by Dennis Harter
dennish@isb.ac.th
On May 3rd, we held a PTA meeting focused on online behaviors and concerns related to middle school aged children. We brought together parents with counselors, technology specialists, and administrators to share what parents should know about sexting and online dangers, as well as some strategies for parents to work with their children on staying safe.
The session was divided into 3 themes:
- What is normal development for 11-14 year olds?
- What behaviors, apps, and dangers are out there?
- What can parents do to help keep children safe?
We also shared resources and articles that might be helpful. They are linked in this article. Hopefully the session prompted some healthy conversations at home between parents and child.
Here is the video of the presentation.
Here are the slides from the presentation, which you can click through as you go, or refer to later (it may be hard to read the slides in the video).
Here are links to the resources shared at the end of the presentation.
- Sample smart phone agreement
- 10 Realities about Bullying Online and at School
- 11 Facts about Sexting
- 12 Home Technology Expectation Poster
- “Catfishing” Apps
- “Growing up in Pornland” article
- Raising Children Website
- ‘Friends’ on Facebook: Parent Do’s and Don’t’s
- Parent Concerns from Common Sense Media
- Cell Phone Parenting from Common Sense Media
- “Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children” article
- notAnoobie – Singaporean website on technology and kids
One key theme was around parents modeling the behaviors they wanted to see from their children. Kids want their parents to be present in their lives too (even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like that). One way we talked about doing this was ensuring that meal time is completely device free and more importantly face-to-face engaged with you and your children.