Parenting 101: The Internet & Your Child

There are times in a parents' life where you are confronted with a situation, and it suddenly hits you, "Holy crap, this is one of those moments that you always see on tv and that other parents talk about! Now I'm that parent! I have to figure out how to handle this. What did they say on that commercial? Doh!"

The other night I'd went downstairs to let the boys know it was time to hit the sack and as I knocked on their door then went in, I noticed Gunnar on the computer, hastily closing a window and trying to look nonchalant. Ahhhh crap... I busied myself tidying their room as they got ready for bed, then I casually asked, "So what were you doing on the computer, Gunnar? Nothing bad, I hope! Ha ha." half joking, half serious.

He mumbled and muttered, not quite giving me an answer, and so I told him he needed to show me. He looked so scared and guilty that I thought FOR SURE I'd find porn sites or naked chick pictures. Turns out he was online chatting, or instant messaging (IM), with a couple of girls from his school. I quickly skimmed through the conversations, and it was like suddenly I was transported back to grade five again, with all the drama and social politics and boy-girl dynamics.

So what did you do for Easter, Gunnar?
Nothing.
Do you miss school?
No.
Jenny won't stop calling me, its soooo annoying!
Oh.

I was a little confused at first about why Gunnar would be acting so "nervous and allergic" (family joke) about the IMs, but then it hit me. Holy crap, my ten year old boy is CHATTING ONLINE with people. I was now that parent, in that situation. All the warnings and advice on how to deal with it, ran through my head. I had to deal with this situation NOW, and I had no clue how to go about it.

Parenting is so much easier when you're doing simple things for your child like cooking meals, helping with homework, washing their clothes, or doing fun stuff like playing soccer or baseball with them, going quadding or fishing, all that. But then you come across a situation like this, and its hits you that this is what true parenting is all about. You must figure out some way to guide your child, to give them the advice, the words they need to hear to help them grow and mature. You have to give them solid boundaries of what is allowed and what's not, rules to keep them safe, yet you want to promote and encourage their independence and free-thinking. There is a fine line between keeping them safe and stifling them. I know this from my own experiences as a child and teenager, and so I'm always very careful when dealing with matters that are in that gray area.

So the first thing I did was have Gunnar go over the rules of internet safety with me. I know that his school is big on that and he had no problem rattling them off for me: never give out any personal information, such as address or phone number, don't chat online with people you don't know, etc. But most kids don't know that even telling someone something like the name of your sports team and what number you are, or where your next game is, or the name of your favorite park, those are all things that internet predators will ask on purpose so they can pinpoint your location. The main rule with internet chatting is that he is only allowed to IM with friends he knows from school, or hockey. No chat rooms. No making new friends online that you've never seen before and don't actually know. I rattled off another (made-up but probably somewhat true) fact that over half of all the people in 'kids' chat rooms are actually adults, internet predators disguising themselves as children so they can track down these kids and kidnap and molest them, sometimes even kill them. (That scared Gunnar, and it was good because I wanted him scared.)

The next matter I wanted to address with Gunnar was a little tricky. I told him that I understood if he got 'curious' sometimes, but that if he is going to inappropriate websites with sex and/or violence, that his computer records that information, and it becomes part of its history. And if the computer ever needs to be fixed, the technicians can see what sites have been visited, and he could get into trouble. (So I fudged the details a bit and didn't tell him you can delete the history, why would I?) This kind of freaked him out a bit and immediately he confessed that when one of their friends was over last week, the friend googled the word 'sex', and that both my boys had gotten mad at him and made him get off the computer. He didn't say whether or not they closed the window with the google search results, but I let the matter drop, haha.

I also told him that its possible for a parent to bring up any and all IM windows, from past to present, and read the full conversations. (I don't know if that's true or not, but its certainly an excellent deterrent for anything inappropriate.) But seeing the two IM convos he had going with those girls, I'm not too concerned about anything of a sexual nature. If anything, it was kind of cute and amusing, the girls were chatty and obviously desperate for Gunnar to actually "talk" to them; instead, he was being a typical 10y.o. boy with his mono-syllabic and dull answers. Yet another thing that brings me back to the days of calling up a boy and spending half an hour chatting his ear off while he says 'yes', 'no', 'okay'. Despite the one-sidedness of it though, both parties are usually satisfied. The girl is thinking 'He likes me!' and the boy is thinking the same.

So the next thing for me to do was to check his email inbox. And lucky for me, every single email he'd ever received since setting up his account was still in there. Turned out the poor kid didn't know how to delete them (kinda funny seeing as the 'delete' button was obvious). But before I looked at them all, before I even opened his account, I made sure to tell him that I didn't like having to invade his privacy like this, but as a parent I had to, for his own safety and protection. And that if I was going to discover anything inappropriate or of that nature, that he'd better tell me now and explain the circumstances of why he'd be receiving it and who would be sending it. Thank God he was able to tell me in utter honesty that there was nothing like that. I don't know how I would have handled that.

Most of the emails were from relatives, but I noticed that there were quite a few from those two same girls that he'd been IMing. Read through some of them, boring mindless drivel like 'this is the friendship circle, forward to ten people and you'll have good luck' -- ugh, I hate emails like that! I advised Gunnar to just instantly delete crap like that, don't even bother passing it on, its a total crock that you'll get bad luck or good luck or whatever. He agreed. I also told him that if he does choose to forward an email, that the first thing he should do is to delete all the email addresses of the prior recipients, because its kind of like invading their privacy to send an email to someone with huge massive lists of other people's emails addy's on there. That is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. If I get an email and I have to scroll down through hundreds of email addresses of total strangers, just to get to the message of the email, I usually just delete the email rather than read it. Sorry, but true!

I adjusted the safety and privacy controls on his email and IM account, we cleaned up the look of his contact list (took off all the last names of his friends, to protect their safety and privacy), etc. It was actually a lot of fun, me and Gunnar bonding over our love of computers, haha. Internet geeks, we called ourselves.

But you know, once he realized I wasn't there to lecture him, or punish him, or to prevent him from having an "electronic life", he totally chilled out and really listened to me. The things I was telling him, the advice, the hints and things I've learned to do and not to do, he actually appreciated. Of course, I had to warn him that, although I trust him to be 'safe' online and not act inappropriately, I still have the right to check his computer, with or without his knowledge, because I don't trust that others will do the same. And he understood.

Poor Gunnar. The first-born child is always the guinea pig for us parents, facing these first-time situations.