Raising Children in the 21st Century
Girl Erma knows (not exactly a friend) signed up for a website that her parents didn't want her on. It wasn't anything bad, but the point was her parents, for whatever reason, said no. So Girl listed Erma's e-mail address on the parental notification part. Erma, thankfully, was furious and told me about it and I ended up having to call Girl's mom and let her know what was up.
It's kind of scary - these kid-friendly sites try to be responsible by requiring a parent ok, but the kids still find ways around it. Most of our kids know a lot more about computers than their parents do, and they're quick to share that information with their peers.
I don't like being Tattletale Mom, but if the girl, at this young age, is already sneaking around behind mom & dad's back, what is she going to be trying next? There are too many creeps out there in Webland to let this be no big deal. These kids have no idea what kinds of dangers are out there.
Labels: Erma, parenthood
posted by hobbitsister @ 5:57 PM
17 Comments
17 Comments:
Good for Erma (and you:)! I wouldn't want to tell, even though it definitely wasn't right for her acquaintance to put Erma's name on there without asking her!! Erma's a true Gryffindor. ;)
and yeah, 21st century=scary!
Hi there!
Yay for Erma! It's funny how people think that things done on the internet have no "real-life" consequences. My brothers just totally don't get it.
Just to get a conversation going- I think that we are safer now then really ever before- we're just more aware of bad things that happen but then we develop safeguards against those things. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to raise children in classic Rome, or the middle ages, or even 1850s or 1950's North America.
But yeah, our computer is going to be SO locked down once our kids get old enough to know what it's about! We're lucky that Josh has to know about this kind of stuff for work so it shouldn't be too hard for us to do, but we were thinking that churches and community centers should be offering classes for parents to teach them how to be computer and internet savvy.
I think that's an excellent idea, Kimberly!... maybe Josh could do it at your church??
i agree with you, kim, that over all our kids are pretty safe. a parent internet class is a good idea, though.
and now my children are tired of the internet safety lectures i've been giving them for the past 24 hours.
but i also told them that i'm not out to tattle on everything their friends do. i know it's really important that their friends be able to trust them, and it's really, really important that they can trust me.
I think that is the most important thing. (Keeping communication open with your children.) I am all for not ruining a child's innocence, but even my 6 year old knows that their are some grown-ups who might want to "hurt" children. He doesn't need details, but he really needed to know why "stranger danger" was important. I have met so many parents who are more intent on shielding their children from danger that they neglect to tell them what that danger is.
And I agree with Kim. I read an article about all the acronyms kids use these days and I was shocked at how few of them I knew. (POS for instance.)
And you should be really proud of Erma. It sucks that anyone would put her in a position like that. I hope she realizes that a true friend wouldn't do that.
POS?
oh :) Thanks :) (I always use poc, so I forget there's also a pos)
WRONG!!! POS is parent over shoulder! See, we need a class, don't we?!?!?
really? i so did not know that.
ooh, interesting! ...there's a phone commercial where the girl is speaking in acronyms during an argument with her mom, and her mom tries to use it too (she actually does a good job too!)... that could be you guys if you take that class :)
(some excerpts from the commercial:
bff=best friend forever
tsnf=that's so not fair!)
i like that commercial
me too, but I assumed it was because I don't have children who talk like that yet.
i like brendan leonard's im acronyms
sad - that one's not on youtube
unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of brendan leonard clips on youtube - but if you want to check them out, "mud" and "dizzy olympics" are pretty good.
the kids got their dvds the other day - with an autograph from brendan - so that should keep them busy through the end of summer
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