Monitoring Your Child's Electronic Habits

Each week in Moms Talk, our Moms Council of experts and smart moms take your questions, give advice and share solutions.

Moms, dads, grandparents and the diverse families who make up our community will have a new resource for questions about local neighborhood schools, the best pediatricians, 24-hour pharmacies and the thousands of other issues that arise while raising children.

Moms Talk will also be the place to drop in for a talk about the latest parenting hot topic. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in as we start the conversation today with a question: How do you monitor your child's technology habits?

Jan Katz-Kellogg: I need all the help I can get in monitoring the technology my teenage son comes into daily contact with. He lives in an electronic Disneyland. The “kiddie rides” used to be X Box (360, Live), Playstations (2,3 PSP etc.) and wii. Then came iPhones, laptops, Facebook, texting and the ability to communicate with anyone, anytime. And while there are parental controls on many devices, it is close to impossible to keep up with them all. I have felt powerless at times. That’s about to change. In the next few months, a new web-based service, myi.com (short for my internet) will offer parents brilliantly simple options for creating and maintaining their own personalized Internet for ALL devices in their home. Even better, the options don’t require a computer guru to use, are customizable by age group and are inexpensive.

The concept is this: myi.com will allow you to take your family's lifestyle and personality and apply it to all devices that connect to the Internet in your home. This allows you to customize what topics you do or don’t want your child exposed to, time limits or time frames you want to place on all your home’s devices and applies them simultaneously to every single device your family uses, regardless of brand or type. That includes, phones, cable, computers and gaming systems. For example, you may want 7 to 9 p.m. to be homework time and you don’t want texting, gaming or cell phones used. Set it up as a guideline. This becomes a house rule.  You will be sent a message if this rule is violated. And the child gets a message that says “ Busted!” or “Grounded!” You can also set up your system to make certain devices unavailable from 7 to 9 p.m. Accountability is a great value for a child to learn!

From toddlers to teens, there are super simple, easy-to-use applications designed to safeguard your child, encourage good habits and promote your family’s priorities. The applications are much like the ones you see on an iPhone and are available on a variety of topics. The process is similar to ordering ring tones and are priced about the same. There are basic choices (Ex: Do you allow topics on sex, drugs, gambling, firearms to appear on your kid’s Internet screen?) and home-specific applications dealing with house rules, bedtime, study time, gaming and more There is even an application called “Crunchtime” that temporarily removes electronic “distractions” for particular days or times.

Once you have created your home system, you can share with friends or gift the apps. You can even send them to the grandparents–who don’t have to be Internet savvy–ensuring your system stays in place no matter where your child is.

Parents will finally have full control of their own home’s electronic wizardry and make it actually strengthen their core family values!

I have just described a few options myi.com offers that might pique your interest – there are many to choose from. Like most things electronic, describing them in writing is harder to do than actually doing them. T o get a heads up on this upcoming service, go to myi.com and register. When it launches in the next month or two, you will be notified and will be able to demo it and see for yourself what an exciting new concept this is. I will also keep you posted when it launches!

Kim Koch: Through the elementary years, we did not have cable television. I knew it would distract away from reading and quality family time. Even videos were watched on a limited schedule.

 Middle school, came cable (with all but PG-rated channels locked with a password) and video games. It really did have an impact on my son’s behavior. He was more frustrated and aggressive after playing certain games. I did not allow M-rated games in our home through those years. I used a cooking timer to let him know when his time was up, I had to move it out of his room so I could keep him honest. The computer was only in the living room. A cell phone was given for emergencies.

In high school, he was allowed to text message. His first month of unlimited text netted more than 13,000 texts. I was floored, even short messages like ok, lol, wtg, were counted into the shocking number. It was a real eye opener.

 I allowed XBox Live to come into our home, only played in the living room, with the volume up, so we as parents could hear what was going on.  What I learned was, lots of people are not monitoring their children. Military recruiters use the war games as a recruiting tool. I made sure he read books about the wars he was going to play games about prior to him playing so that he understood that death is real, and you don’t have cheat codes or infinite life in the real world of war.

I found that it is not good to let your teen have a cellphone alone in their room while they are sleeping. No matter how much you CAN trust your child, you shouldn’t trust people they come in contact with.