You know in adolescence, when Jamie says [Spoiler removed by MNHQ - thread also contains spoilers]

[Mycatisanevilgenius]

You know in adolescence, when Jamie’s says he’s pleading guilty, why doesn’t the dad respond?

The dad says nothing

then after a long awkward silence the mum chimes in the convo and changes the subject

are we suppose to think that’s how any real difficult discussions are just not had ?

then the mum brushes it all under the rug ?

Yes, the trying to reassure themselves that they'd been good parents really touched a nerve with me. It's what I've always asked myself, especiallyalways working. Interestingly, dh has lower standards than me and just assumes he's a good parent because he's a. Better than his dad and b. Better than many we see round here.

I think the problem is that the Internet is not censored. Children from the age of 11 can have access to horrific stuff that they are not old enough to process. Also the more violence we are exposed to the more desensitised we become. Add to that the toll that social media has on children's mental health and I honestly think smart phones should be banned for under 16s.

When my daughter was at secondary school there was a video doing the rounds of someone being killed. It happened in another country where 2 men had lured another man into woods and one of them had videod the other killing him. Now I don't know whether the video was fake but I had a good open relationship with her at the time and she told me about this. I remember being shocked. This was about 15/16 years ago now. I bet there were loads of other parents who didn't know that their children had watched that.

I also live near a secondary school and in the afternoons I sometimes walk past groups of year 7/8s. I see them huddled round a phone and it's obvious from what they're saying that they are watching porn.

What's he supposed to say? "That's great son, best to make a clean breast of it."

Saying the dad is avoidant and couldn’t watch the video. How many of us could have watched that video if it was your child?

He did watch the video. That's not what I said. He watched it and he turned away. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's his attachment style. It's part of the interest and discussion point of the show. Why did those parents produce a murdering incel and other parents don't? What went wrong? What did they do that other parents also do that may have contributed?

I thought it was because Jamie had pleaded not guilty until then so they probably hoped, against all the odds, that there was a chance he could be found not guilty. (Dunno how, I think at one point Jamie said the cctv was fake? Provocation? Diminished responsibility if that's still a thing?)

But once he decided to plead guilty all that hope and denial fell away and there was nothing left to say. It was the right thing for Jamie to do but hard for his parents who still wanted to believe somehow he hadn't "really" done it.

I think the dad was also acutely aware that the mum had not seen the video and possibly had a bigger glimmer of hope. Jamie didn't realise she was in the car and the dad didn't know what Jamie was about to say, so dad was likely experiencing a moment of regret that she was even less prepared for it because he'd tried to protect her from the details and didn't know how she'd react (though in fact she was calm for the rest of the call).

@Whoarethoseguys If your child walked into a pub at aged 13 and was approached by a drug dealer, then a prostitute then a sex trafficker would you say 'Like it or not we live in an age of pubs and children should be taught how to visit them safely , and to question what they see and hear?

No, you would just think I need to protect them from something they are too young to handle and to protect their right to live a childish world and stop them going in there.

I agree they do need to be able to make their own judgements about porn and drugs and dodgy cultures/thinking but when they have developed the maturity and confidence to do so. Not at age 8 or 11 or 13 years old.

Parents, just do your job, protect your children, be unpopular with your children and set a good example. Then by the time they are 16 they will have some grounding to tackle the depraved culture of the much of the internet. If more parents do this then it will become the norm and peer pressure won't be so strong to have access to the internet pre-16.

I agree young children shouldn't have unlimited and unmonitored access to the internet. And I don't think young children should have smart phones. I don't understand parents who give primary aged children smart phones.
But the PP I was commenting on said no WiFi at home and no access to phones.
I think it is much safer to educate children on the dangers. If my 13 year old walked into a pub and was offered drugs I would hope they would turn them down because they understood the dangers because we had discussed them.
It's impossible to protect our children from every danger which is why I think they need to be aware of them so they can be protect themselves
Jaimie was drawn to the likes of Andrew Tate's toxic masculinity culture partly because he felt he didn't fit into his dad's idea of what a boy should be like (good at football or boxing etc) and at the same time he was being fed a lie that blamed girls for his perceived failings in addition his parents had no idea what he was reading. If they had had conversations about online safety, and if critical thinking had been encouraged at home and at school, and if his parents had checked what he was reading online , it would have been easier for him to resist being drawn into the toxic culture.
Everyone failed Jaimie and Katie

I thought the dad was an incredibly sympathetic character.

I thought the dad was an incredibly sympathetic character

So did I.

If I remember rightly the final ep is 13 or so months after ep3, which itself is some months after the event (even if the eps run concurrently, it’s still taken an unusually long time to get to trial which is still a month away).

You imagine there has been many, many hours of conversation and thought between the family and professionals before the call in the van and the viewer can assume the mum is in possession of all the facts, including that there is conclusive CCTV evidence (among presumably much more at that point) that will likely seal his fate. By the time Jamie makes the decision there’s probably not that much more left to be said. It makes for a dramatic moment but it’s probably the best thing for them all.

But then you have child(ren) who will access the internet at school, at friends, in the library. It will be like smoking behind the bike shed or 'that book' that got passed around at my school.

You want a child who can come to you and say, "friend X showed me this on the internet and I didn't like / understand it"

You want a child to be able to keep themself safe. To navigate it safely and to report things that need reporting.

To me it is like road safety. You start off teaching a child to cross a road holding your hand, then you build up to them crossing alone and by the time they are learning to drive they should know how dangerous drink and drug driving is, how dangerous speeding is etc etc.