As any parent will readily admit, raising kids isn't exactly a walk in the park. I don't subscribe to the alarmist view of life - that every stranger who says 'hello' to my child is of ill intent - but I do probably teeter dangerously close to being over-protective in many regards. My wife and I complement each other very well on this point, she keeping me in-check when I'm going overboard and vice-versa, but we're both wrestling with the topic of Internet use.
Jake, my eldest son who will soon turn nine, is a chip off the ol' block... a true geek-in-training. He loves all things technology and has been this way for as long as I can remember. And like many households, you can count on there being at least one hand-me-down PC available roughly every four years and the kids are the beneficiaries. (Consider it the trickle-down theory of technology.)
Jake has had a computer in his room for at least a year, but we've only recently allowed him to connect to the home network and access the Web. We don't leave the wireless card hooked-up permanently, he has to ask permission to get it and he has to tell us exactly what he plans on doing online. Originally his only online interest was Webkinz.com - an incredibly safe and "locked-down" environment for kids. However, as of late, he's become very interested in writing (hmmm... wonder where that came from) and is creating a binder of mini-reports that he has authored. One day it could be dinosaurs, the next Mars, but there's always something that piques his interest enough that he wants to do some research and share what he learned.
Obviously, my wife and I think this is great and we want to encourage and reinforce this learning experience in any way we can. However, we also feel a bit like we've painted ourselves in a corner. We want him to be able to leverage tools like Google - particularly the image search function - so he can put these reports together, but we also feel pressured to keep a very close eye on what he's doing. We don't think that he would intentionally wander into dark corners of the web where he shouldn't - we've had all of the safety conversations with him, are raising him to have "online smarts" and we're kicking the tires with different types of filtering applications - but you never know.
It was so much easier when his interest was limited to Webkinz, as we could wander into the next room and hear the mooing of the 'Cash Cow' game. Now, however, we feel more compelled to be sitting next to him - or at least hanging out in the same room - while he works on these projects. Do we pull the computer out of his room and put it into a more common area amidst the hustle-and-bustle of the household or do we allow him to keep the PC in his room so he can research and write in peace? Do we limit his time to only those hours when we can sit in the room with him (which, given my work schedule and the parenting responsibility which comes along with having two other kidlets, may be tough to come by) or do we empower him to follow his intellectual pursuits whenever he wants? (I'd rather see him working on a report of his own design than watching a rerun of Spongebob for the 13th time.)
Right or wrong, we're leaning more toward a 'trust but verify' approach. My wife and I will get him started and we pop-in periodically to check-in and see how he's doing... he knows that, in no uncertain terms, the watchful eyes of Mom & Dad are ever-present. I also think this is a good entry point for teaching personal responsibility and accountability and, so-far, he hasn't let us down. In fact, he's impressed us with his studiousness. (Plus it's a welcome diversion for his typical hyper-kinetic mode of operation - always running, always playing.) But like evolving from Webkinz to Google, I'm sure one of these days in the not so distant future he'll ask: "Dad, what's a FaceBook?" Ugh... I'm so not ready for that one.
So... it begs the question... are we being too permissive/naive or is NetNanny and frequent spot-checks enough? What are your thoughts?
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