Should I? Parental decisions.
Just today two parents asked me for my opinion about what they should allow their children to do. I’ve always told folks that I can give you my opinion, but that’s not necessarily what you should do. You first have to determine what your own values are and what is important to you in raising your own child. So, here I’ll give you my own opinion on these two questions, but you have to decide for yourself:
The first parent, a mom in my town, just purchased computers for the house specifically for the kids. The older one - 13 year old - wants to get on Facebook after attending a camp over the summer where all their new friends were on Facebook. Many parents in our town are completely against letting their children have access to Facebook (I suspect in reaction to a MySpace incident in town a couple of years ago).
My suggestion - let them, but require them to let you be a friend so you can track what they are doing to protect them. This also gives you a chance to better understand what Facebook is and what kids today like to share. Many times I find parents against such social networking tools have never used them either.
The other parent question came as an email from a dad in California who seems to be having a problem at home where, from what I can tell, his child would like to have a cellphone. He didn’t mention the age of his child but did mention that their school embraces a “if I don’t see the cellphone, then there isn’t a problem.”
My suggest - I think it’s unrealistic to think that kids won’t bring phones to school and many parents like the idea of having access to their children right after school. But the school has the right to require them to be stored in a locker, for example, while they are on school property and should enforce such a policy strongly.
What do you think? Post a comment below with your thoughts.
September 28th, 2008 at 10:28 am
kids will have to learn the hard way most of the time.