Important Message on Monitoring Your Children and Teenagers Online

Important: This is NOT one of those wonderful blogs that do nothing but advertise products, or offer faux reviews. This is a one-time suggestion of a software to protect your children online. If you'd prefer to leave now, consider these blog posts of mine that a lot of people seemed to enjoy:
Ugly Son? It's Dad's Fault, Study Shows...
Gag-Proof Your Parenting Attitude! (Get the Funk Out Your Home!)
The Zippy and Lippy Show--Dad Gone Wild!

Here is a link to this GREAT software! Spector Pro 6.0

Still here? Okay, here's the deal...there are many different software programs out there to help keep your child safe on the Internet. But once your child gets into the upper-elementary age-group, such software becomes far less effective (kids can't get to the game sites or music sites they want to get to with the other software and you have to set the filters to be so loose, the protection of the software becomes practically useless).

As kids get older, you need a way to MONITOR them. (At least that's been my experience. But perhaps your child is perfect. :)

Features of Spector Pro. Spector Pro’s excellent combination of monitoring features: Screen Snapshots, Chat/IM Activity, Web Sites Visited, Email Activity, Program Activity and Keywords Detected. They also have three new features: MySpace Activity, Online Searches and Top 10 Summary Reports.

Without getting into too much detail, our monitoring has kept our daughter safe several times already. One time we were alerted she had tried to input our address. Another time we were alerted to cyber-bullying. A third time we picked up on some boys that were 19 and 20 flirting with our daughter online and trying to get her to meet them (then 14)--that one was a lot of fun.

That is what makes this software so good.

Plus the install was easy and the customer service was excellent. So if you want it, go ahead and buy it. If you don't want it or if you are uncomfortable with that level of monitoring of your child's online activity, simply don't buy it. Thank you for your time and tolerance.

There is a corporate version of this. Sales have been brisk due to statistics showing that the average worker admits spending over 2 hours a day of company time surfing the internet for non-business related purposes. (Emphasis there on the "admits". To corporate, it's called "time theft"--though buffooned recently on the wonderful show The Office--still a reality.) Yeah, if companies could get that 25% of worker time back...maybe there won't be as many lay-offs...word to the wise, warning to the wise guys.

You may balk at the price of this product (at this writing $84.99 on Amazon) ...to me, it is the best $85 I ever spent. Worth EVERY penny for the peace of mind it brings.

Here is the link again to learn more: Spector Pro 6.0

How Being a Boy Almost Killed Me (If My Parents Had Known, They WOULDA' Killed Me!)

When I was growing up, I could have died. Real bad. A whole bunch of times. And my parents never knew it until now. ("Hi mom and dad!")

Oh and don't feel so smug about your kids. Chances are you won't find out until 20 years from now about the numb-skulled, death-defying craziness your child is into RIGHT NOW. I am talking about the kind of stuff that could turn them into a potted plant--or plant them six feet under. (Think of all YOUR death-defying "Jackass TV show"-like near death experiences!) And why don't you know? Because they are afraid you would KILL them if you found out!

Here were just a few of my near-death experiences:

Death By Hot Dog and Kool-Aid--I was 5-years-old, at my friend Bernard's birthday party. There were many hot dogs. Me and Bernard, being the party "clowns"--competed to see how many we could stuff into our mouths. I ended up with such a huge wad of hotdog and bun in my mouth that I could not chew or swallow. That LAST thing I was going to do was spit out the whole glob...but I swear it was about to gag me.

Some kids noticed and started making fun and laughing. I couldn't help myself and started laughing real hard which made me choke real bad. I ran to a bush, and spit out a real lot. I returned to the table and drank some Kool-Aid. I started laughing again--and Kool-Aid came out of my nose!! I was petrified--I thought it was blood. I seriously thought I could have died real bad--twice in 3 minutes.

Arrows From Heaven
There was this time when I was 5 or 6, playing with a big group of kids, when a teenage boy invited us over to his back yard. We were honored a cool teenager even paid attention to us without trying to take our money or push us around. So we went.

The game he introduced us to this day was simple: He would shoot target arrows up into the sky...and all us little kids would try to avoid them as they came back down. :)

What a blast! When his friend joined him and we had two arrows to stay away from it got really crazy! What a fun time--that is, until I got tired of looking up. That's when a falling arrow grazed my shoulder. Six inches over...at best I'd still be trying to re-learn my ABC's today, worst-case I could have been dead, real bad.

BB Gun Ricochet
Like Ralphie in, A Christmas Story, I TOO got a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. I was 9. Just like Ralphie, I put the target right up against a piece of scrap metal, pumped off a shot and I was HIT! On the arm...a foot and a half higher, it could have put my eye out...or gone through the eye and into my brain and I would have been dead, real bad.

Freewheelin' on Benton Hill
We had this steep hill in our neighborhood. We loved to freewheel down the hill on bikes at terrifying speed. (Freewheel=the bravest/ toughest kids put our feet up onto our handle bars--totally off the pedals and unable to brake). At the very bottom of this steep hill was a blind cross street--you couldn't really see the traffic coming in time to save you--you just tried to navigate into a certain long driveway--or you would meet the curb at high speed. Oh yeah, death was possible, by car or by curb.

I was ten when I went freewheeling down Benton Hill for like the hundredth time in my life. Maybe I was cocky. Maybe I just got careless... I almost hit a car. A braking driver, a curb, and a nice big bush saved me from being dead, real bad.

There were others--getting a dart stuck in my cheek--about 2 inches from my eye (I was throwing them into the basement ceiling): going headfirst over the handlebars of my 10-speed and landing on my head, and so on. But the point is made. Though being a boy almost killed me, I survived. You survived. And so did these boys...

COULD THIS BE YOUR CHILD IN THIS SHOPPING CART?



CAUTION: BAD LANGUAGE...VOLUME OFF TO AVOID...


Only "advice" I can give here is...protect your kids all you want. You can't keep them safe every second of the day--even if you're the BEST parent in the whole wide world, and you are constantly hovering. Protective actions are prudent. Freaking out too much due to over-protectiveness will introduce a weirdness into your relationship which will rob your kid(s) of some of the most important things you are to provide as a parent--a sense of safety, security, and confidence in facing life in this big, bad old world.

SO what can you do? Go give your kid(s) a hug, tell them how much you love them. And let them know that if they ever do something stupid that gets them dead real bad...you're gonna have to kill them. But then again, they know that already :)

Click here to read a post on this blog about the teen brain and risk-taking behavior--why it happens and what you can do to try and stop it!

In COMMENTS below, please:

• Tell about times when you were a kid and almost ended up "dead, real bad".


• How do YOU find peace when fear for your child's safety overwhelms you?


• What are some practical things you do to keep your child safe?

Need to compare notes with other parents on all things parenting? Visit the website every parent needs: Click here to visit now!

Have quality conversations with your teenager that don't make you feel like a dork, with 101 Movie Clips That Get Families Talking (Yes, that's a dork-free guarantee!) Click here to learn more!