Cyber safety for kids and families with Joanna and Jodie on 103.9FM The Fish Family Morning Show

NBC News Today recently reported that a Gerber survey found 40 percent of moms aged 18 to 34 made social media accounts for their babies within the first year, and another seven percent created accounts for their children before they were two years old. It stands to reason that the next generation of parents who are comfortable having …

Fifteen-year-old Julia Shohbozian of Rocklin has overcome the bully climate at her high school by making her world bigger than the small-minded clicks creating a very hostile social climate on campus. For her junior year in high school, she opted to enroll in independent study and has started taking classes at Sierra College and is very happy that she made a decision to expand her world. She also serves on the Placer County Youth Commission that advises the County Board of Supervisors on matters of public policy and youth perspective. “I realized that if my peers didn’t care about me, then why should I care about what they think about me,” she said, "I am not interested in judging other people for entertainment".

Welcome to the 2014 Fall Edition of Banana Moments Family Business Quarterly

A recent Mashable article features a young man who made the choice to drop out of school and pursue a career as a professional video game player and then stunned his parents by earning enough money to pay the rent, other bills and have a little left over for some luxuries. For now, this is a career that is fulfilling. It will probably …

Parental control settings have limited value, more like the training wheels on a bike. Before long the child will master the device and the controls. Parental controls have value as instructive ways to engage and maintain an ongoing dialog with the child about purpose-driven use of the cyber tools. When the use of parental controls are perceived as training wheels to help the child develop their own self control essential to be secure in the network, the signal conveyed to the child is one of confidence in their ability to become a responsible user. And so the aim of parenting with parental controls is to prepare the child to be in control, and for the parent to monitor in age-appropriate ways.

Return to Contents: 2014 Fall Edition of Family Business Quarterly

 Cyber Rites of Passage

• Setting and maintaining age-appropriate boundaries in this web-enabled environment is tricky and achievable. Ultimately the goal is to groom your child to be self-governing and responsible with the cyber-powered applications and tools.

Rites of passage typically provide some definitive criteria for conferring roles, responsibilities, rights and privileges and social standing to individuals as they mature in society. It is a way …

It helps to be clear that the conversation with your child is not about you; it is about the child learning how to take command over their own life and you are the primary teacher. You may draw upon your own experience, but do not allow the conversation to digress into your adolescence and childhood. The idea here is to encourage your child to seek conversations with you about how to apply virtues in their life so you can encourage them to seek Wisdom (James 1:5) from the Lord and impart your wisdom.

On Tues. Oct. 21 and again on Oct. 22, Rocklin resident Peggy Harper Lee , author of Spoiled: Fresh Ideas for Parenting Your Entitled Child at Any Age (2012) , will be speaking at St. Joseph Marello Catholic Church in Granite Bay about the skills to overcome the power and discipline issues with children of all ages. Lee, a mother of five ages 32 to five, developed the material for her book from her financial consulting practice. She found that many of her client’s financial issues were related to the expenses associated with entitled children of all ages. “Parents today are from the ‘achievement’ generation,” she said, “And so there is a tendency to blur the parenting and child lanes in order to accomplish personal goals.” The net impact can be the formation of a disabling dependency wherein children depend on someone else to be responsible for their lot in life, which is compounded by the network culture that features instant gratification centered on self. Some examples include failure to launch, as adult children lack the motivation to find a way to make it on their own; and expectations that parents will pay for the desires the child cannot afford or for which he is not willing to work; to resistance and hostile reactions to expectations to helping around the house and doing homework.

Fresh Start training, introduced by Banana Moments Foundation, teaches parents the fundamentals of creating a family culture to function more like a sanctuary from the cyber social storm, wherein children feel safe to come home and talk about their experiences on and off line, and then parents can impart wisdom and teach discipline.

For many the idea of a bedtime has been muted if not eliminated from their social existence; it is an arcane notion in a cyber-powered world without time and space barriers. Texting has introduced an expectation to be available for immediate response 24 hours a day. And the impact on mental health, including getting proper rest is a problem psychologists and health care experts have been concerned about for quite some time. So the question every modern parent needs to ask is: “Does the technology serve me and my family, or have we become slaves to the devices?”

There are cyber device settings and apps that parents and kids can deploy as a part of your anti-bully strategy. The aim is to create boundaries in the cyber tools and in your child’s own hearts and minds embrace the correct thinking and actions in confronting a bully mentality. The most important thing parents can do is use these tools to inspire open dialogue about recognizing and responding to mean-spirited, nefarious or unkind communications in the children’s cyber social realm.