parental surfing tips

 

Before your child begins to Surf the Internet

• 1 Support and encourage your child's use of the Internet, and participate in their new learning experiences. Acquaint yourself with their online pals and email habits. Be aware of all correspondence with strangers and friends.
• 2 Parents, teach yourselves about the Internet. Many libraries and online sites offer information that cover logging on to the Internet, searching for information, and what sorts of places you can visit online (e.g. web sites, chat rooms, email). If your kids are more familiar with the Internet than you are (which is quite possible), doing a little work ahead of time will pay off when it's time to talk to them about online safety.
• 3 Kids just starting computing like pre-schoolers and younger grade school students should probably be supervised during their Internet experiences. A good policy might be to stick to trusted websites like Nickelodeon, Children's Television Workshop (Sesame Street) and similar familiar areas.
• 4 If kids want to buy from the web, there are several companies that offer online bank accounts that you can "seed" with money for them, and empower them to shop on their own. You still control the amount of money they can spend.
• 5 One of the best recommendations is to keep any computers with Internet access in a common room, rather than in a bedroom or someplace where there is too much privacy. Obviously, parental involvement in what your kids are doing is also vitally important. See what they are doing, and whey they are going in cyberspace.
• 6 Consider installing many of the freeware filters that are available. Using these free source filters, you can keep content available to only what you allow your child to see. However, this is no substitute for good parental involvement.
• 7 Make sure your children are aware of online rules. They should know never to give out their real name, address and/or telephone number, or agree to meet with someone person to person. Advise your children that some people on the Internet conceal their real age and identity. Create a list of online rules and post them by the computer.

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