Parent Over Shoulder – and other tips for keeping kids safe on the web

Did you hear the recent news aboutr Myspace and Facebook finding thousands of registered sex offenders from North Carolina alone active on their sites? Here are some tips we learnt from my kids elementary school.

1. Keep the computer in a room where you can see what your child is doing. Preferably in the living room..so if you are cooking then your husband can monitor while he is slouching on the sofa watching TV.:-)

2. Dont give them an email account. If they insist on having one, share an email account so that you know what messages they get and send.

3. It would be easy if you have the sites that your kids go to like miniclips.com(my son loves this site) on your bookmark /favorite sites so that they can go directly to this site.

4. Get a Parent control ,internet filtering software. The price averages from $20 to $30. We got netnanny and it works good.The only con of this software is that it blocks too many sites..even sometimes some trusted sites.Kids will be calling you to open those sites every 10 to 15 min…its sometimes a pain but I think its worth it. Kids may know a way to get around this software when they go to middle school..

5. Don’t let the kids go to chat rooms. Some games will have chat rooms with the application. My son loves playing chess and used to go to a website where they can play online chess ..I didnt know until recently that they have chats going on the sidebar.. I have since blocked it.

6. Talk to your kids about not sending pics .

7. Talk to them about not revealing personal information ,school name, phone number.

8. Talk to them if they suddenly turn off the computer when you walk into the room. Ask them why they did that and monitor more closely. Apparently,Kids have some code words to let others in the chat room if you walk into the room suddenly.. one of them - POS- parents over Shoulder.