This morning I discovered my 12 1/2 y.o. son had accessed Youtube videos, while I was upstairs cleaning, that were very unsuitable. And I feel a bit sick. This responsibility of raising children keeps getting heavier.
This means significant changes in computer usage around here. It was always coming, but this is the big wake-up call. I just feel sick that it took this to wake us up!
Really, the whole computer use by the kids in our house has taken off in the last 15 months, ever since we came back to Japan. At that point our eldest got his own school email address. And the younger boys were expected to do homework using the computer (various educational websites like IXL and Typing Pal and their classes have their own blogs too). Now our eldest is in the school wrestling team and they've been encouraged to watch Youtube videos about wrestling. It is really only a very small step sideways from that to the most undesirable. Our computer is in a common room, but as was demonstrated this morning, I cannot be always looking over my sons' shoulders.
The other problem is that I am a multi-tasker. And the way I got a lot of computer stuff done when the boys were toddlers was to have the computer on and between other things will be dashing off an email or checking something on the internet. That habit remains with me, unfortunately. I'm looking at the various options to change our current status. Probably everyone is way ahead of us, I feel like we've had our heads in the sand.
The easiest thing to implement today (in the midst of busy week) is that everyone has now their own "account" on our Mac and there are parental controls there that block the sorts of things our son was looking at this morning. That means that I have to log-out from everything I've been doing to let someone else use the computer (though really, I hardly use the computer between 4 and 8 p.m. these days, it is too busy with boys doing homework and such).
My husband will talk with our son this evening. In a way there is good that can come out of this. We've mostly met with disinterest when raising this whole topic with him before. Now, he's obviously changing and interested, so this is an opening to talk.
I'm really am a bit embarrassed to admit all this. But I figure if there are others out there who can learn from this, then I want to help you avoid this in your own family.
5 comments:
There's no need for embarrassment. This is an issue all parents (but especially those of boys) eventually have to deal with. You're definitely not alone in this.
If you need help on the tech side of things, feel free to consult us.
Check out covenanteyes.com. Provides accountability by reporting inappropriate content but doesn't restrict access too much.
I hope things settle down for you all. Keep up the good work. Parenting must be so hard.
Don't be embarrassed, we all go through it ... my boy is now 17 so we know only too well what it's like. If you want to chat or unload or just sympathy from someone who's "been there, done that" you know my email! It's still a shock though how young they are exposed to/show an interest in this stuff ... yes, a good time for some father & son chats ...
Hey, you've probably already researched this but we put on a program called "safe eyes". We've frequently found it's blocked stuff for us on youtube but allows us into sites we want. It's a great tool because it blocks specific videos rather than the whole of youtube. Can be downloaded online. When I went to our local Harvey Norman computer shop to ask about filtering software they had none. No one had ever wanted it before. I was shocked! We realized we needed it when my preschool kids were searching for "teletubbies" and found an inappropriate video came up in the search listings! I suddenly realized we needed to put the internet beast on a leash! Here's the website for safeeyes. http://www.internetsafety.com/
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