Some situations are viewed in black and white; right and wrong. Yet, many people think situations also have a grey area where solutions are not so easily discerned. This is not just about the choices people make, but the thought process they go through to arrive at their decisions.
What Do You Think? Submitted for Your Consideration and Conversation
You and your spouse take your teenager to the mall to get a new music CD he’s been talking about. When he picks up the CD, you see there are two versions: one with an “explicit content” warning and one “cleaner” version. You allow your son to get the cleaned up version.
The next evening, your son has a friend over for the weekend. The two of them are upstairs in the family room. Their music gets a little loud, so you go up to tell them to turn it down.
As you get to the top of the stairs, you see that your visitor’s digital audio player is connected to the stereo and you can hear four letter words coming out of the speakers.
You take the digital audio player off the speaker dock, and tell the kids to watch a movie and get some popcorn.
Returning downstairs, you plug in earphones and listen to some of the songs on the visiting boy’s player. You’re shocked by some of the lyrics, and realize he has the explicit version of the CD.
Do you think you would even consider taking the player back and letting the two boys continue listening to the music? How do you think you would deal with your son’s choice to listen to music with such strong language even though he knew how you felt about it?
At the end of the sleep over, do you think you give the music player back to the boy, or to his parents with fair warning?