Child Safety Online - Crucial Decisions For Parents

Discussions of child safety are more frequently focusing on the issue of online safety.  Between these two topics, child safety and online safety, parents are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

Parents must forever struggle with the ever-shifting balance between control and autonomy for their children.  But as television's Dateline shows with it's "To Catch a Predator" segment, parents must take an evermore proactive role in assuring their children's safety online.

The first steps parents must take to assure their children's safety online are to:

* Talk openly about the issue of online safety.

* Be honest (but not overly alarming) about their concerns for the child's safety.

* Set some basic rules about not sharing personal or family information with online acquaintances (what school they go to, their address, etc.).

These are the first steps, but parents must remember that the predator's game is a confidence game.  It is a con game, one that can threaten any child's safety.  The predator may appear as just another player in an online game, building trust through shared interest and activity.  Or they might be the sympathetic, reassuring ear to a frustrated teen's complaints in a chat room.  Or they may be explicitly teasing and tempting, seemingly treating the teen as the adult she wants to be.  Whatever the tactic, the underlying goal is to build rapport and trust.

Children, even well informed children, are extremely vulnerable to this kind of subtle seduction.

Because of this natural and normal vulnerability parents may well need to take additional steps to assure their child's safety online.  Probably the single most important thing parents can do is to keep the computer that their child uses in a public area of the house, not the child's bedroom.

Such a change may well create tension for both child and parent.  Everyone likes to have their own space.  Growing children increasingly desire privacy.  And parents certainly don't mind having a bit of peace and quite while the kids are in their rooms studying, playing or surfing online.  Despite the difficulties this basic decision is probably the single most effective step parents can take to assure their child's safety online.

Naturally, it is best to implement these measures as early in the child's life as possible so that these are accepted norms rather than rude awakenings.

In addition to this, or perhaps as an alternative to relocating the computer, parent's need to establish that the computer is not the child's private domain.  Parents should install one of the parent control software packages that are available.

Net Nanny or PC Tattle Tale, for example, are programs that allow parents to either block or filter specific sites or specific content.  Some of these packages even allow the parent to monitor computer usage remotely.

All parental control software programs keep logs of activities for review.  Some even provided frequent screen captures that are played back as a rapid slideshow so that past use can be viewed graphically.

Child safety online is a real issue.  Online predators are a real threat.  Even if online safety comes with the price having to endure normal resistance to such changes it is a small price to pay for keeping your child safe online.