Parental Controls

[Ravenfire]

Do you use parental controls for your children or do you think its not needed?

Do your children go online on their own and how much do you monitor and trust them not to go to inappropriate sites?

If you do use parental controls which ones do you use?

[darwins]

personaly i dont belive in them, my attitude is that i wouldnt let my kids to play own their own until they were old enough as its not safe, i take the same view with the net, they can use it, but not on there own

[wokkies]

big ds and dd have their own pc's in bedrooms big ds discovered that i could check his cookies and find out what sites he went on but he is 17 now but he mainly uses his pc for messenger, dd is paranoid because she thinks we know which sites she goes on because her pc is connected via a hub in the kitchen as is big ds's and we can pull the plug anytime, and little ds is BANNED from the laptop and only comes on my pc if i am right next to him, sorry waffling again

[essexgirl]

i set up dd on aol parent control and there a chat room on there so now i let her go on mine but she is only 8 and just looks up things for school or plays game i was so shocked to find a chat room on the parents controled siteshrugshoulders111

[Appalachia]

No parental control on tv. If i don't like what they are watching and think it's inappropriate or gross, I tell them to change it.

As to the internet, They get 1 hour each on friday and 4 hours of game time on saturday. I use winspy now that they are 14, 15 and 17. They know if they go somewhere I don't like, they will lose thier privelege.

Only problem is, when internet was first introduced to the public school system, we parents had to sign a permission slip. I declined to allow my child to use it as how can 1 instructor monitor 30+ students on the internet. Now our consent isn't needed and unfortunately, the Montgomery county Public School system has the highest porn hit rate then commercial or private users in the area.
jawdown1234

In short, my hands are tied to prevent them from seeing or going to site I don't approve of and the schools attempts to restrict sites are hampered by computer savy kids who know how to get around it using proxy's etc... :no:

[Easties]

i dont let jack use my pc as tbh i do think he is too young but just lately he has been going on google at school ect so i think i am going to start letting him use it BUT only with 100 percent supervision so i wont use any of these parental controls just yet

i do think they should be used for older kids from about the age of 10 (ish) as my neice (dps sister yes that one lol) was using msn and had a guy on there that was asking her to turn her webcam on otherwise he wouldnt talk to her anymore it turned out he was in his 20's (she was only 10 at the time i think) and she had been going into adult chat rooms whilst her mother was sat next to her on the sofa glued to the telly !!!!!!

i am very funny though when it comes to computer games and certain films
i wont let jack play any games that are age rated higher than 7 and films i have to watch certain ones first before i let him watch them but normally he dont watch any that are higher than PG unless i have checked them out first

of course i get slated because i wont let him play grand theft auto becuase its rated 18 and is full of guns and swearing but his 8 year old and 9 year old cousins are allowed to play it because their parents allow it so im being an over protective mum and over reacting but when my son comes out and says to his cousin a little while back i will f.ck you up it says it all really he had been playing it at his cousins house after staying there one night even though i was promised it would be put up out of reach !!!!!! but as usual i was over reacting

[angel1980]

Hmm I'm not sure tbh, I think it has controls on images, I should check really. Ds does use the pc, usually when I'm here watching although once he did go online and googled games and found himself on FHM website, big oops!!!! (didn't see anything dodgy though as was playing a game and we caught him before he saw anything else, lol) Since then we have restricted him to a few sites which we've checked out first. :happy72: Usually he plays on cbbc or cartoon network.

Would not let him have a pc in his room for a long time and/or use chatrooms or msn.

[Appalachia]

of course i get slated because i wont let him play grand theft auto becuase its rated 18 and is full of guns and swearing but his 8 year old and 9 year old cousins are allowed to play it because their parents allow it so im being an over protective mum and over reacting but when my son comes out and says to his cousin a little while back i will f.ck you up it says it all really he had been playing it at his cousins house after staying there one night even though i was promised it would be put up out of reach !!!!!! but as usual i was over reacting

I had the same challanges with my kids cousins when they were smaller and now I have to defend my stand against what thier friends parents allow thier friends to do. Favorite line from my 17 year old dd, "It's not that serious mom". I'll be the judge of that :D

[bonjovibabe]

My ds has a pc in his room but it is not connected to the net. If He needs to look at thing for school, he uses either dp`s pc or my laptop but one of us is always with him as he doesn`t know how to work the pc himself. The one in his room has to be turned on and set up for him to use.

[bikemad]

Ds has a pc in his room but no net if he needs the net he uses the pc in the living room or my lappy and if he is online then he is never left alone in the room.When he is a bit older il be putting some kinda software on with parental control.

[sanjan]

Don't have parental controll on this one .

They can use either the main PC or the laptop when it is here.

Cam like going on either pokemon sites or sonic sites mainly but he also has a few others bookmarked like swapits and kids tv sites

Madam uses it either for her course work or things like beebo. meebo or pizco like a lot of her mates. she also goes on swapits as well

[mrsmop]

We have the parental controls set up on bt but l do stay in the room and watch what they are going on it is usually nick and cbeebies, but then my 10 year old has special needs so he is into quite babyish sites and games.

[smirnoff]

we dont have parental controls as marc has said, ben has his own folder of bookmarked sites that we have "vetted" he knows who he can talk to on msn.. and thats all .. hes really good and knows that if he goes against what we have said then he loses use of the computer...

[Jen]

No parental control here, Ds has PC in his room and Dd uses her lap top down stairs, she is usuallly on cartoon network so not much to worry about there.

[nicholamarie]

all mine go on the internet, we have parental controls on and they play mainly on there own but we do keep an eye on them and so far no problems, they dont surf the net though as they have games they play set in their tool bar and mainly play on them

[storm]

Ds1 who's nearly 11 only goes on the pc with me or dp watching at all times.