The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting |
| Parents need to be Internet-savvy Posted: 07 Dec 2011 12:05 AM PST It's time parents became enlightened about the power of the Internet on their children. MAKING front-page news in The Star on Oct 12 was the findings by the international security specialist Norton that more than half of Malaysians are in the dark over what their children are up to when they are surfing the Internet. This is the realistic scenario today: teens and tweens spend half of their waking hours in cyberspace, while parents unfamiliar with the Internet gradually lose confidence in parenting because they do not know what their children are up to, and cannot understand why they seem so disconnected from the family. So I thought it might be helpful to summarise the "happenings" in the cyber world in a comprehensive manner so that when we communicate with them, we appear to be more in touch with what they are familiar with. Searching for information on the Internet When teens/tweens encounter a question, they are increasingly searching the Internet for information and learning, including for school projects and homework. Among the popular Internet search tools are Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Wikipedia. While it is an excellent and convenient tool, the Internet contains both good and bad information. Teach your teens/tweens to discern between the healthy and harmful material. If you are new to this, catch up with your teens/tweens by learning how to search online. Go to www.google.com and type "searching Internet" to find useful tutorials. Communicating on the Internet Your teens/tweens may also be busy chatting online. Live video and audio conferencing is available to any Internet user through Windows Live Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, and many other chat programmes. While we may know their friends in real life, we also need to pay attention to their online relationships. Set up a Window Live ID or other chat programmes to connect regularly with your teens/tweens while at work or overseas and you will find yourself in a much better position to understand and help your teens/tweens. Socialising on the Internet What else are our teens/tweens doing on the Internet? Interacting with people via online social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace has become very common now. Online social networks are a great avenue to help us find and connect with our ex-schoolmates and old friends; get instant updates about the latest happenings in a friend's life; search for and join communities with similar interests; and gather and keep in touch with friends and family all over the world. If you do not have a Facebook or Twitter account, set up one at www.facebook.com or www.twitter.com . Start searching for family and friends on Facebook or you may even want to plan a reunion via the site! Gaming on the Internet What is your teens/tweens' favourite pastime? The answer is ... computer games! Bingo! Computer games are so popular because they have impressive graphics and sound, an engaging storyline, and feature motion controllers that make the game play very realistic. In fact, many teens/tweens are moving on to play Massively Multi-Player Online Games (MMOGs) which include Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like MapleStory and World Of Warcraft as well as social games such as Second Life. Unlike most computer games, you cannot win in an MMOG, but you can get better. As their game characters learn new skills and acquire weapons, they level up in the game and gamers feel more powerful. At the same time, you cannot lose in MMOG. When the characters "die", they can be resurrected and the game continues. Hence, gamers get absorbed in "living" their virtual character as they immerse in the fantasy world. As the gamer engages in role-playing, it is therefore highly addictive. If your teens/tweens are already playing MMOGs, ask them to help you create a Maple story character and try "levelling up" a character from 1 to 25. It's free and before you know it, you may get hooked on it yourself! Commerce on the Internet The Internet is a huge market place where people buy and sell without going through middlemen. Online shopping is here to stay. While we may have taught our school-going children to manage their pocket money and count their change, it is also important to teach them the basics of online security. The first rule of thumb is to teach them to handle money responsibly. When you think they are ready, the tween years (between eight and 12) is a good time to expose them to online shopping. As they surf for bargains, we can show them the secure modes of payment. As a parent, I believe in getting in there first to educate the teens/tweens rather than waiting for them to discover on their own and make a wrong choice. Hopefully, the above will provide a peek into the cyber world and help parents to be more aware of their teens/tweens' online activities, thereby moving out of the dark into light. – Reference: Cyber Wellness Handbook For Parents at www.planetcrush.org/resources Charis Patrick is a trainer and family life educator who is married with four children. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Use common sense in setting family size Posted: 06 Dec 2011 10:41 PM PST The choice of the number of kids a family wants is entirely its own, and not open for discussion. DO I want a number three? It's a Chinese thing. I have two girls, and therefore I must be hankering for a third child who will hopefully be male. Now, why would people think something silly like that? On the other side of the coin, parents with boys must face the same question: whether they're trying for a girl next. I think that's a rather rude question to ask, in the same league with "Do you prefer a boy or a girl?" and the classic, "Oh, don't worry, you can always try for a girl/boy next time." I enjoyed both my pregnancies, and loved the fact that I didn't have to suck in my tummy when I wore tight-fitting clothes. Because the bump was supposed to show! But to get pregnant again just so I don't have to suck in and to fulfil some archaic custom that you need children of both sexes to be complete, seriously? And I don't need to give the whole spiel about both genders being equal and that preferring a child of one gender over the other is old-fashioned and simply wrong. We all know it. I love boys. I have nephews whom I love, and a lot of my friends have adorable little boys. All is good. There is balance in the world. There are boys out there who will one day grow up to be good men, and my daughters may even deem them worthy as equals and partners. But I love my girls more. For now, I am relishing my freedom as they grow and become more independent. I can start to travel with them and not have to worry about them bawling on a long-haul flight. I can leave them to do their own thing while I do mine, even if it's for half an hour at a time. Trust me, after you've been enslaved to your bundle of joy for the first two-and-a-half years of her life, that half an hour is a luxury. I finally get my life back. Suddenly, I can sleep through the night, because my youngest now sleeps through the night. On most days, I can eat my dinner properly, without having to frantically tear meat and shovel spoonfuls of nutrition into hungry little mouths. On most days. If you see me out at a restaurant, I'm still the manic woman with pasta on my shirt as I try to prevent pasta from getting on my kids' shirts. And I don't order my own meal; I eat my kids' leftovers. I'm sure there will come a day when I can order whatever I like and eat it in its entirety without sprouting a white hair. I can go and catch a movie with my husband again, because the girls have realised they can live without me for three hours without breaking out in hives from separation anxiety. Although I find myself rushing back to see them after the movie, because I still break out in hives from separation anxiety. OK, so my life is not totally mine yet, and it probably will never be. But I have achieved a semblance of normalcy. You want me to throw that away and start over again with a third baby? Not likely. I don't mean for the column this week to be any kind of birth control. If a third, fourth or fifth kid is in your future, go for it! Children are a blessing and a joy. I just don't think I have it in me to be a mother of three, therefore, it's the responsible thing to do to stop at two. Heck, some people are not even fit to be a mother of one, but that's a discourse for another day. And just in case there is another toe I haven't stepped on, how about this? With the inadequacies of our education system, I have to think about private education for my kids. With the steady increase of our standard of living, and a salary scale that doesn't seem to rise in tandem, unfortunately, I can only afford to educate two kids if I go private. Since we're on the subject of toe stepping, the next time you see a glowing pregnant woman, have some sense and don't ask her if she's expecting a boy or a girl, and don't give her a 10-watt smile if it's a boy and a five-watt smile if it's a girl. Just tell her she looks great and to have a nice day. Oh, and don't ask to touch her bump. Would you like it if random people asked to touch your bumpy bits? Elaine Dong is happy with two and will let you know if she changes her mind. She blogs at www.angelolli.com. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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