by Glenn Caleval

While trying to create a safer environment for your children, it is vital to keep at the forefront of your mind who they are; what stage of life, what natural inclinations, what personality and sensitivities.

For example, teens naturally resist control from their parents. And all children are hypersensitive to parental tone and body language. Because they do not have the sophistication of adults that comes simply from years of experience, children frequently interpret adult anxiety as blame.

Loud voices from parents always mean trouble. This is easy to understand since loud voices have been the warning signal from parents to children long before language was invented. We are hardwired to to react completely unconsciously to shouting.

You need to start by voicing what you already know: your child is doing nothing “wrong.”

Even if you have a teenager caught up in a predatory internet relationship, you know that your child has done nothing wrong. The predator has done something wrong, but your child is simply being a teenager. It is important that your child knows that you know this, believes that you are not trying to assign blame or punish.

So remain calm, loving and understanding throughout your efforts, regardless how resistant, angry or petulant the child may present.

Probably the greatest challenge you face is getting genuine buy-in to the need for specific actions and behaviors. Teenager almost universally see such efforts as intrusions into their lives, parents who don’t understand or who are being unfair.

If you do not adequately take account of this normal set of reactions, your interventions could generate more difficult problems. If you have a teen that is involved in a risky internet relationship and you overreach their ability to comply, you could even trigger a runaway episode. (If you have a child that is completely beyond your influence, you must get outside help. This advice is directed at normal and difficult children, not kids with serious emotional or behavioral problems.)

Therefore, it is important not to overreact or to allow your child to believe you are overreacting. Work hard at providing a logic the child can at least understand, if not willingly agree with. You know your own children best and so you are uniquely qualified to understand or discover what kinds of logic will be most effective. Here are some examples to stimulate your thinking:

* Would it be interfering in your life if we made sure you had a good parachute before you went skydiving? Your skis were safe and the buckles secure before we watched you ski down the hill? That we have gotten you proper pads/helmet so you can play football/hockey/etc safely? That your seat belt is fastened when you are in the car? That we have the tools necessary to ensure the food you eat is not bad — is the refrigerator an interference in your life? There are many, many things we do that are designed to protect the family, and you really do know that it is not because we don’t trust you or are trying to control your life. The things we are talking about are just another version of the fridge.

* Would you try to get us to leave the house if you knew there was a chance of dangerous gas from a leak of some kind — would you try even if we didn’t want to go and didn’t believe you? Think about the idea — you are coming home from school and you see a tanker truck spilled in the street and police are warning people to get out and get away because it is leaking dangerous, but invisible gas. Would you try to get the family out of danger? And what if we thought you were pulling a prank and we weren’t willing to go along with it, would you say you don’t want to try to control us and let us possibly get injured? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to save us even though we did not believe you or understand your concern? The things we are trying to do are simply trying to protect you from dangers that neither you nor we can see.

* Is it fair that the whole family be put at risk to suit any one of us? These safeguards are not just about protecting you; they are to protect us all. Have you not read or heard about the terrible things that have happened to some families from identity theft? Families have lost everything because they were not monitoring what they were doing on the internet and in the comfort of a casual chat they give out enough information to expose themselves. This applies as much to us as it does to you. We are going to be monitoring ourselves as well. Do all of us, including you, not have some responsibility to put the safety of the family ahead of our own personal wishes?

Remember that teens are very jealous of their privacy. Perhaps when you were a teenager you had a sign on your bedroom door that proclaimed “No Entry!” Lots of us did. It is this privacy concern that is likely to cause the most friction with your teenager. Teenagers imagine they have many secrets, that their lives are so different from their parents that they cannot tolerate the thought of intrusion. They engage in banter of which they know parents would not approve, and so they feel they have these very private conversations. Girls might gossip about boys and are mortified at the thought the parents would see it. Boys talk about girls, sometimes in disrespectful ways — and they know it’s not acceptable so they must hide it.

For your teenagers, monitoring software is no different than placing a wiretap on the phone to listen in on their telephone conversations.

To make progress against these ingrained and natural inclinations, it may be helpful to depersonalize the computer and introduce some reality to the nature of the internet.

First, the computer is a piece of equipment for broad audience use. It is not a one-to-one connection like a telephone. It is more like the television than the telephone and it should be treated as such. If you have accepted our advice about the location of computers in the home, this will be much easier to communicate. In fact appropriately located computers can dramatically reduce all of the barriers you will face in protecting the family on the internet.

Consider allowing your teenager to monitor your internet activity. If you apply monitoring to your own accounts, you can show that it is not about intrusion or control. If you need to use the internet in ways you do not want the child to be able to review, log on under the Administrator account and keep that account free of monitoring. But ensure that you use your “regular user account” enough that there is something for the child to actually review. If your internet habits are like most parents, the child will soon get bored with checking up on you.

Enlist teens in protecting their younger siblings.

Explore the rest of the Secure Surfing content.