Suitable punishment for this? ways to handle it...?

[MrsSnape]

I allow my 9 year old son 2 hours of computer time a night. I have parental controls set on his account so that certain sites are banned etc...

Anyway one of his favourite sites is "Roblox" which is a community where kids build little worlds in a "lego" type setting and can chat to each other.

Anyway he said he was having trouble logging in so I came in to do it for him, after putting in the password etc a message came on saying he had violated the sites terms and conditions and had been reported by another member for "profanity".

Underneath this was a transcript of what he had said to someone and it went like this:

"You mother f u c k e r, you big b i t c h, im going to f u c ki n g beat you up!"

I asked what the hell he was playing at and who he'd written it to, first he said he didn't write it, then he said his brother had written it, eventually he said he wrote it but didn't mean to press send, he then began crying and begged me not to tell anyone etc. He won't give me a proper reason as to why it was written in the first place.

I don't know how to handle this, he's usually "the good kid", never in trouble ... I'm shocked and quite upset.

He would be devestated if I banned him from the PC but I'm thinking it deserves this?

A little update on this.

It turns out the person he swore at was a man, he won't tell me what he and this man were talking about and has now decided that he doesn't like the site anymore anyway and says its ok if I ban it.

I'm actually more worried now than I was before...am I just being paranoid? he gets VERY stroppy when I bring the subject of this man up and tends to storm out of the room as if he's panicking.

I'm thinking of going on the site later on as him and seeing if this man contacts me.

I've just had a look in his inbox on the site and there are messages from another member telling him that his old account was banned (the other member, not DS) because he was "downing noobs". I asked DS what this meant and he said "noobs" is another name for "knob" because "knob" in not allowed.

I'm quite worried about it all.

I would leave it completely for a few days, just say, let's have a few days off the computer, and do other stuff. Then, when it's all calmed down, have a nice gentle reassuring chat, stressing you're not cross etc etc to try and find out what it was about. Right now there's now way he'll talk about it. And yes, all kids do it, my 10yr old ds and his friend were typing in sex plus boobs, I was only alerted by the howls of laughter...

Also agree that 2 hours much too long. Mine get half an hour screen time and have to choose between TV, computer etc.

I very much doubt that he truly understands the severity of his language, and he was clearly upset - that's pnishment in itself. I'd talk to him about why that language is unacceptable, only allow him to use the computer for homework for a week and watch for future offences.

MrsSnape, I think I'd go on there as your son too in your situation. Doesn't sound very good does it? I've tried to emphasise to my boy the dangers of paedophiles without going into the details of what exactly a paedo is/does etc...very difficult this parenting stuff isn't it. Please let us know how things are going with it all though.

My Ds goes onto Runescape, but one of his school friends has just been banned from the site and by his mum because of bad language etc. Don't know what the kids are thinking really...

Just FYI, 'noobs' generally means 'newcomers'. And I really can't see why a 9 year old using some bad language is such a big deal, no one ever died of being cussed out in the course of a computer game.