also able to outthink parental control and be involved in creepiness, which can swing back at him. As he gets a bit older, he may be VERY disturbed if there's creepiness coming back at him. And then, there's dealing with it if he gets in trouble. But mostly, HE may wind up getting hurt, badly.

Maybe I'm being naive. Well, yes, people often see that about me.

But my children are so precious to me and one of the things that's terrifying, as they get beyond the cute early grades, is how easily they can be swept up and lose themselves and their reason to live over both internet and in person creepiness.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Hope so.

I think you have a right to be concerned. He has the potential to hack into things that end up being dangerous or illegal or both., all of which will have serious consequences. These are things he doesn't understand right now, and probably won't understand either when he's doing it (if that happens).

He needs strong guidance on what is acceptable internet behavior, while also participating in something that is challenging enough to keep him interested in it and not in things that will get him in trouble. Perhaps you can get him into some programming classes that are geared for older kids (or even adults), explaining boy genius' talent to get him in the door. That way he can be challenged and taught how to use his gifts wisely. I don't think letting him figure it out on his own is very safe. He's already figured out how to participate in creepy. Thinking out of the box to find him something challenging that is also useful will set him on the road to doing something personally and financially rewarding. I've heard of kid geniuses getting hired by major corporations for their talent.

Cool that you have passed on the 1337 genes.

Could you elaborate on this a little? Awful and creepy are descriptors with a fairly wide gamut.

For some values of "awful and creepy" this could be no big deal, but the more concerned posters are probably considering other cases.

Thanks for all the words! It is fun to read everyone's thoughts. There are some good and serious points I wouldn't want to anyone to think I wasn't paying attention to:

MOSTLY I'm not worried about how he is perceived in an anonymous community... but the habits of someone who doesn't know any better can lead to danger.

Have you seen youTube comments for anything children might comment on? Specifically, videos about minecraft... largely an audience of youngins who know their parents aren't looking. Lex learned to comment by reading other kids comments... one day he asked "Is this real or is it fake, I don't think its real."... perfectly reasonable... but 2 days later with no answer he followed up with something akin to "HEY, ANSWER MY QUESTION. IF YOU DO NOT YOU ARE GOING TO BE A f****r AND BE GROUNDED FOREVER."

The thing that made me aware that he wasn't on the REAL Club Penguin site was that he came up to me and asked what a "stalker" was... apparently he had been following another toon around for half an hour trying to get them to play with him, that is when they told him to go away and that he was a stalker.

So... you know... we have to talk these through... bad language is REALLY EASY... because Lex likes rules (although, if the reward is great and the challenge is high, he will make a run at breaking them)... but he doesn't grok the CONCEPT of stalking, so its just small reiterative steps, hoping that he'll put the pieces together in his own time.


Like I said, he keeps me on my toes... I could rebuild a PC before most people owned one, and while I have no doubt he is smarter than I am, I have decades of experience on him, and I'm hoping that gets us to a point where he has to tools to make the right and SAFE decisions.


My thoughts exactly, like I said, it was obvious when I was reading (and deleting) his YouTube comments that he was aping an existing behaviour... and more over, he wasn't the only one.


Couldn't agree more. Again... I named him after Lex Luthor... I really set myself up for this, and that's fine.
I kid you not, the same week in Australia there was a kid born named Superman... for real...


Yeah... and he keeps pushing me on the learning curve as well... which is good when you're getting slow in your old age.


Lots of them... I'm feeding him Legos and Kodu and Puzzles and Video Editing, and he is seeking out tutorials on how to bake cookies and do magic tricks (and hack your hosts file, apparently) etc etc... I've always said the best thing I can do is give him things to do and stay out of his way, but keep him sight...

OhkaBaka <-- Was creepy but never awful... on purpose...

I would be very proud of him as well. He definitely has a gift and it should be nurtured. However, I agree with the others that there is reason to worry. A lot of our kids don?t pick on social cues and there are really creepy people out there waiting to prey on them. Many of our kids over share and on the internet that can be a very bad thing. Also, he is smart enough to get himself in MAJOR trouble if he hacks the wrong thing. There are white hat hackers out there, but many aren?t and they could guide him to do things that are illegal or just another little evil genius who is sharing what they learned from some dark belly of the internet. His considerable skills could mislead people into thinking he is older than 7 and if he gets them angry they could tag him and cause you all kinds of problems.

I live in the Bay Area so If my super tech savvy 4 yr ends up on the evil genius route your guy is on, I am hooked up. However if you don?t live somewhere as tech friendly maybe try r00tz.org or code.org as a start. Def Con has a Def Con Kids if you live anywhere near Vegas.

I think it is awesome and it is great you are supporting him on his world domination tour. Remind him we are friendly.

I used to engage in awful + creepy internetz behaviors for entertainment purposes when I was bored in college.
It involved certain kinds of chatrooms and saying horrible things in them.

So that was you!

I'm still in therapy, because of that...





(joke)