A few nights ago, we decided to leave both boys home alone. We felt confident that Justin could take care of himself and his younger brother for just a few hours while we had an evening with other adults. Not only did Justin meet my expectations, but he far exceeded them in a very classy way. Garrett, on the other hand, is barred from any and all electronics device in the house that have access to YouTube.
The evening began with me giving Justin one simple instruction: ‘Make sure you leave your cell phone on so I can contact you in case of an emergency and to let you know when the pizza is going to arrive.’ When the time came, I called him and his phone went directly to voicemail. He had clearly turned it off. That was the one thing I told him not to do! After three or four tries, I resorted to Alexa. I knew I’d be able to ‘Make an Announcement’ from my phone and the whole house would be able to hear me. Once he heard the announcement, he called me back. (There’s a reason he turned off his phone. I’ll get to that in a minute.) The rest of the evening was uneventful.
When we got home, Justin pulled GWE into his room for a brief conversation. I joined Garrett in the den and watched tv with him before I had to put him to bed. After speaking with Justin, GWE came up the stairs and told me that she needed to tell me something in private. I met her in our bedroom, and she proceeded to tell me this story, from Justin’s point of view:
Right after we left the house, Garrett ran upstairs to watch television and Justin went into his room. It didn’t take long for Justin to get bored, so he went to see what Garrett was watching. As soon as he opened the doors, Garrett quickly shut off the television and looked very guilty. Justin, realizing something was amiss, asked Garrett what he was doing. Garrett refused to tell him or hand over the remote. Justin spent several minutes trying to build up Garrett’s trust by promising not to say anything to us…and that’s why he offered to turn off his phone as a sign of good faith.
Once they had an agreement, Garrett handed Justin the remote. Justin turned on the TV and discovered what Garrett had been hiding. He had gone onto YouTube and decided to look up, “LIVE NUDE GRILLS.” That’s not a typo. That’s really how Garrett spelled it. Garrett was watching video after video after video of half-naked girls making out with each other. (By the way, the Parental Control were on and he was still able to watch this stuff.) In a very nice way, Justin reprimanded Garrett and told him that this was not appropriate for him to see and the he shouldn’t watch it anymore. Garrett agreed, in theory.
GWE and I were half hysterical/half horrified as she told me this story. Because our YouTube account is under GWE’s name, she was able to look up what he was watching. WOW!!!
GWE and I agreed that YouTube needed to be removed from the family television in the den. It took me a few minutes, but I got it done. Several days have passed and Garrett has not mentioned anything about it. He must have noticed that YouTube is gone by now, but maybe the unsaid is better than the said.