Some scary statistics regarding child safety online

These are statistics compiled by Protectkids.org.They highlight the dangers that our kids face while online.

• By the end of 1998, more than 40 percent of all American homes had computers, and 25 percent had Internet access. This trend is expected to continue. Children and teenagers are one of the fastest growing groups of Internet users. An estimated 10 million kids are online today. By the year 2002, this figure is expected to increase to 45 million, and by 2005 to 77 million.
  Youth Internet Safety Survey
  
• Only 1/3 of the households with Internet access are proactively protecting their children with filtering or blocking software.
  Center for Missing and Exploited Children
  
• 75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.
  eMarketer
  
• About 25 percent of the youth who encountered a sexual approach or solicitation told a parent.
  Youth Internet Safety Survery
  
• One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information.
  Crimes Against Children Research Center
  
• One in 33 youth received an aggressive sexual solicitation in the past year. This means a predator asked a young person to meet somewhere, called a young person on the phone, and/or sent the young person correspondence, money, or gifts through the U.S. Postal Service.
  Youth Internet Safety Survey
  
• 77% of the targets for online preditors were age 14 or older. Another 22% were users ages 10 to 13.
  Crimes Against Children Research Center
  
• 75 percent of the solicited youth were not troubled, 10 percent did not use chat rooms and 9 percent did not talk to strangers.
  Crimes Against Children Research Center
  
• Only 25% of solicited children were distressed by their encounters and told a parent.
  Crimes Against Children Research Center
  
• Only 17 percent of youth and 11 percent of parents could name a specific authority, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), CyberTipline, or an Internet service provider, to which they could report an Internet crime.
  Youth Internet Safety Survey

These statistics reflect the use of the internet in most developed countries. The increasing use of the internet as a place where young people meet and communicate socially has introduced a range of new opportunities for them to be exploited. Most parents are unaware of the dangers faced by their children online.

What is needed is for parents to provide their children with the resources to be able to guard against any unnecessary danger. Just like we teach our children at a very young age not to cross the street without an adult, then as they get older to look both ways before they cross and then we allow them to venture out on their own as they mature the same applies to web use.

At a very young age it is very important for a parent to be in total control of their children’s online environment. But, as they mature it become more a matter of supervised learning. Children don’t know what they don’t know.. Hopefully by controlling the level of risk and implementing the appropriate safeguards children can use the web safely.

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Hoopaa

Hoopaa (http://www.hoopaa.com) comes from a Polynesian word that means safe or keep secure. The idea of hoopaa is to keep your kids safe while online because you are aware of where they have been and what they are doing. There is a range of programs available to purchase that allow you to keep track of what the kids are up to online.

Hoopaa is free. And it boasts and impressive range of features:

• Continuous monitoring of all web sites visited;
• Enables you to block web sites from any place at any time;
• hoopaa can automatically block web sites according to their category; Sexuality, Games, Hate, Personal, Gambling or Religion. It’s the parents not hoopaa that makes the decision which categories are to be blocked.
• All Internet access from a computer can be blocked during specified periods of the day.
• The ability to provide a screen capture (an image of the page) of each web page visited; very important if you wish to track blog’s that children may access on a frequent basis;
• Tracking and capturing of all MSN Messenger conversations from all computers in your house that hoopaa has been installed;
• Daily email sent to you containing all web sites visited by each user of each computer registered to your hoopaa account and all MSN Messenger conversations;
• You can login to hoopaa at any time to view all tracked information in real-time;
• hoopaa only monitors what you, the Account Administrator authorizes;
• You can cancel the tracking of any specific web site or MSN Messenger account at any time;
• hoopaa can monitor your children’s MSN Messenger conversations even when they are at a friends house – as long as hoopaa has been installed on that computer;
• hoopaa does not share or make available any information that can be tracked back to your email, your computer or MSN Messenger accounts;
• hoopaa is an absolutely 100% free service to all end users;

The main downsides of this program is that it runs best on Internet Explorer a program that I don’t like because of its security issues. And, it only runs on Windows XP. For most users this will be ok for a while but I expect that as more users move to Vista hoopaa will be upgraded to that OS.

I plan to use it on my children’s computer over the next week so I will keep you up to date on how it goes. I also plan to review a couple of the more popular commercial programs over the next few months and we will see how they stack up against this free service. At first glance hoopaa seems to provide most of the resources that you would expect from the commercial software that is available.

“CyberPatrolâ€, NetNanny” and “CyberSitter” are examples of filtering software. http://www.cyberpatrol.com , http://www.netnanny.com and http://www.cybersitter.com

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Create a safe environment for you children

This is a very important aspect of keeping your children safe. Don’t just rely on monitoring software to keep your children safe online. More and more of our lives are going to be spent on the web and we need to make sure that the web world is as safe for our children as the physical environment that they live in.

from PC Magazine 2006

Just like the real world there are lots of hazards that face our children online. But with good management these risks can be minimized.

The first step is to create a safe environment for your children to use the internet. As I have mentioned my children are quite young so I need to recognise that at this stage in their life this is primarily my responsibility. Again life online closely parallels the principles of good parenting in the real world.

Make sure they use the computer in a public area. Don’t allow them to use the internet unless you are prepared to supervise them physically. Most parents wouldn’t send their children to another suburb to use a playground by themselves. The same is true of the internet, don’t let them go to an internet site unless you are aware of what that site contains.

Get familiar with the web yourself. Do a bit of research yourself about what are the best sites for kids and set up the computer so that they have easy access to those sites. Firefox has an excellent system for creating bookmarks in a toolbar near the top of the browser. Use this to provide sites that will keep the children’s interest. We tend to use the same sites over and over. I know that I have my favourites that I use to help me in my work and in creating my blog. This also applies to kids, they will mostly want to use the same sites over and over so make sure that you play a big role in choosing those sites.

Set up your search for safety. There will be times when children will need to go outside their familiar areas. This may be for a school research project or they may just be curious about what else is out there. Google has a number of options that you can choose to create a safer search. To do this in Google go to preferences and then choose safe search filtering. You can then choose the filtering level to stop explicit images and text at the extremely safe level. Google is the search engine of choice for most internet users today.

Educate your children about the web. Communication about what is going on is vital. Make sure you talk to your children about some of the dangers of the web. For example by nature they are trusting souls but make sure that they know not to give out their personal details to anyone. Make them aware of the dangers of opening files that they don’t know anything about. Talk to them about the sites they are visiting and let them know that not all websites are good.
Check your browser history.This is not as effective for older children but most younger children will not be aware of the trail they leave in their browser’s history. Even if you have minimal monitoring software you can keep an eye on where they have been by simply clicking on the browsers history button and having a look at all the sites that have been visited. Get to know where you children go on the web.
Set guidelines for their time on the web. Monitor the amount of time they spend on the web. Just like watching too much TV, too much time on the web is not healthy for a child’s overall development. They need to have time to do other creative things as well.

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Introduction

For many parents this is a big concern. We have friends who have banned their children entirely from the internet. They are not allowed to email, search or even play on designated kid’s sites. This will definitely keep their kids safe from any harm on the web but it certainly create problems for the way that they are able to deal with the modern world.

Keeping your children safe on the internet is not a one step solution. It takes a range of strategies to ensure that they are as safe as they possibly can be online.

“What parents have to realize is that there is no silver bullet,” says Herbert Lin, senior scientist at the National Research Council of the National Academies, where he directed a 2002 study on protecting children from sexual exploitation and online pornography. “Filtering software has certainly gotten better, but do parents rely on it too much? In my opinion, they do. A filter is brittle. Even if it stops 90 percent of the bad stuff, what
do you do about the other 10 percent? You still have to have a thorough educational process.”

I use my computer nearly every day for work. But more and more my daughter was wanting to search for things online for school projects or because she had heard about a particular subject. When I wasn’t busy I would let her use my computer to google the subject that she was interested in. However I could see that this was less than ideal because I wanted to work on my computer and she wanted to explore the web.
Recently we acquired a second computer specifically for the kids. I had a number of reasons for this:

1. It got them off my computer. There is no excuse for any nasty accidents happening to it.
2. It protects me from getting any nasties on my computer. My kids click and click. They don’t always understand what they are clicking on they will just do it so that the computer responds in some way. They know that much. The danger of this approach is that they could just as easily click on something that will introduce something undesirable to my computer.
3. It gives them the freedom to explore when they need it not when I am not busy.
4. It is a desktop PC that is placed in the play area that is overlooked by the kitchen and has a constant stream of traffic past it. It has gotten them out of my office and into the open. Whatever they are doing on the web is easily visible by myself or April.

The trouble with the internet is that it is full of unknowns once your kids are out there. The question that many parents ask is what can I do about this? What do we need to protect against?

There are the obvious and not so obvious things that we all know about like:

• Pornography
• Viruses
• Online child predators
• Dangerous chatrooms
• Stealing personal information
• Trojans
• Spyware
• Malware
• Phishing
• and so on

With my kids out their on the web I felt that I had to do some things to ensure that they were as safe as I could possibly make them without wrapping them up in a protective cocoon that didn’t allow them access to the resources and fun that they could have on the web.

The two main steps that I took were to:

1. Protect them from any nasties – Install some monitoring software
2. Protect the computer from any nasties – install user privileges

How I went about this I will outline in some coming posts. I will also take a look at some of the more popular software programs that are on the market ie. NetNanny and the like and see what you get for your dollar.

I actually installed a program called Naomi that has the following features:

• Heuristic analysis capable of recognizing new material automatically.
• Semantic analysis of web pages contents and analysis of their addresses and links.
• Recognizes all the major languages (10+).
• Recognizes ICRA labelling system.
• Monitoring is not limited to web sites, but covers the whole local internet traffic.
• Works with all service providers and software applications, and does not alter settings.
• Allows blocking of file-sharing applications.
• Password-protected (the password is chosen during the installation).
• Easy to use: does not require configuration.
• Can be used on slow connections (it does not perform any download in background).

And, its completely free. You cant get better value than that.
My kids are quite young and this system works just great I don’t want them to even get a glimpse of any pornography. Naomi does a great job in shutting it down very quickly. What all this means and how this compares to other commercial versions I will outline in the coming posts.

I realise that this is a bit of a diversion from the normal theme of ChrisGribble.com but I really want to be a responsible father and ensure that my children are safe. I am sure that there are plenty of other people who feel the same.

ABC’s of Fatherhood – O

O is for openness.

I want to be very open with my children. One of the common experiences of children of my generation is that they never really got to know their fathers. That is they knew about them but they never really got to share some of the more intimate aspects of their life.

I try to be very open with my kids. In many ways that’s easy because of my personality. With people that I know and trust I can be very open. I tend to be more reserved with new acquaintances and unfamiliar circumstances.

My children need to see in me the full range of emotions. Not just when I am irritable or enforcing discipline or even frustration because someone has drawn over the covers of our newly covered lounge. They also need to see the other emotions, sadness, disappointment and happiness in a range of situations.

Too often we can be guilty of not having enough time to sit with  our kids and explain in their terms what is really going on. So we end up just having closed relationships that only deal with externals.

The other day my daughter was talking on the phone to a friend. And she told this friend a whopping story because she thought that no one could hear here. But, I did.

That day I took the time to talk to her about why she told the story. I tried to go beyond just dealing with the obvious lie. I had an opportunity to open up to her and say that I love her for who she is not for who she would like to be. I said that she didn’t need to tell stories for people to be her friend and that if they really wanted to be her friend they would like her just the way that she is.

We talked about it. We were open. I was open to her about the fact that she was so very special just the way that she was.

In the busyness of life it can be easy to just deal with problems quickly. Openess required the committment of time and effort into the relationship to ensure that we are able to talk about the stuff that does and doesn’t matter. Because it all matters in some way.

Boundaries – what not to do with your children

Cloud and Townsend (Boundaries) identify four typical ways that people will blur boundaries:

1. Compliancy
1. They are afraid of hurting someone by saying no.
2. Their boundaries are so indistinct anyone is able to cross them and this opens the person up to abuse.
3. They don’t like to rock the boat and will often give into a child’s demands rather than follow through with consequences
2. Controlling
1. This person doesn’t respect other’s boundaries and will often look for opportunities to intrude in other people’s lives.
   
2. Controllers will rarely believe that they have done the wrong thing because they are so consumed with their own needs.
3. As a parent they will have little understanding of their child’s needs or temperament instead they will enforce their standards or expectations on the child.
4. Controllers are not really in control, rather they are controlled by their own insecurities and impulses. (For example they will become extremely angry when something doesn’t go their way)
3. Non- responsives
1. They are not able to hear the needs of others or see things from another’s perspective.
2. They often will appear distant from their children. This wall is put up to protect them from further hurt
4. Avoidants
1. These people find it hard to accept good things from others Cloud and Townsend say that this is common in men who demonstrate it by finding it hard to accept help or advice.

The influence of parents

Frederick II the emperor of Germany from 1196 to 1250 was called a wonder of the world by his admiring subjects. He was a keen scientist and conducted the following experiment,

“…..He bade foster mothers and nurses to suckle their children, to bathe and wash them, but in no way to prattle to them, for he wanted to learn whether they would speak the Hebrew language, which was the oldest, or Greek or Latin or Arabic or perhaps the language of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain because all the children died. For they could not live without the petting and joyful faces and loving words of their foster mothers.” (Ross and McLaughlin, 1949, p.360)

Children learn to communicate through the messages that they receive from us. They are conditioned by the environment that we provide and are taught by us how to respond. A name given to this is behavioural conditioning.

There is a story about a young psychologist who wanted to train his small son to use the potty. Since children don’t usually find the toilet seat too much fun or too stimulating he decided to change this by bringing an element of pleasure to the toilet environment. He obtained a circus poster of a clown that was colourful and smiling with a big nose. He placed a red light bulb in the nose and switched it on while the child was on the potty. Needless to say the child enjoyed this immensely and as a result wanted to go to the toilet all the time. Later it wasn’t too difficult to rig an electrical circuit so that whenever the child urinated the circuit was completed and the nose light up.

This also produced what is called a stimulus generalisation, which means that a stimulus like the original can produce a response like the original. One day the father and the son went on a car ride and were stopped by a red light.

Can you guess what happened?

Putting a boy to bed

Those who approach life like a child playing a game, moving and pushing pieces, possess the power of kings. Heraclitus

I couldn’t resist putting this in. We rest easy at night at our place knowing that there are many superheros with us who will protect us if there were to be any problems. It is quite a job collecting them each night and making sure that they are positioned just right. However we managed it quite quickly tonight. Also missing is a stuffed crocodile from Australia Zoo. It didn’t quite make it into the shot but Steve is pretty big in my son’s eyes a the moment.

Discipline – Definitions and quotes

Dictionary Definitions of Discipline

• Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.
• Controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary training; self-control.
• Control obtained by enforcing compliance or order.
• A systematic method to obtain obedience: a military discipline.
• A state of order based on submission to rules and authority: a teacher who demanded discipline in the classroom.
• Punishment intended to correct or train.
• A set of rules or methods, as those regulating the practice of a church or monastic order.
• A branch of knowledge or teaching.

Discipline – the toughest job

Before I became a parent I was convinced that discipline would be one of the easiest tasks of being a Father. After all it was a matter of me laying down the law, creating a loving environment and then determining whether they kids had met my requirements. The reality has been very different and I have that discipline has a much higher calling than merely creating guidelines for my children’s behaviour. Discipline’s purpose is all about finding the potential that lies in our kids and finding the keys that unlock that potential.

Steve Biddulph tells of an experiment was conducted with rats in which they were place in a number of rooms. The first room contained food and a small movie screen that was rigged to operate whenever a lever was pulled. The second room just had food and drink. And the third cage had food and drink but gave the rats an unpleasant electric shock.

Firstly the rats were placed in the room with food, drinks and movies and soon worked out the lever made the movies come on. The rats soon made themselves very busy working hard at the lever pressing it to keep the movie in view. This lead the observers to their first principle: intelligent creatures like to have something interesting to do.

They then placed the rats in the second cage with food and drink but nothing else to do. The rats were content for a while but then started misbehaving. They chewed the walls, fought with each other, rubbed their fur off and generally misbehaved. This led them to principle two: Intelligent creatures will do anything to keep from being bored including things that are self destructive.

Finally they were placed in the room where they could receive the electric shocks. Every time the rats ate they were shocked. To conclude the rats were given a choice between the three cages. What one did they prefer the most?

• The food, drink and movies?
• The electric shocks?
• Only food and drink?

The rats ended up preferring the electric shocks. What do we conclude from this? (that we will do the things that get the most response)

To further back up this point Biddulph tells the following story about an exasperated family trying to deal with their boys constantly fighting. This family was very busy, the father an up and coming professional who put in long hours trying to get ahead. They enlisted the help of a group of psychologists to observe their children’s behaviour and hopefully come up with some solutions.

The boys had their own playroom that was full of soft drinks, had every toy that had been invented at that stage. However the parents discovered that in spite of everything they provided they couldn’t stop their boys from constantly fighting. The boys didn’t matter if there were others present.

The evening of a cocktail party was chosen as the time to evaluate the boys behaviour. After the guest arrived and the parents left the children playing downstairs they played quietly for a short time. Soon they began making a lot of noise, but the psychologists noted that it looked more staged than real.

Quickly their father appeared on the scene and began berating the boys for their behaviour. The psychologists noted something that they had never seen in rats, the boys looked chastised except for a curious twist to their mouth. It was named the Mona Lisa smile.

They said that this smile is a secret message from kids that says, “I should be feeling bad, and I should look sorry, but I am kind of enjoying this.” Parents don’t really understand it but it The psychologists prepared their report which basically said the father needed to spend more time with his sons. The parents dismissed this report took the boys to a psychoanalyst who analysed their dreams for a couple of years with little result. They eventually gave up on this and the father took up golf with his boys and they were miraculously cured.

There are three reasons for most kids misbehaving

• Children play up because they’re bored
• Children play up because they feel unwanted
• Children play up because it gets them noticed

What are the most common circumstances where you need to apply discipline?

• When you are busy
• When they are locked up in the house (our kids love day care)
• When they are left alone

Most of us would possibly say it happens at the worst possible moment. That is why it is important that we ensure that firstly that the problem is not because of their circumstances or something that is not really their fault and secondly that we make the time to discipline. Discipline is not just the immediate response to something that irritates or annoys us. It is all about the nature of our ongoing relationship with our kids. Discipline is perhaps one of the highest expressions of love and one of the greatest gifts that we can give our children.

It is very tough work but allows for the possibility for our children to be able to stand on our shoulders and see just that much further than we are able to. It is through good discipline that our children are able to develop the character that will help them through life’s sometimes difficult journey and allow them to have the resilience to meet the uncertaintities that lie before them. It is the job of parents to provide this platform through the hard work that they put into building these qualities in the life of their children.

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