As parents it can be helpful to think of the internet as a giant new city that you have never visited before.

Dear Parents

The cyber safety space is becoming more and more scary and dangerous. To this end we had an excellent presentation by Zareen and Rob Cope at school last Wednesday evening. It was brutally honest and extremely informative. Thank you for those who managed to come out to listen to them. This newsletter contains some good links and information which I urge you, as parents who want to keep your children as safe as possible in the online jungle, to read them and take any necessary steps to keep your family safe.

As parents it can be helpful to think of the internet as a giant new city that you have never visited before. If you were to visit that city you would most likely not leave your child on their own late at night. You would want to be with them and maybe let them loose in one shop at a time and would give them a safety spot to meet you if they did not feel safe. Help your child understand that it is not because you ‘do not trust them’. This is about accountability and accountability does not exist because of an absence of trust. Accountability is all about protection! Accountability gives people the opportunity to show how well they are doing and can safe guard them in the event that they are beginning to go down a track that leads to difficulty without them even realising it. Check the history of your child’s device. This is big! While you might go to the extreme in setting up your home internet like Fort Knox it is all in vain, if your child can access the internet through their phone (and believe me they most likely can!). Set rules around this and understand this. It is VERY easy for a child to set up a ‘hot spot’ with a smart phone and access the internet on any internet capable device through it. One of those difficult things in life is that while we may put all sorts of measures in place at home, there is always that moment that when your child goes to ‘sleepovers' or visits to other homes the same rules do not apply. Once again, the key is trust and accountability. When setting time limits and or dealing with issues of ‘misuse’ consider that the device is like a Swiss army knife. It can be used in many ways. Have tight limits around the ‘entertainment’ (gaming, YouTube, social media...) aspect of the device is important but children have the opportunity to be very creative on the device creating content (movies, music, sound clips, design...) and it can also support new learning through creative and engaging concept reinforcement (Mathematics games, spelling games, reading challenges...).

Some helpful rules for your home could be: no devices in bedrooms, turn off the wi-fi at night. Open communication is so important in helping your child navigate the internet, discussing what is harmful and unsafe and what is okay. Talk about what your child could encounter on the internet, age appropriately, and how they should respond. There is a huge amount of helpful information available for parents around keeping your children safe whilst online.

We need to be careful that we do not fall into the trap of thinking that this will never happen to my child, this is simple quite likely to be untrue. Even in lovely Christian families there are horror stories of what children stumble upon or get involved in, often not deliberately. We need to be vigilant and aware of the dangers. The world has changed and it is our job to protect our tamariki and keep informed.

Some of the above information has come from Shaun Brooker’s book, Keeping your Child/Teen Safe in the Online Jungle

Yours in His service

Sandra Bosman