Sunday, October 23, 2005

Sons, Husbands And Others

Well one particular one of each, anyway; two mine, one not.

Son, 10, has joined a forum for gamers. This is brilliant. For the first time I see him rush home from school and beg to check his email. Then I sit patiently through 'how do you spell....?' over and over. He wants to write. He wants to spell. He has a passion.

Yay hurray!

Even his school is so impressed that in his reward time before lunch and just at the end of the day, he is allowed to post to this forum of his. Its clean, well managed and it inspires him, and thats all any of us want. Even his bad spelling fits right in, there seem to be plenty of (presumably) older boys in the same boat.

Such is his enthusiasm that another lad in his year, another of the generally less enthused pupils, has also joined and spends his reward time posting to the threads. Herein lies catch 22.

When they both post from school, they post from the same ISP. Today he got a sharp warning from the forum moderators. He stands accused of opening multiple accounts and multiposting, because (very fairly) they figure that the same ISP means its the same person. They have penalised him (taken posting points off him) and a warning is a big step towards being banned. He is gutted.

For the first time ever (because as you know mums, what-mums-say and what-mums-think are mortally embarrassing) he has let me take over the keyboard and send a reply, using his account name, in an effort to clear this up. Sadly it is now the half term holiday, so I can't get school to back me up or confirm their ISP for another week.

Fingers crossed.
http://www.consumercorner.co.uk