Overheard in a counselling room…

"…and this has become more frequent, in fact, this is all he does for most part of the day. At first, I thought, fine, he's just seeing some educational programme or maybe some serial, I mean, how harmless can that get? Then, he started staying up late, you know, and so I didn't like that much, because, everyone in my house tends to sleep early, and my grandma likes to get up early. So I 'd potter around in my study, finishing my work, and the light would be on in the living room & the sound volume would be ever so low. This one time, I went up to get him to go to bed and I got suspicious when he was very startled to see me and at once, he changed the channel. I mean, stuff that we'd have done too if we had this kind of T.V reach in our days. Don't laugh, man, I know it sounds trivial, but it makes me sort of uneasy."

"But surely, you never know it was some kind of…you know, shady stuff that he was watching."

"Don't they teach you anything about Freud or something at med. school?"

"Now calm down. See, did you catch him red-handed, sort of. I mean, what's the proof?"

"See, he doesn't know all the controls in the remote. The model of T.V. I own has that back feature, you can go back and see upto a couple of previous channels. And after I put him in bed, I clicked that to check, and he was watching the cable channel and also that, you know, that silly French channel…"

"And how long did you watch them… Ok Ok, sorry, sit down"

"Please, I need some help man, it gets embarrassing at times, what with my grandma around."

"Why don't you ask her to speak to him or get someone else?"

"For one, I couldn't discuss this with her. And even I was to, she's so fond of him that, whatever he does, she always glosses over it. Never scolds anyone. And my family isn't the type where we have those kinds of elders-children type discussions. We are sort of old-fashioned, you know."

"Then reduce his T.V. viewing. Maybe sit alongside or if you can't, get your wife to spend more time in the living room, so he'll be embarrassed to try anything. See, he's just started this kind of behaviour, so I'm sure you can pull him out."

"Actually, it's also about the net, you know. I got my computer, last month, with Internet and all. And because he knows how to use it and so on.."

"So? Yahoo and Search, eh! This is pretty normal for kids, but… "

"You see! He doesn't know about the History folder and all, and it's pretty disconcerting to see some of the stuff. So, what do I do man? My younger son always looks up to him and it would be pretty bad to see them giggling over that kind of stuff. Sort of a parental disaster."

"Hey, don't overreact man. It happens. Especially, when people get access to T.V. and the Internet in these times, when there's such a lot of stuff of that kind around, easily accessible. Best thing is to solve it from a kid's perspective. That's what I always advise all those parents who come to me. Generally, the approach works. Try treating him as a kid. But, don't get me wrong here, it's pretty funny actually. Was he like this before? I don't remember him like that before."

"Yeah, you're right. It is hilarious actually. He's a bit of a child now. Never knew there was a bit of the 'dirty old man' in old Grandpa. I guess he's making up for all the lost fun now…"