Giving New Meaning to Parenting

Ahoy! I have much to say this week, on a topic close to my heart, but I’ve been travelling, and have jet-lag, wedding-party lag, an airline-induced cold, AND my husband backed up and re-installed my computer while I was away to fix some bugs and now I have to find all of the links and notes that I was using for this post! Where are they? I am grateful to get my computer looked after, though; it needs a sensible person to tidy it up from time to time. I tend to be a bit, um, creative, in my filing and backup process.

Speaking of computers… How enormous their effects on our lives have been! It’s funny, because as a family, we removed TV and visual media from our lives when my first son, Chas, was a year old. He had been exposed to very, very little TV before then, and my research and experience, and the fact that we lived in a sunny place with plenty of outdoor play, made “No TV” an easy decision. Of course, as the boys grew up, that meant “No Videogames” and “No Internet” too. As time went on, and more studies showed that “television and computer game exposure affect children’s sleep and deteriorate verbal cognitive performance”, we just went on our merry media-less way. The boys showed many signs of having very little screen time: enthusiastic readers with huge vocabularies, strategy-game enthusiasts and none of that rude sassiness As Shown On TV. They had each other to play with, as well as a constant stream of cousins and friends who came to play and stay, saying that our house was the most fun in the world. They built things, waged wars, did terrifying things with bikes, dressed up and fell out of trees, and were as happy as can be.

Later, when Chas was ten and the other boys eight and six, we got a big-screen desktop computer with all the bells and whistles, and internet. “This should be interesting”, was my take on the matter.

It has been; VERY interesting. The speed with which the kids learned to use the computer and the internet made fools of anyone who felt that kids were deprived if they didn’t learn computers young (Hey, the one brief time my brother and I had a computer when we were kids, we took it apart to see how it worked, put it back together and it melted down in clouds of acrid smoke. And now, we both use computers and the internet heavily in our chosen professions. Of course, neither of us became programmers. But it does go to show that computer success at a young age is highly overrated.)

Computers are logical devices and any bright kid will have them figured out in no time. Middle boy Sam was soon being asked at school to help his teachers to find “Lost” programs and tidy up desktops. He shows a real interest in computers and programming. The flip side of this is that he tends to become completely absorbed in the screen, and will sit there, not eating or sleeping, until he’s removed by a Responsible Adult.

The system on our computer, and later, on the two laptops, used Windows ‘Vista’ Parental Controls and the computers were always used in full sight of grownups, but still, there have been times when I wondered about the influence of this media. Up to the time that we got computers I was in charge of the boys’ education: I read them stories and texts that I thought they should be hearing. With the internet, though, it was out of my hands. The boys quickly became avid fans of Eddie Izzard and learned the effective usage of several cusswords; and one day they were, with a few cousins, looking for something animated on YouTube and there was a sudden hush – when I looked over there was animated skeleton sex. “Go play outside, guys”, I sighed, hitting the ‘x’ button, but the damage was done. Some sites that are marketed to kids, like Nickelodeon’s Addicting Games site, have some horribly violent and gory games featured among the ‘okay’ ones and if you’re not watching your child play you’ll never realize it. Worse, kids think that if it’s animated on a kids’ site then it must be perfectly okay and normal. Addicting Games encourages game writers to upload to their site, so perhaps some get through their screening process, but I eventually blocked the site completely from the kids’ screen when I saw the boys, yet again, playing a game where you get the most points by killing someone with the most gore and blood. I don’t care if it’s animated. I’m into peace and love, baby.

In a way, I don’t mind the exposure. This is Education too. It’s a big world out there, full of weirdoes. Realizing that the internet doesn’t always give you what you’re looking for is like falling off a bike; it just makes you more careful next time. It also made me more careful, as Responsible Adult. I do look over their shoulder, I do warn them, and I still have pretty strict parental controls on the kids’ screens. Don’t trust these controls to catch everything, though. Watch your child! We’ve all heard the tales and watched the news about sickos who lure kids out of their homes via chat rooms, and just a few clicks or an innocent internet search can take you a child to an adult site.

Our conversion to media-using family was complete when we decided to homeschool the boys for a term before we moved to the UK. The desktop and two laptops were central to our math classes and the boys began to learn to touch-type with the marvelous Typing Instructor for Kids. Any subject could be enriched using information and images found on the internet, and youngest son’s reading improved rapidly with daily reading aloud from a real book and playing reading and literacy games online.

A few game sites do appear to be almost 100% safe:

Club Penguin is a virtual world where you can become a penguin for free, play games for coins, and buy virtual stuff. With membership (which you have to pay for with real plastic), you have more cool options. Club Penguin is policed by live moderators and chat is filtered: “If you say a bad word you get banned automatically!” says son Sam, “And if you are being mean, a moderator can report you.” Of course, there sneaky ways of being mean, but it seems as though the moderators on Club Penguin are savvy and do a good job. The arcade-style games are fun and I’m certain that reading and typing skills can be improved by using the site. I would recommend this site for all school-age kids.

Moshi Monsters is similar to Club Penguin: A virtual world peopled by cute “Monsters”, where you can play arcade games and collect ‘rox’ currency to buy things for your virtual monster house. I like that if you plant the right things in your garden you can attract new pet “Moshlings”, that’s unusually environmentally-minded! “Chat” is in the form of messages posted to your friends’ bulletin boards, and can be seen by your other friends. These messages are filtered by the system, and it is possible to report content to a moderator. This site seems to be quite safe and fun, and I can recommend it for confident readers. For both Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters you will need an email address to set up your free profile, and your child will immediately start begging you for Membership… which of course is NOT free!

Of course, there are still reasons to keep an eye on your child while they play. Chat, like playing, can lead to bullying, and a kid who’s being bullied is not often likely to report it to a moderator. It’s important to know what your child is saying to others, and to explain that we should be kind to others even in virtual reality.

Children can practice skills like reading, budgeting and math on these sites, and many of the games are supposedly “educational”. But computer use can never replace real hands-on learning, and educational videogames, like other screen time, can cause an increase in emotional disorder problems, decline in vocabulary and verbal skills, attention deficit problems, lower SAT scores, less family interaction, and reduction in REM sleep. Not very encouraging, is it? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two should have NO screen time at all, and older kids should have no more than ‘one or two’ hours of total screen time a day (that’s computer, TV, movies, and videogames all together). In our house, it’s supposed to be half an hour per day, but we often leak over that if we’re doing something cool online or watching a DVD. Half an hour is long enough for most days, I feel. The boys are still outdoorsy and love to read, and I believe that being bored is a wonderful thing.

Other great sites:

Math Playground. Times tables “Invaders”, angle guessing, algebra games and fractions. This is fun!
The BBC Schools Website has Math, English and Science games and tutorials. We used this site when we homeschooled to be sure that the boys were up to date with the British Curriculum. ‘KS1’ is basic literacy and numbers, ‘KS2’ is for age seven or so and up and ‘KS3’ is secondary school. The boys enjoyed completing each level.

Multiplication.com, a site dedicated to the times tables. Memory games and tricks: “Skate x Skate = Sticky Floor” somehow makes SO much sense when you are nine years old!

Funbrain.com has math, but also plenty of cool reading and grammar games and activities. I think that this site would really help kids who ‘hate to read’, and give them confidence. I like the grammar games here.

The internet is also excellent for research.

Wikipedia, of course, has everything a kid wants to know, and can also teach them that you can’t always trust what you read. We have found some very strange and definitely wrong entries in Wikipedia, but they don’t stay there for long! Wikipedia is a great, generally safe, tool for kids to use to learn how the internet works. The internet is created by its users, and kids need to learn to be responsible and discriminating.

For older kids, a Blog is a great way for them to practice publishing their work. My boys have one where they write about their adventures and post photos and poetry, and even recipes! They have even learned how to write simple html, with help. Once again, a Responsible Adult is needed and you’ll have to keep a close eye on what they’re up to. You don’t want them posting their real names or addresses, obviously.

There are so many online games out there that teens and older kids can get into, and some, like Tribal Wars, are really good. The problem with these games is that the more time you spend online, the better your rating in the game, and more online time means less real social and learning time for kids. My husband and the older boys (Chas is now 12) play together, so Dad can keep an eye on Son’s village and let him know if the enemy is about to attack. My husband has met youngsters in the game who aren’t ready for the stress of having their villages absolutely wiped out, though, and I question the wisdom of allowing kids free roaming on these games. I’m sure the grownups get irritated, too, at having to deal with the questions and pleas of kids. “Please don’t wipe out my village, I’ll do anything. I’ll pay you taxes. I’ll be your slave!” wrote one boy to his powerful enemy. I wanted to call his Mom. The Tribal Wars community is mostly responsible and smart, but there is NO moderation or filter on chat. If you let your kid play these games, you should play too. (Me, I stay out of it and sing ‘Peace and Love!!’. The boys and their dad ignore me and plot the destruction of the neighboring villages with 476 archers and 5 catapults and have the scouts returned?)

Is the internet safe? No, not really. It’s like riding a bike: a kid can skin his knees, bump his head, or even be hit by a car. But you, the parent, can make your kid safer. You wouldn’t say “SURE you can ride in the road!” and send them out without a helmet and some serious instructions, would you? In the same way, the internet can be made safer. Your instruction is your kid’s helmet, and looking over his shoulder at the screen, you’ll see that car coming. Just like riding a bike, the internet can be seriously fun and wildly educational, and together, parents and their kids can learn how to use it.

What other sites would you recommend, dear readers? And which ones would you block?

by Nan Sheppard

Photo graciously provided by fd, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved