Dr. Dennis Harding in Auburn, California, successfully treats children and adolescents with mental health issues. His practice is based around a treatment called Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic which uses a magnetic pulse to gently tap the atlas back into alignment.

There is no greater heartache for a parent than the suffering of a broken child. Receive your broken child with a grateful heart because God’s promises are true. He reveals, restores, and heals. When we put our trust in Him first, and then in the experts, the restorative answers for your child can be found.

My youngest son, who is 22 years old today, is my digital native. He cannot imagine a world without WWW connectivity. Throughout his childhood, he had experienced chronic ear infections and periodic bouts of panic, which we discovered two years ago, was the result of a twisted atlas.

Yes. That is what I said. Atlas.

It was a twisted atlas bone (that holds the skull in alignment with the spine) which in his teen years became more severely twisted with sports such that by the time he turned 20 years old, had caused anxiety and insomnia. A twisted atlas crimps the blood supply to the brain, and stymies other neurotransmitter flows between the brain and the body, resulting in various mental health issues, including:

• Migraine headaches
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Panic attacks
• Symptoms of multiple sclerosis*

The stress on his brain, back muscles, and endocrine system was not recognized by traditional western medicine.

This condition had become a stronghold defining his life, robbing him of the joy I knew he had in his heart as a young child. Something wasn’t right, and I knew that there had to be an answer. I knew who my child was, and I also knew who my God is…God gave me a magnificent son, and He would be the one to reveal to me what the problem was so he could be restored and heal.

Casting all your care upon on him, for he careth for you.

1 Peter 5:7

Faith: What you believe matters

So in my mind, I heaped the mountains of fear and anxiety crowding my heart aching for my son’s suffering into a wheel barrow and walked it to the foot of the Cross. (Photo: Comrade Foot -Flickr)

My faith informs me that God’s promises are true, that parenting is a divine appointment and that He never gives us more than we can handle. God doesn’t make mistakes.  Whatever was happening with my son I knew would be used to the good.

So in my mind, I heaped the mountains of fear and anxiety crowding my heart aching for my son’s suffering into a wheel barrow and walked it to the foot of the Cross. I thanked God for my son in all of his suffering, I prayed for revelation about what was wrong and what could be done to restore his health. I declared God’s grace over his entire situation.

And then my son’s heart opened to hear God’s promises from me. And it was revealed to me that the root of my son’s condition was an alignment issue.

Yes. Alignment. What a powerful, healing concept.

Revelation: Understanding the problem leads to healing

For Banana Moments research, I had interviewed and written about an upper cervical specialist in Auburn, Dr. Dennis Harding, who had successfully treated children and adolescents with mental health issues especially where the medication and other treatments including counseling were not working. His practice is based around a treatment called Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic which uses a magnetic pulse to gently tap the atlas back into alignment.

So I contacted Dr. Harding about my son’s condition. This diagnosis of a twisted atlas (my words) was a divine intervention. Once it was explained how the atlas alignment, which in my son’s case  happened at birth, had been the source of disturbing his peace from the time he was an infant, his entire life made sense. A feeling of peace overtook me like I had never felt peace before, and then joy.

Courtesy http://www.atlasdr.com/symptoms.html

Twenty minutes after his first treatment, my son said “I feel different.”  His voice was firm, calm, and resolute. The next day he told me: “I think I can feel my own happiness starting to come back.”  His hope was affirmed. Two days later he actually slept for the first time in many, many months. He was so grateful, hugging me and thanking me over and over. I held him tight, so grateful to God. And then I told him to thank God for my faith that guided us to the right answers for him.

Wow.  How God delivers.

And today my son is more at peace than I ever knew him to be since infancy. He still has some issues to work through, but they more have to do with seeking an abundant life as we all do.  The healing and restoration is an answer to prayer. It is a constant reminder to me that God gives us everything we need to restore and heal if we trust Him first, and then seek help from the experts.

“The emotional backpacks our children carry today are a lot heavier than those of generations past.” — Dr. Dennis Harding, Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic in Auburn, Ca.
(Photo: Backpack Fashion by Comrade Foot – Flickr)

Modern life and children’s mental health: How heavy is your child’s “backpack”?

Upon our first visit to Dr. Harding two years ago, he shared that he was seeing more adolescents and young adults with similar issues as my son. Presuming that atlases have been out of alignment since the time of Adam and Eve, I asked Dr. Harding why the atlas alignment is wreaking such havoc on young people today.

“The emotional backpacks our children carry today are a lot heavier than those of generations past,” he said. “The endocrine systems (which regulate emotion and sleep), are taxed by extreme sports, pressure to get top grades at any cost, and constant divided attention with texting and social media.”

According to Harding, the atlas can be knocked out of alignment by severe stress, trauma, or persistent feelings of adversity and insecurity. It can be physical, emotional and spiritual. “So a break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, for example, can be a spiritual trauma, depending upon the individual and the situation,” Harding said. “So can the divorce of parents and being in an automobile accident.”

The strain of modern life is greater than we realize because we have not grown up in this cyber-powered world. Below are some of the ways the atlas bone can fall out of alignment and then be exacerbated:

• Birth – the atlas can twisted in the birth process
• Extreme sports – pressure to achieve professional level performance in sports that stress the body, and other extra curricular activities.
• Academic pressure to achieve perfect scores for college entrance exams/grades
• Constant connectivity to mobile devices – no down time
• In general schedules that do not permit enough sleep and relaxation – kids are up late with social media, homework, and up early to start school and with extra curricular activities (zero periods)
• Being cyberbullied (can redefine your world, inspires extreme insecurity and hopelessness)
• Feelings of hopelessness in response to the network pressure to “achieve” and never measuring up

To learn more about Dr. Dennis Harding and Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic, go to: The Atlas Doctor

***

For more about helping your child be secure in a cyber-powered world that can stimulate fear and anxiety, go to The Authority In Me.

My next book (working title):  A Google World in the Garden of Eden: Five Family-Safe Strategies for Texting and Social Media is coming out in the fall of 2013.

Email Joanna (jullien@surewest.net) to sign up to receive Banana Moments updates on ways to stay current and confident in responding to youth,  cyber technology trends and other issues of modern life impacting the parent-child relationship and families.

* Note – Dr. Harding recently shared research indicating a diagnostic breakthrough for Multiple Sclerosis, related to a relationship between the leakage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic instruments to gently tap vertebrae into alignment.

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Joanna Jullien
(Photo: Christi Benz)

Joanna Jullien is an author, educator and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

Follow Joanna @CyberParenting

Like Banana Moments

Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

Parents Who Rock Meet Up – 2nd Thursday of the Month

This group is for dedicated, loving parents who are looking for someone to turn to for support, information, and resources for today’s parenting challenges. Are you parenting as your parents did? Exactly the opposite? Are you pretty sure that help beyond the on-the-job training that we all experience would help bring peace to your family? Join two local parenting experts, Peggy Harper Lee and Joanna Jullien, who have ideas, tips, tactics, and help, whether you would like your 3 year old to go to bed without a fight, your 13 year old to get off her cell phone, or your 23 year old to get off the couch and get a job.

Join the Meet Up Group: Meets the 2nd Thursday of the month: Mimi’s Café in Roseville, 6:30pm

Peggy Lee
Photo: Courtesy

May 2013 Parents Who Rock Meet Up Topic: Yelling
Featured speaker: Peggy Lee

Peggy Harper Lee is a Rocklin mom and author of Spoiled: Fresh Ideas For Parenting Your Entitled Child — At Any Age, who discovered in her financial planning business that parents’ issues with money had more to do with parenting.  The modern parenting culture had evolved to a point where parents have a tendency to assume responsibility for our children’s lives, and consequently children learn to expect to be provided for what they desire – they do not feel responsible.

And yelling can be one of the symptoms of assuming too much responsibility for the conduct of your child. It is a state of both parent and child being out of control.

According to Lee, the purpose of communication is so we can be seen, heard, loved and valued. Yelling, as a strategy, conveys the opposite. It doesn’t serve any real purpose and it does not signal that you treasure or respect your children either.

“Yelling is a topic that just about all of us has had to deal with in one way or another,” Lee said. “When I was growing up, my mother yelled. And it terrified me. I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying, except feeling her rage. And I can remember making a decision that yelling was not an effective way to communicate.”

Lee offers some tips to stop yelling and enhance your communication at home, which will also bring peace.

1. Think about it. Why do you yell? What is your history with it? How did you feel when your parents or other authority figures yelled at you? How did it make you feel?

2.  Make a conscious choice not to yell. It really is a decision.

3. Choose a technique to calm you down when you are feeling the impulse to yell. Counting to ten is one such technique. If you count, do it playfully…think good thoughts so that you are able to calm down and marshal your thoughts to express to your child that is pushing your buttons. Then approach your child with your reaction or instruction.

4. Whisper, or lower your voice.

5. Take “don’t” out of your vocabulary. The limbic portion of our brains do not have an image for “no” or “don’t.” Whatever you don’t want to happen, is what registers with the brain and it will keep happening.

6.Respect among siblings. If your children are raising voices to one another, separate them and say “work it out nicely”. Give them as many time outs with the expectation that they can work it out. Do not referee their issues because it sends the signal that you do not have confidence they can work it out. They most certainly can, if given the chance. So separate them as many times as it takes, with a patient resolve that they are expected to work it out.

7. Stop nagging. Yes, stop it. Nagging leads to yelling and it says to your child “I am responsible for your life, not you.” If  your child is not getting out of bed on time, let her be late for school, or leave without his homework. Better your child experience the consequences of their own behavior early. It is empowerment for them. The signal you give your children when you choose not to nag is that, again, you have confidence in their ability to take care of their business.

The benefits of choosing communicate without raising your voice, is a more peaceful household wherein every individual is accountable for their own conduct and business. There is less stress.

“Anybody can be a non-yeller,” Lee said.

And there can be a greater measure of peace.

***

Upcoming Parents Who Rock Meet Up topics:

 Join the Parents Who Rock Meet Up Group for notifications

Parents Who Rock Meet Up: June 13, 2013

Topic: What it means to be a parent in a cyber powered world

Joanna talks about how parents can trump the pressures of technology trends and popular culture to strengthen the authoritative bond with their child, especially teenagers.

Mimi’s Café in Roseville, 6:30pm ($10 for you and a friend)

Parents Who Rock Meet Up: July 11, 2013

Topic: Communication styles – Guest Speaker Julie Anderson

Mimi’s Café in Roseville, 6:30pm ($10 for you and a friend)

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Joanna Jullien
“‘Banana Moments’ is the term I use to describe all the curve balls and surprises of parenting in the network. Some are humorous and light hearted others are gut wrenching. There has never been a more rewarding time to be a parent. Photo: Christi Benz

Joanna Jullien is an author, educator and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

Sign up to receive Banana Moments quarterly and monthly updates.

CyberParenting Topics on The Fish 103.9FM Tuesdays

Follow Joanna @CyberParenting

Like Banana Moments

Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

John Fleishman is the Assistant Superintendent of Technology Services for the Sacramento County Office of Education. “The more we can encourage students to make positive, responsible use of the Internet and mobile devices, the more cyber safe they will be.”

The most important lessons about citizenship kids learn first at home.  If we are critical and not supportive of one another as parents then how can we expect our own children to be considerate of one another on or off line? At the end of the day, forgiveness and individual accountability are the formula for a peaceful society. (Thank you for demonstrating this Jesus). And we do not have peace in our society when we are judging others and excusing ourselves. If we are seeking control of others, but not leading with self-control, we are disturbing the peace.

May is California Digital Citizenship month and the schools are featuring lessons about digital citizenship. Teachers are working digital citizenship curriculum into their lessons, and the students are learning about things like intellectual property and plagiarism, cyberbullying, digital footprints and on-line privacy.

This topic of cyber citizenship is equally important for modern parenting.

Whatever lessons your children learn by witnessing how we treat other parents and their children when there is conflict, your child will employ with gusto off and on line. So for digital citizenship month, this is to encourage parents to promote good citizenship at home as children are learning about digital citizenship in the classroom.

To this point, I came across an excellent example over the weekend, about a blogger mom who shared her experience with the sit com Big Bang Theory exposing her young child to sexual content.  Jennifer Rodriguez, children’s book author and founder of Salice Family Services in Carmichael, was astonished at the bully comments attached to the article.

Jennifer Rodriguez, blogger mom and educator on healthy emotional bonding, believes that parents are allowed to make mistakes. “That is how we learn to be better parents. And so we should stop criticizing one another.”

“So many parents are judging her and calling her parenting skills into question because she did not discover the problem right away,” Rodriguez said. “It is my opinion that this mother is already feeling guilty about not catching the inappropriate comments sooner… Parents WILL make mistakes, and we are ALLOWED to make mistakes.  That is how we learn to be better parents.  It also teaches our kids that it is ok if they make a mistake, too.  It’s not the end of the world; they can fix their mistake and move on.”

(Read the mom blog article about Big Bang Theory.)

So let’s examine some of the “judgy” parent traps and what to do about it.

“Judgy” parent traps that promote poor digital citizenship

One of the problems I have observed about the bully culture is that there is a focus on how other people offend “me” (insecure) and a harboring of expectation that we are entitled to our own brand of justice for the offenses of others. Bullies do view themselves as victims, thereby justifying their harassment or intimidation.

In this regard, the most important thing we can teach our children is that self-control is the best way to 1) learn and 2) contribute to your classroom, community and society.

Below are some of the traps of being the “judgy parent”, which teaches the kids that it is okay to be critical and dismissive of someone you disagree with or with whom you are in conflict, the unintended consequences and what to do about it.

Trap 1: Rescuing.

Rescuing your child from conflict and seeking your brand of justice when your child is feeling stress or discomfort (including the grades she receives from her least favorite teacher or being excluded from a peer group).

Unintended consequence: Your child may begin to adopt a victim mentality that the world must conform to him because he is not capable of resiliency. And so in their on-line world, the chance is great that the child will interpret your behavior as a green light to be expressing his resentment through texting or comments on social media, further disturbing the peace in him and with others.

Reparation tip: Start by listening to your child the next time she has a bad experience, and repeat what you heard her say. Then ask her questions to get her thinking more objectively about the circumstances and the other points of view. Help her to think about what is happening more calmly, and then consider the options she has to make things better on her own.

Caveat: Chronic abuse situations are a different matter. If you find you or your child in a situation where there is physical or emotional abuse on a regular basis, and ganging up on one individual (and you know it when you or your child are under attack), and your attempts to resolve it go unheeded, then consult an excellent resource: B.R.A.V.E. Society dedicated to peer abuse awareness, resolution and prevention.

Trap 2: Fixing Blame.

As parents, we experience opportunities to be victorious or defeated with our children every day.

Blaming others for conflict and accepting your child’s version of the story as if it were gospel is a trap that I have experienced in my own parenting journey and as a volunteer at my son’s schools. The mobile phone makes us more susceptible to believing what our children tell us about what is happening. Most people have experienced this to some degree or another. There have been few times when I have really struggled to restrain the “mama bear” in me when I perceived that a child of mine was in danger or being mistreated.  And I have witnessed a number of “mama bear” reactions to a child’s version of what happened. It is a sad, destructive experience for the children who learned the wrong lesson and experienced broken relationships among their peers and the adults.

Unintended consequence:  Again, the children interpret your reaction as a green light to keep going along the “blame game” path. There is no reflection, no individual accountability about her own role in the conflict, or the issues she is experiencing with peers. In a very real sense, this can be disabling because this strategy (believe only what the child says) expresses a victim mentality. The presumption is that the child can a) do no wrong, which is folly or b) cannot be expected to stand corrected in dealing with her issues involving other people.

Reparation tip: When your child is in distress, avoid looking for someone to blame. Rather look for an opportunity to help your child learn about working through difficult situations with other people.  Assume good intent on the part of other people involved, and express the concern from your point of view. Try not to declare your version of the situation as the only truth. Give the other people involved an opportunity to express their point of view. There may need to be boundary setting involved. Not every relationship is safe. If your child is encountering a situation with peers that does not seem trustworthy, encourage your child to seek other opportunities to make new friends.  This is a good time to discuss what it means to be a good friend to others, which will make it easier for her to attract other friends and possibly help repair a relationship out of conflict.

Trap 3: Express a criticizing heart.

Openly criticizing (in front of your children) the standards of other parents whether they are higher or lower than your own. For example, some parents enforce media entertainment ratings (R,NC17, T, E) and others do not. Most parents enforce a seat belt for every individual in the car, a few do not.

Unintended consequence: So the lesson our children learn is that rather that reaching out to the individuals with different standards to work out a compromise or a collaborative solution, the strategy is to criticize and disrespect others who differ from you.

Reparation tip:  This is where parents need to collaborate about the transfer of custodial responsibility. If your child is attending a party that involves transportation to a destination, when you call to verify if there are enough seat belts for every child, be prepared to offer to drive if there are not.  This way if it turns out there are not enough seatbelts, you can offer support and not criticism. If the other parent’s standards for entertainment are stricter, honor them when their child is in your care. When you honor the higher standards, nobody looses and the children learn respect and tolerance for the interests of others that are different from your own. When you dismiss or criticize the higher standards of another parent, the lesson the children learn is that it is okay to be offended and disregard the different boundaries of others.

Trap 4: Gossip.

Gossiping about other parents and their children in front of your children.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Ephesians 4:29

Unintended consequences: Gossip is not a good thing because it does not engage the people being talked about in ways that are edifying. It is a form of disturbing the peace. Being honest, I am not innocent of ever gossiping, but I have come to have a healthy respect for the value of checking it for the sake of children.  The signal that gives kids is that those parents who are the object of gossip are not to be respected. When our children have information about other adults that is compromising, or receive signals from you that it is okay to talk about them, it can inspire children to stir the pot spreading the juicy details of the gossip overheard to their peers. With texting the gossip can easily turn into cyber bullying for the children of the parents targeted in the gossip at home.

Reparation tip: Refrain from talking about the circumstances, issues, observations, stories or concerns about other parents in front of your children. If you need to vent frustration about a situation with another parent, do it privately. And if another parent is obviously behaving badly, it is sufficient to acknowledge to  your child that the way the parent is behaving is not okay. Enough said. The less you dwell on the problem parent, and the more proactive you are in reaching out to engage the right people to resolve the problem, the more secure your child will feel, and therefore be less vulnerable to the bully mentality which stirs anxiety and disturbs the peace.

For resources about dealing with bully situations, go to: B.R.A.V.E. Society

Check out a parent support group in Roseville:

Parents who Rock 2nd Thursday of the month, Mimi’s Cafe.

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Joanna Jullien is an author, educator and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

Joanna Jullien
“‘Banana Moments’ is the term I use to describe all the curve balls and surprises of parenting in the network. Some are humorous and light hearted others are gut wrenching. There has never been a more rewarding time to be a parent. Photo: Christi Benz

• Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

Photo: SAN_DRINO (FLickr)

“You get me” – bonding with digital natives

For digital natives, children born after 1990 who cannot imagine the world without WWW connectivity, authority is a relational experience. In previous generations, authority was ascribed to structure, such as a title like parent, teacher or president.

Digital natives seek authenticity, so they know when you are faking it. One way to be authentic is to envision your home as a mini-republic, wherein you are training your children to limit the amount of power, which is their God-given civil liberty to think for themselves, that they give up in the network. Framing house rules in this context helps translate “rules” as boundaries that protect personal liberty.

Embrace your child as a learning executive

Know this: your child’s experience on and off line, in their world of peers and school campus and on-line communities will inform them differently than your own experience. It is critical that your child has a chance to express her views and discuss it with you with impunity. It is an opportunity for you to learn something about your child, and to impart wisdom.

Active listening. To make dissention work as a way to strengthen family bonds, practice the art of listening as “active listening”. To be an active listener, you repeat what you heard the family member say before you respond – especially if you disagree. Your children should be expected to do the same for you. This art of active listening is one of the best ways to demonstrate a culture of respect for the individual; and when individuals feel respected, as if “you get me”, in any community, there can be peace.

Assert parental authority that provides protective cover and respects free will

Adopt a family motto to reinforce the distinction between private and secret. In our home, the family motto with cyber technology became, “Inspect what you expect.” This particular motto reinforces that there is no privacy between parents and minor children. It is the parent’s business to know what is happening with their child, for the purpose of providing protective cover, not for controlling their life. While secrets, on the other hand, are kept because they cannot survive the light of day; they usually harbor risky behavior, and burdens. Therefore secrets should not be kept from parents.

If your child reveals a secret (about a peer or herself), then the most important thing parents can do is not freak out. Listen to what happened and secure help. If the police need to be involved and/or counseling, this is your opportunity to demonstrate the individual resiliency your child needs to emulate. Assure your child that dealing with life’s issues in the light of day, where truth can prevail, is the only way to end suffering and pain.

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Joanna Jullien
(Photo: Christi Benz)

Joanna Jullien is an author, educator and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

• Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

Bridget Farren, Assistant Vice Principal at Del Oro High School in Loomis, California

It is true that under the right circumstances and the wrong thinking, we are any of us capable of anything.  In the network, this couldn’t be truer. As one teenager put it, “Everything is situational.”

Bridget Farren is an Assistant Vice Principal at Del Oro High School in Loomis. She observes daily the challenges our teenagers face in a network culture that obscures the boundaries for personal security. It is an anything goes environment, save the parental voice of wisdom.

“I am a proponent of giving my own teen space and freedom and the tools used to be successful in this network based world,” Farren said. “However, that doesn’t mean I leave out monitoring him.”

Farren encourages parents to be active monitors of their children’s on and off line activities, because the social circumstances of the modern teenager are remarkably more risky than of previous generations. She encourages parents to:

• Ask questions about the day, preferably questions that don’t require a yes or no only.  It demonstrates a sincere interest.
• Monitor his devices and his electronic footprint.  Why?  Because you care and want to help guide them should he head down a path with friends who are making risky decisions.
• If you hear or observe your teen texting or exploring sites or social media comments that are mentioning drug related activities or parties, don’t assume these are harmless.  Ask questions and reach out to other parents of the teens involved in the texts.  Why risk it!
• Know that social media amplifies risky conduct. These social media parties that are advertised are exponentially advertised, meaning a party that we may have remembered as being seemingly harmless with a few close friends from high school is not today’s reality.  These parties are attended often by hundreds of students from many local schools.  Nobody knows everybody and the social conscience that comes with familiarity is not present.  This makes these parties extreme and much more risky, because when a person gains anonymity inhibitions are decreased and he/she is much more likely to engage in risky behaviors.  Bottom line, the social media organized teen “party” of today is not a safe place and we have the responsibility to prevent these from hurting our youth.

The Alpha/Omega app of heart and mind

Parental authority cannot be taken, it can only be surrendered. The model of authority to strengthen the parent-child bond is rooted in the mustard seeds of faith of the American republic. We have the power.

There are three realms of security of our time. Physical (locking and alarming cars/doors), cyber (Internet security/passwords/parental controls), and hearts and minds (God’s love expressed as your beliefs, values and house rules to help children be self governing and exercise free will responsibly).

So the ultimate app for helping children set personal limits in the network is the authority model of individual liberty in the network:

Aa

“Aa” is an application faith that made the founding of the republic of the United States possible. It is an app of the heart and mind and is the source of power to rise above the fray of the hectic, noise of the network.

The capital ‘A’ is the authority of God, who is sovereign and grants free will to individuals.

The small ‘a’ is the authority of the individual.

Together “Aa” this represents liberty. And it must be defended by the individual against the manipulations of the untruth in the network, and can only be defended as our children learn to exercise free will responsibly, with wisdom.

When children experience house rules as an application of faith, “Aa” to keep them in command of their own life, not surrendering to the manipulations of untruth in the network (cyberbullying, sexting, pedophiles, drug and alcohol abuse, anxiety), they can become self-governing and cyber-secure.

So to assert your parental authority in the network as love language, “inspect what you expect,” by monitoring on and off line activities. This motto reinforces the truth that there is no privacy between parents and minor children. It is the parent’s business to know what is happening with their child, for the purpose of providing protective cover, and helping their child to exercise free will responsibly. More importantly, let your teens know you expect they are making good decisions and so you will catch them doing things right.

More articles about how to communicate the value of setting personal limits in the network:

• To be successful in school and in life children first need to learn self-control
  

• Teaching limits for safe teen driving

• Parental authority for educating children involves a civics lesson that starts at home

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Joanna Jullien
“‘Banana Moments’ is the term I use to describe all the curve balls and surprises of parenting in the network. Some are humorous and light hearted others are gut wrenching. There has never been a more rewarding time to be a parent. Photo: Christi Benz

Joanna Jullien is an author,  speaker and educator on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

• CyberParenting Topics on The Fish 103.9FM Tuesdays
• Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

Christine Davidson and Mark Shelton attended the “Drive it Home” event in Sacramento to understand how they can help their 19-year-old be a better driver.

CyberParenting Topics on The Fish 103.9FM Tuesdays

April is “Distracted Driver Awareness Month” and a couple of weeks ago Allstate and the National Safety Council sponsored an event at the Jean Runyon Theater in Sacramento to help parents understand their pivotal role in teaching teens to be safe drivers. The event featured Second City comedy skits and helpful insights from John Ulczycki, Vice President of Strategies for The National Safety Council.

Local sponsors of the event include The Safety Center and Impact Teen Drivers in Sacramento.

The comedy skits focused upon cautioning parents with humor about the folly of distracted living and driving, by showing a typical family whose communication is thwarted by mom constantly checking her smart phone in the middle of important conversations about driving habits and other teen issues.

Mostly the parents in the skits were freaking out and making their teen driver nervous. The audience was howling. The youth were nodding their heads in agreement. So were many of the adults who recalled how their parents taught them to drive.

Julie Dominick is an Allstate agency owner based out of Lincoln. “As I watch these skits about parents in the car trying to teach their teens how to drive, I have flashbacks of my own experiences as a teenager with my parents,” Dominick mused. “And we are here tonight for a very serious reason. Fifty percent of teen drivers will have an accident of some sort of accident before graduating high school. And the number one killer of teens in the United States is auto accidents.”

Dominick offered another way to think about it. “Annually we loose 4,000 teens to car crashes, which is the equivalent of eight high school graduation classes per year,” she said.

Correct your son, and he will give you comfort; He will also delight your soul. Proverbs 29:17

John Ulczycki is the Group Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for the National Safety Council.

John Ulczycki is the Group Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for the National Safety Council.

“The most important thing we can do for our teenage drivers is model the way we want our children to drive,” Ulczycki said. “The number one reason teens get into crashes is because of inexperience, and they need to witness how it is done correctly starting at a very early ages as passengers in your car.”

Below are some helpful insights from Ulczycki:

• Parents make the rules at home about driving to fit each child based upon their individual strengths and weaknesses (you can require more hours of practice than the law, for example)
• Do not allow the mobile phone to distract either of you from the important business of driving
• Teach your children to scan the road to anticipate traffic flow, ask your teen driver what she sees ahead as you are accompanying her for practice
• Enforce the provisional license because kids are easily distracted by others in the car
• Give your teen plenty of practice with you driving in all conditions, such as wet roads, rush hour traffic and night time
• Once your teen is granted a license, keep riding with them and lower the risk of accidents
• Keep practicing the challenging stuff, entering the highway, pulling out of a parking lot and left turns

See slide show of the event.

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Driver distraction temptations keep coming: Google Glass

Check out this video below to see what Google has in store: Google Glass is in beta. Pretty amazing!

The anticipation of Google Glass inspired preemptive legislation in West Virginia to make it illegal to wear the Google fashionable mobile device while driving, as reported in Hands Free Info a couple of weeks ago.

Google’s next big product launch, Glass, is head gear in beta testing that puts the smart phone screen in your field of vision much like the holograph on StarTrek the next generation, or The Terminator viewing data and instructions.

The main concern raised is that laws on the books make driving with “hands free” devices legal. Google Glass would be hands free, but would also interfere with your field of vision while driving.

Chris Crochran is the Public Information Officer with the California State Office of Transportation Safety.

Chris Crochran is the Public Information Officer with the California State Office of Transportation Safety. “In general we can say that safe driving means that all your concentration needs to be on the road, and anything that interrupts either your physical, visual or mental attentiveness is potentially dangerous,” he said.

The question remains, will more laws make us safer?

Adrian Quintero is the Public Information Officer for The California Highway Patrol, Valley Division (Sacramento). According to Quintero the distracted driving problem for teenagers is largely a matter of family business.

“We are all put at risk by distracted driving,” Quintero said. “Families set their own boundaries and parents need to communicate and enforce what they expect of their child when he is behind the wheel.”

Adrian Quintero is the Public Information Officer for The California Highway Patrol, Valley Division (Sacramento).

Quintero requires his 17-year-old to put the mobile phone in the trunk of the car while driving so there can be no temptation. “There is a natural anxiety about responding to texts,” he said. “So I have her put the phone in the trunk so she can focus on driving safely.”

Free safe driver training for you and your teens:

Start Smart

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Joanna Jullien
(Photo: Christi Benz)

Joanna Jullien is an author and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays

Follow Joanna @CyberParenting

Like Banana Moments

Like Three Moms and a Mike

Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

Photo: nist6ss(Flickr)

God bless MSNBC news anchor, Melissa Harris-Perry, for speaking her mind declaring children as belonging, not parents and families, but to the collective who should also educate them. I do respect her point of view, and I am grateful that she put her belief out there so that what she really meant cannot be mistaken.

This statement and her attempts to recast it can serve as a rally point for truth and healing the American parenting culture which suffers from surrendering our inherent God-given authority to be the parent.

Listen to her declaration in the video below:

The folly of this “collectivist” thinking, that power comes from the principalities of this world, not from our Creator, crystallizes for me the value of the authority model of the American republic:  God is sovereign over the individual and grants individuals intelligent life and free will; and the people thereby give up limited power to government to protect this civil liberty.

So we can agree that children do not belong to parents in the sense of being property. They are children of God. Our children belong to Him. He trusts us with them.  And so it follows:

• Parenting is a divine appointment. God did not assign children to groups. Children are not born as wards of the state, or to bureaucratic systems and programs. He delegates to individuals – a set of parents at a time.
• God works with amateurs. Look at what the founding fathers achieved through mustard seeds of faith – and they had no previous training or experience as politicians. Parents, like politicians, professors, media personalities and theologians, are not perfect – and every parent is an amateur because each child is unique. We have never raised that child before.
  

  Parental authority cannot be taken, it can only be surrendered. The model of authority to strengthen the parent-child bond is rooted in the mustard seeds of faith of the American republic. We have the power.

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

Educating youth: The art of delegation and learning

Fundamentally, the controversy over who is responsible for educating our children is a matter of what you believe (as in where our authority comes from in the first place) and what you understand about two things 1) the art of delegation and 2) learning.

Delegation. Anyone who has ever successfully been responsible for delegating knows that when “everybody is responsible” then no one is responsible.  How many exhausted moms can shout “Amen!” to this truth? Mothers learn not to say “someone pick up those shoes” or “someone clear the table.”

Nope.

If you do not specifically assign an individual, the assumption is someone will do it, but not me.  Assigning responsibility to “everybody” is futile.

Here is the other thing about the art of delegating. It is also a transfer of power, or authority. To truly delegate a responsibility, the authority must come with the assignment.

When my sons were in grade school, they challenged me that their teachers were in charge of their education, and that their homework was actually none of my business. I explained that while the teacher was in charge of the classroom, I and their dad were ultimately responsible for their education. We decided where they would attend school.

Parents are household executives ultimately responsible for the education of their children. Teachers are classroom executives responsible for the delivery of the curriculum content.  Parents are critical in this regard, because the signals they give their children about classroom conduct are the first and most important set of instructions for learning.

Learning. The paradigm Harris-Perry suggests is that education is something that we do to children. That it is primarily about how much money we invest in a system; how many people we hire.

Children are actually learning executives. We cannot force anyone to learn by spending more money on education. It is an executive function on the part of the individual, the child, who has free will and must be motivated to take information or ideas and interpret and apply them.

And the enemy of motivation is distraction, such as anxiety, hopelessness, preoccupation with texting and social media and other addictions.

This is the challenge for parents and classroom educators alike.

Role of parents in education of youth

Dr. Susan Weinberger, The Mentor Doctor

My friend and colleague Dr. Susan Weinberger of The Mentor Consulting Group, said it best:

“Our children only pass this way once. A parent is and always will be a child’s first teacher.”

Children must first learn at home how to tame their free will, so they can have self-control because learning requires discipline, and yet there is so much distraction with the our multitasking, consumer-oriented, texting and social media centric lifestyles.

Our education system will never make up for what is lacking in our parenting culture, which has not caught up with the network culture. The network culture has transformed the way in which we experience life and therefore, how we learn. It has created a crisis and opportunity for parenting, because children are being conditioned as learning executives. They seek authenticity and are conditioned for authority as a relational experience.

In this regard we can build family cultures that respect every family member as an individual, and strengthen the parent-child bond around house rules as an expression of God’s love. It is the same model of authority for the American republic. Parents can transform their homes into mini-republics, where children may experience cyber-safe boundaries and self-control as liberation, not oppression.

“Family lifestyles are hectic and distracted. Home is often perceived by youth as not a safe place. We work with Joanna Jullien because her parenting philosophy and teaching to help parents relate to their tech-savvy children is an essential aspect of restoring health and peace of mind for children who need to bond with parents in authentic ways.” — Angela Chanter, PsyD., Therapeutic Solutions 360 in Roseville, Ca.

Build your family culture to be a learning culture

Angela Chanter, PsyD., Therapeutic Solutions 360, in Roseville, Ca.

I started working with a local group of psychologists, Therapeutic Solutions 360, in Roseville, to do some private consulting to train parents to “hit the reset button” and restore peace at home.

The parenting curriculum is called Fresh Start and is also available as a 3-hour workshop which can be arranged for parenting groups who want to revitalize the character of a liberated individual in their children who are using cyber powered tools.

So if parents are feeling overwhelmed and at times powerless with what is happening in their children’s cyber-powered lives, or simply want to clear out the distractions, contact me at Jullien@surewest.net to see about arranging for a workshop or a private 2-session, three hour program to hit the reset button.

More about what the community can do for children: Your children are not your own: They remain children of God

Joanna Jullien
“‘Banana Moments’ is the term I use to describe all the curve balls and surprises of parenting in the network. Some are humorous and light hearted others are gut wrenching. There has never been a more rewarding time to be a parent. Photo: Christi Benz

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Joanna Jullien is an author, educator and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

•  Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
•  Like Three Moms and a Mike
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

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Photo: Andrew and Zoey by swanksalot (Flickr)

Blind spots are the stuff about our children’s lives that we cannot experience or know unless we are open to receiving data about our children, from sources other than our own children. In many cases the “new information” does not conform to our expectations.

There always have been blind spots in parenting.

However, the advent of the Internet and the mobile phone transformed the dynamics for communications with societal implications that leveled hierarchies at work and home; the model for formal authority that was once tied to social structure (position) carries less significance than it did for previous generations. Titles like “president”, “teacher” or “parent” carry less inherent authority. In a flat world, where hierarchies are traded for networks, authority is more related than ascribed.

Note: Social norms for citizenship are relaxed in this environment.

We can never be present in all aspects of our children’s lives. We do not see our children in every context. However, cyber parenting has intensified the level of ignorance possible for parents.  Examples of blind spots happen when:

• Parents believe only what their children tell them via mobile phone. They do not inspect what they expect.  Sexting and gossip are examples of the most common things law enforcement find on young peoples’ mobile phones – of which parents are completely ignorant
• Children engage in clandestine behavior on-line, that includes risky behavior (gambling, porn, drugs and alcohol, sexually explicit photos)
• Parents are relating only to the version of the child they “intend to raise” and have trouble accepting data about their child that requires correcting, and there is defending the child (also referred to as “not my child syndrome”).

How to recognize blind spots

When you are confronted by information about your child’s conduct or situation that causes a defensive reaction, likely you are confronting a blind spot. Or if you find yourself explaining away behavior brought to your attention and making excuses, this is a sign that you are likely “blind” to the reality of what is happening with your child.

It is a common problem of incorrect thinking that if we are good parents and our intentions for our children are honorable, this translates to our children’s actions in all circumstances.

This type of thinking is a boundary violation because our children have free will and it is our job to prepare  them to exercise it responsibly. Which means it is our job to instill values at home and then allow our children to experience consequences, good and not good, for their decisions.

Blind spots can be hard to detect because children are very good at concealing what they believe will disappoint or meet with disapproval. And in a cyber-powered world, this capacity for doing more outrageous things and concealing them is greater.

Under the right circumstances with the wrong thinking, we are all capable of anything. This is the human condition.  To be certain, it is human nature that we are all, especially children, subject to the pressures and manipulations of the world, hyped in the network.  For youth, some examples include:

Photo credit: Nimish Gogri (Flickr)

• Accepting “friend requests” from people they don’t know
• Agreeing to meet a stranger in person, they met on line (they may believe him to be a peer)
• Piling on to a cyberbully campaign
• Gossip
• Sending sexually explicit photos via text
• Plagiarism (cut and paste)
• Cheating (texting answers)
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Addictions to gambling and porn

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

How to overcome blind spots

Being a cyber parent requires us to be open to the possibility that our children will at some point do things that are out of the “character” we intend.

1. Confront blind spots with a heart at peace. Be open to the possibility that your child may be concealing things. This is why we inspect, what we expect. There must be no privacy. Explain to your child that you expect to catch them making good decisions. If you catch them making poor choices, then speak truth with mercy, no judging. Just explain why it is not okay and give your child a chance to stand corrected. For example, if you catch your child engaged in gossip, do not scold her on-line. Pull her aside and review with her the impact her actions have on others (do not allow her to digress to what the other kids are doing), and then give her a chance to correct it.

2. Do not freak out when you discover something disturbing. That is not to say that you excuse inappropriate or risky conduct. Rather you bring it into the light and examine it with your child, with a heart at peace. An angry and frightened heart will give the issue more life and power, and bring shame upon your child. The shame will drive a wedge between you. The ultimate aim is to be instructive and hold up the correct behavior standard for your child so that he can stand corrected, and be redeemed in your family.  This is especially important when there are consequences your child must endure at school or work or in the sport, such as suspension or trouble with the law. Your child needs to know that you have confidence in his ability to endure the consequences, rise above the shame, and stand corrected (committed to doing the right thing).

3. Intervention for blind spots.  In order to be in a position to help children recover from a poor course of action early, there are some proactive things you can do:

• Establish house cyber rules and consistently enforce them.
• Monitor your child’s on-line communications and activities
• Become familiar with  your child’s applications and check the activity
• Have access to all your child’s on line accounts
• Set up age-appropriate user levels for wireless devices and applications

4. Some blind spots deserve recognition. You may find that the “new information” about your child is positive. Perhaps you discover from a neighbor that your daughter has been spending time with the younger children in the neighborhood reading them stories, and she never mentioned it to you. Acknowledge the things you hear that are positive as well.  Catch your child doing things right too.

For more about over coming blind spots to strengthen the parent-teacher relationship, attend my presentation at Barnes and Noble in Roseville this Saturday, April 13, at 11 am.

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Joanna Jullien
(Photo: Christi Benz)

Joanna Jullien is an author and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

• Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
• Like Three Moms and a Mike
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner

in Roseville presents

“Blind Spots” & the parent-teacher relationship

Saturday, April 13, 2013

1256 Galleria Boulevard
Roseville, CA 95678

 11:00a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Blind Spots are the aspects of our children’s and students’ lives that we cannot see.  We are not present 24X7 and we don’t see  how they behave in all circumstances. The popular culture, especially cyber communications via texting and social media, cultivate and inspire ideas and behavior that suggest to children there are “no limits”. All the while we parents & teachers may be operating on beliefs, assumptions and anxieties that engage our blind spots rather than helping our child to become a better learner.

This talk explores how parents and teachers can partner to overcome blind spots.

Joanna Jullien “Parental authority cannot be taken. It can only be lost when we surrender it.” Photo by: Christi Benz

Join local author, speaker, journalist, and mother of two grown sons, Joanna Jullien, who conducts research and fieldwork about the impact of texting and social media on family, peer and community relations. Her book, The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, examines how mustard seeds of faith strengthen the role of parents to help children find peace in a cyber-powered world.

The Authority In Me is available on all major retail ebook shelves (Barnes & Noble, Apple and Kindle).

• Purchase your Nook copy ($6.99).
• Get a free tall drink from the café when you present your copy of The Authority In Me on your Nook.(Offer good only on 4/13/13).
• Educational materials and free goodies (books, pencils, posters) will be available
• Refreshments will be served

Seating is limited. Please RSVP to Joanna at jullien@surewest.net if you are planning to attend. Thank you.

• Follow Joanna Jullien@CyberParenting
• Subscribe to Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner on Examiner.com
• Listen to CyberParenting Tuesday mornings on TheFish103.9FM

Last week The Atlantic correspondent Hanna Rosin made headlines with her cover story, The Touch-Screen Generation, that suggests the American parenting culture is a bit neurotic about how cyber technology is affecting our children.

According to Rosin when her youngest child was born, the iPad just came out and she felt like the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 recommendation of no screen time for children under two years old was not a realistic expectation. So she did some investigation and inquiry on her own, and in this article, she shared what she learned at a children’s application developer conference about how children engage with programs delivered on television or mobile devices.

Rosin concludes that the apps designed for toddlers are not necessarily harmful as long as there is parental involvement. However, what is troubling to her is an apparent parenting “neurosis” that unfolds as cyber-technology becomes more ubiquitous we worry more and more about what it is doing to our children because we fear it will “sink them.”  Rather, she advocates for a more relaxed and fearless attitude towards technology, especially with young children, which flies in the face of the AAP ideal.

The “neurosis” Rosin refers to comes from parental anxiety or fear which wants to be in control of the outcomes of our children’s lives. With fear-based thinking, there truly is a tendency to focus on the things we feel we can control. Forbidding use and putting up locks and barriers feels “safer” somehow.  And unless we are able to integrate the technology into our lives with confidence that our children can become self governing in their use when properly instructed and coached, we are left with fear-based tactics that promote exposure to risks, not personal security.

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In this networked environment, there are three realms of security:

• Physical (our person and belongings, home and car)
• Cyber (smart phones/social media and other applications)
• Hearts and minds (beliefs, values, emotions)

Fear sometimes keeps us hyper-focused on the physical and cyber realms of security because it makes us feel like we are in control. And yet the most important part of cyber parenting is engaging hearts and minds of children so they can be self-governing in the network culture.  Below are some of the problems with fear-based parenting:

• Children hide their use of applications or cyber-tools; they will not share what they are exploring because they anticipate a fearful response from parents
• Parents loose credibility when our “fearful” edicts are clearly out of step with the reality our children experience; the disconnect from the wisdom at home is intensified by the untruth in the network about sex, drugs and friendship
• Children are encouraged to bond with other “like-minded” individuals and communities, and your input as a parent will be considered irrelevant
• Lack of parental involvement in the use of cyber apps and tools signals to children that the risks are not great enough to warrant parent attention and/or that they are not worthy of your attention

Photo: The UMF (Flickr)

Our primary function as parents is to provide protective cover for the personal security of our children and impart wisdom. This cannot be done effectively without engaging hearts and minds.  And yet, fear-based approaches cultivate a disconnect from heart and mind because it stirs anxiety and unrest.

Fear-based approaches to Cyber Parenting include:

• Over reliance on parental controls – assuming that is all that is required
• Ignoring what the child is doing on-line because it is all too much to monitor
• Freaking out when something alarming is discovered on a child’s mobile device or search history (I have been guilty of that)
• Commenting on your child’s Facebook and joining in on conversations with her friends – essentially seeking to make an emotional bond as a friend
• Micro-managing; there is no graduated plan in place to groom a child for competency and independence

This does not mean we should cave into every demand or every popular whim. We must, nevertheless, pick our battles wisely so our children can identify a meaningful connection between our guidance and their experience.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18

Fearless collaboration: Engaging hearts and minds

The over all objective for building a secure “heart and mind” security platform with children is to remain approachable.  And speaking from experience, I know this is a tall order – especially in a cyber-powered, fast-paced world. Nevertheless, the two most important things you can do to be the safe-relationship for your child are:

• Bonding over house rules
• Be a good listener

Bonding over house rules

Photo: Mickey van der Stap (Flickr)

In order to shed fear, it is critical that you express and model your beliefs and values through house rules. Having clear boundaries rooted in truth and wisdom make for a peaceful heart and mind, with which children can bond. When you sit down as a family to discuss your beliefs and values, and then translate them to the house rules that center around respect for the individual and personal security, it is possible for your children to become engaged because they identify with the purpose behind the boundaries.

Conversations with law enforcement indicate that in cases where predators are extorting children for having secrets and compelling them to participate in explicit sexual acts, it is because the children believe that the risk is having their secret revealed to their parents. One police officer told me that kids are hugely relieved when the sexual exploitation finally comes to light; until their secret was exposed, they were carrying a heavy burden alone.

Listen

When you listen to your child and you are not jumping in to rescue or influence outcomes, it is then possible to ask questions of your child that will make them think for themselves about a situation or circumstance. Listening happens when you simply hear and observe:

• You are silent with open ears while driving your child and his friends to various activities and events
• The expression your child’s face after viewing a text
• The tone of the room when your child enters
• Your child’s reaction to certain assignments, people, events

If you want to offer an opinion or guidance, then suggest that you have some experience about a scenario or an event and ask them if they want to know more about your perspective. Chances are slim to none that they will not want to know. But if you force your perspective on your child, like bad tasting medicine, they will resist and they will not be able to hear you. They will be responding to “oppression”.  It is a natural human reaction to being micromanaged.

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Joanna Jullien
(Photo: Christi Benz)

Joanna Jullien is an author and speaker on strengthening the parent-child relationship in a cyber powered world. She is the author of The Authority In Me: The Power of Family Life in the Network Culture, produces The Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner column on Examiner.com, a contributor for Three Moms and a Mike, and is the CyberParenting advisor on The Fish 103.9FM, Tuesdays.

• CyberParenting Topics on The Fish 103.9FM Tuesdays
• Follow Joanna @CyberParenting
• Like Banana Moments
• Like Three Moms and a Mike
• Sacramento Cyber Safety Examiner