How old are these kids?
Okay, I'm a software developer as well and my husband is a server/network administrator. Needless to say, we have computers all over the house. We have a 5 and a 7 year old who have computer access. Their computer is set-up so that they can only go to certain websites. But, this is not the main focus of our parenting. Because, they can get on my computer, the library computer, friends' computer, or everywhere else they can get a hand on a computer.
Our parenting is directed at teaching the kids to choose properly. Lately, we have been teaching them the good and bad of certain games. Their friend showed them adventurequest.com in their house and they came home telling me about it. I went to the site and found some games that are too violent. So, I had to sit down and talk to them about avoiding those games and they told me, yes, they know about that, so they don't play those games. So far so good. We had a family home evening several times that explained the dangers of youtube.com (a lot of youtube videos are imbedded in certain reptile sites that they have access to in their computer). We had several discussions on computer bullies. We have the same discussions on what's on TV and movies. We watched Transformers in the theater and the m-word came up which made my sons question what it meant, we had to figure out a kid-friendly explanation for it. Our long time male family friend came out last weekend with his boyfriend. I had to explain that to the kids as well.
My point is, I can't stop our children from being exposed to all these things. Our purpose is to eventually make it so that they will "police themselves" when they get to be teen-agers. Because, if your kids are teen-agers and they still don't know to avoid questionable sites so that you feel the need to play "Big Brother" on them, then the battle is already lost. And I think that is sad. If after all these preparation I am doing and the kids still choose the bad stuff, then, it is their agency and all I can do is hope and pray that they come back to the fold very soon.
Just my 2 cents.
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