Happy New Year!
I hope you had some time to relax during the past week or two. I took some time to do a little reading about kids and computers. Much of it centered around how parents can supervise, guide and monitor. This is a question with many levels. Let’s break it down.

First of all, there are many ways to monitor your children, for example, you can set parental controls on your computer and on your Internet access, similar to setting controls on you tv viewing. You can purchase a firewall to restrict certain types of content from coming up but what about IMs or text messages? There are programs that you can buy that will send you information about or copies of your child’s IMs or texts. My Mobile Watchdog or any number of spy programs, such as FlexiSPY, allow you to monitor your child. It may require a little shopping but the programs are out there.

The next question is, do you really WANT to know everything your child is doing? Where is the line? You want your child to develop independence but you want them safe and confident.

It needs to be a developmental decision, starting with close monitoring and gradually releasing control. It also needs to be clearly spelled out to the child that you are entrusting them with great responsibility. Whether any of us like it or not the current youth have much more thrust at them and therefore require greater responsibility. As parents this new era forces us to evaluate each child and each circumstance individually.