The Challenges Facing The 21st Century Parent

By: Russell M. Stewart..

If there's one thing that every parent has had to learn the hard way, through experience, it is this - that parents are always wrong. Whatever we choose to do as parents, a friends' parents are doing differently, or whatever we think is good advice to follow today, was scrapped by everyone else yesterday. Being a parent is hard work, and after all those childhood years resenting our own parents and vowing that we would do things so much better if only given the chance, we are now well aware that we are the very parents that we vowed we'd try not to be as children. It might well be the case that we're not making the same mistakes as our parents, but we're excellent at making whole rafts of new ones to make life interesting for ourselves and our children.

The biggest change in the world which we as parents can see is the introduction and proliferation of computer equipment and technology. As young children ourselves, some of us would have had some experience of innocent little units that could do relatively little, others of us had no experience at all - it was another world. Today, we are bringing our children up in a world we could not possibly have imagined, and seems as far removed from our own childhood as is possible to conceive. Whereas we spent hours riding round on empty streets on our bikes, our children are stuck indoors mesmerised by the images on their computer screen. Our challenges involved cycling all the way down the hill as fast as we could, our children's seems to be to unlock the secrets of the Shrine of D'Gaarn or kill as many Wailing Jarpees as possible in the hope of a good drop. If this leaves you cold, or dazed, then welcome to the club.

Parents aren't idiots - we're most of us quite capable of working a computer, typing up a letter, creating a graph and sending off some emails, but computers seem to have a whole other world built in to them that leaves many of our generation reeling at the prospect. For those of us who shred our telephone and gas bills before binning them, and always ask to see the identity card of the man standing at our doorstep wanting to read our meter, the idea of happily posting your most intimate details on a worldwide system for the entire world to see and do what they like with is awful. Whilst having friends all over the world sounds appealing, having friends we have never met and are never likely to challenges our understanding of what friends are. Just because you hang out in Doom Forest killing dwarves from the opposite faction each evening doesn't, in our traditional book, constitute a friendship.

Naturally, with so many news stories about the terrible things that happen as a result of the internet, with people masquerading as children in an attempt to lure them into meeting up in the real world, and then never seen again. If you have considered the idea of simply binning the computer and saving a lot of trouble, you certainly wouldn't be the first parent, or the only one to have such concerns.

Of course, the truth is that computers, and the internet, are no more dangerous than any other aspect of our lives. Yes, we could easily get knocked down and killed crossing the road, a tree might fall over and crush us, or we might go on holiday and get killed by a falling coconut, but we stand more chance of being killed in any of these ways than of any harm coming to us using a computer or the internet. It's simply a matter of common sense. After all, crossing the road is a fairly straightforward and relatively safe procedure, but lying down in the middle of the motorway is clearly being ludicrously cavalier with our safety. Similarly, using the internet safely is fine, but there are stupid things that we, or our children, can do which we need to be aware of.

What are the dangers or risks involved in using the internet, or computers, and exactly what can we as parents do to try to ensure that our children can enjoy using this amazing resource, whilst at the same time staying as safe as possible? The key to safety is understanding - whatever it is you're doing. Whether it's driving on the motorway, parachuting or flying to the moon, the more you understand the risks, the less risk you'll be taking. By understanding what it is that your children are doing, and knowing what they mean by avatars, profiles, chat rooms, messenger programs and online games, you will be able to share your child's experiences much more, and help them to use the internet more safely. The more we can work with our children to encourage them to use the technology in a positive way, but understanding the dangers and risks, the more chance we have of helping to ensure their safety, enabling them to decide themselves on the level of risk.

In just the same way that we tell children not to talk to strangers, not to accept sweets from people they don't know, not to go out alone, but to stay with a friend, to report anyone acting strangely, and other basics to help them stay safe when out and about in our own neighbourhoods, making sure that they realise that people they communicate with on the internet have the advantage of anonymity and can disguise themselves far more easily online than they could in real life. A 12 year old boy your child bumps into at the park is clearly exactly that - he needs no further proof to back up his claim, and is therefore probably quite safe as a friend. However, someone online who claims to be a 12 year old boy has only words to prove it, and a photo which could easily be lifted from any of the billions of sources on the internet.

Possibly you may already be aware of the fact that there is a wealth of security software available for parents. These enable you to lock down and protect your computer, installing filters and logs, restrictions and blocking tools, guards and scanners, but to be honest most of this will simply cause our children to be ever more curious about what really is on the other side of the wall you've built. We were children once, and we know that the first thing you want to do if told not to look over the wall, is to look over the wall, and most children are smart enough to work out a way of getting past the security. A far more effective way of supporting and protecting them is to communicate with them. To have the computer somewhere publically visible so that you can see what they're doing, share an interest, and talk with them, is far better than trying to lock everything down and then running away to pretend the dangers will go away.

Article Source: http://www.yesparenting.com/articles

There are lots of parents blogs on the internet and some provide very useful information on everything to do with kids. From advice on illness, nightmares, education and lots more. Take a look, from kids to teens, great stuff.

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