FYI: Safeguarding Your Children Online

I finally made it home after being stuck in western Kansas for four days with transmission problems. Yikes!

The following is a list of helpful tips to protect your family:

1. Develop a trusting relationship with your child early: most of the things we are afraid to talk to our kids about, they already have some basic knowledge on from their friends and cultural surroundings.
2. Keep the door of communication open: this has a lot to do with controlling our own anxieties about certain topics (especially sexual) so that we are approachable. Anxiety and tension can be very non-verbal forms of communication and kids pick up on it easily. Breathe!
3. If you have reason to suspect your child is viewing inappropriate sites, do not over react – approach your son or daughter with respect, love and concern.
4. Add to online profiles that you monitor your child’s use of the Internet.
5. Keep your computers in heavy traffic areas in your home.
6. Know your children’s online friends.
7. Use a pre-filtered Internet Service Provider (ISP) – check www.FilterReview.com for help
8. Check CDs, floppy and zip disks.
9. Check history files often.
10. Spend time with your child as they surf the Internet.
11. Ask your child to show you what IM (instant messaging) looks like.
12. Spend time with your child online, and have them teach you about their favorite online destinations.
13. Get to know and use the “Parental Controls” provided by your Internet Service Provider and/or blocking software
14. Always maintain access to your child’s online account, and randomly check his or her account.
15. Teach your child about responsible use of the resources on the Internet.
16. Find out what safeguards are used at your child’s school, the public library and at the homes of your child’s friends. These are all places, outside your supervision, where a child could encounter an on-line predator.
17. Instruct your child NEVER to arrange face-to-face meetings with someone they met online and NOT to respond to messages or bulletin board postings that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent or harassing.
18. Tell your child to NEVER give out identifying information such as name, address, school name or telephone number to people they don’t know.
19. Explain to your child to NEVER post pictures of them on the Internet and let them know this has seriously harmed other children.
20. Teach your child to come and get you when they access something on the Internet that makes them feel uncomfortable, no matter what it is.
21. Teach your child that the Internet is a good source for educational, recreational and creative searches, but has intentional landmines placed that could hurt them.

Most children these days start using computers in elementary school. This is not a discussion that needs to wait until middle school and most definitely not until high school. I recommend these frank discussions start at age 8 or 9 and even earlier if the subject comes up. Do not be afraid to talk to your children! They will be much more impressed and malleable if they hear the information first from you versus other sources. The benefits that I have found talking about sexual issues early on is that children are more willing to listen to you before they hit adolescence, they are less silly or embarrassed about the topic, it is interesting since they have most likely not heard much about the information before, and they take it more “matter of fact” than personally. If we are willing to baptize our children at age 8 telling them and ourselves that they have reached a certain age of accountability – then we need to be prepared to address the complex and sometimes uncomfortable issues surrounding accountability.

much of the information above was taken from illusionsprogram.net or nationalcoalition.org