Grow Your Own Magazine

I found out yesterday that my 13 year old neice who lost her mum last Oct has been giving out her personal details on either facebook or bebo, Although I havent seen what she wrote her elder sister ( 30 plus ) who lives in Birmingham found it and rang my other sister who told her daughter and when she checked it out she was shoked at what she had written and found she had been chatting to a 51 year old man, an african man and a 17 year old localish boy, plus others, and while all this might be inocent I want to stress to ALL KIDS the dangers this might lead to.
My niece said she didnt know it was wrong but she did, as last year I sat with her and her mum and told her never give out any personal details of yours or your friends to anyone you dont know, she had given my 12 year old daughters mobile and e mail details to her friends without mine, or my daughters permission.
So kids if you are reading this please please DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GIVE OUT ANY DETAILS ESPECIALLY TO PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW.
My brother in law has no idea how to use a computer and has no intentions of doing so, therefore there are no restrictions apart from other family members checking up on her.

Sound piece of advice there Jackie

I have 2 girls and the laptop is always in the dining room - I bought this one especially as it is not wireless. Hence the hateful mess of wires under the desk -Id rather that than unsupervised midnight online chats. Cant understand how parents allow computers in bedrooms - and tvs and dvds - mine are allowed music only. And yes,they feel deprived, but tough!

JackieJ - sounds like you are doing the right thing foryour neice, shame about her Dad- he probably doesnt know where to start (especially a teenage girl) difficult for him, but at that age (mine 12 and 14) you have to be tough or theyll walk all over you (oh god I sound like my mum)!

I dont like that BEBO - its too much like a popularity contest for me - not healthy - Boys are all trying to look and sound hard/street and girls all flirty and posey - I tell mine to take anything off that I dont like the look of. WE have to supervise our kids online - noone else will -- it is after all a business and ethics go out ofthe window when big bucks are concerned.

that is all - climbing off my soapbox now!

francesbean

i read a letter that was e-mailed to my partner about this subject by a friend of a friend who works for the police about an e-mail written in the states by a police officer.

It basically starts as a diary of a sex offender who finds a girl on a chat room and tracks here down to here home town 400 miles away , and although this girl had not given here address she had included pictures on here site that showed her with friends and her school photo with the colours and logo .
From this little piece of info he found her school and found out who she was due to the photos that had be posted by her on the site , later that day he followed her from school for a short while then stopped , and each night he waited at the place he stopped the day before and followed a little more untill he had her home address where he sat and waited to get the family pattern to find out when the girl was left alone on a regular basis.
When the day came and she was alone in the house he banged on the door and introduced himself as a long lost friend of the family and is only in town for the day and just though he would pop by for a visit . To make this more real he would take a bag of fake presents in a bag for the family.
He sat there talking to the girl as she made a coffee untill the parents came home talking about there past life with her parents untill they came home , on arrival the parent wanted to know who the guy was in there front room and on this the police man identified himself and explained how he had got there and how it could have been completly diffrent ending.
The police do this sometimes in the states to make awarness of the problem and then go to schools and show how easy it is to be found and hurt.

So just remember - they don't need name , address , telephone number or date of birth just a simple photo can give the information they need to find you!

__________________
---) CARL (----
ILFRACOMBE
NORTH DEVON

a seed planted today makes a meal tomorrow!

www.freewebs.com/carlseawolf

now in blog form ! UPDATED 01 / 04 / 08

My daughetr has a laptop but it is connected to our computer ( dont ask me how Oh's domain ) he knows when she is on line and can check it out, all the protection stuff in place, she has a t.v in her room but hardley ever watches it and its turned off at nine pm. Mobile taken away at night as well.
Sometimes I think i am too strict with her especially when i talk to other parents and they are shocked at what i dont allow. But as she is my fith child with four older sons been there done that got the t shirt as they say. They were never allowed to hang out on street corners had to be in by 9pm had to tell me where they were, if they lied to me they were grounded they didnt like that.
I think you have to trust your children and teach them to respect themselves and they will respect you and other's, be persistant with boundries dont keep changing the rules and they do learn from it.
As for my brother in law he never wanted anymore children got 2 from his first marriage and has never interacted with my niece now expects it to happen overnight.

Spot on JackieJ - 14 yr old currently grounded until end of month - I think she now realises that there will be no reprise - no time off for good behaviour (that is expected) and that her behaviour was unacceptable. In the past I may have relented and given in to her pleas- not this time or ever again. I learnt the lesson - I think she has too.

Scary tale carlseawolf,Ill relate this to my kids as a cautionary tale - what a sad sign of our times.

francesbean

I grounded my 17 year old son ( now 29 ) for a whole month he was only allowed to go to college and work ( washing up in pub ) and had to give me his wages which i banked for him, I was a single mum at the time and he was over 6 ft tall. The boys laugh at me now when i sort of get cross with them and tell me to stand on the stairs so i can reach to give them a clip cross the ear always threatened never carried out.
One look from me and they know when they have gone to far.

At school we do Internet safety, and I asked how many year 7s (11-12 years) had a Bebo, Myspace or facebook or some such account; almost all did. Then I asked how many of them had told the truth about their age, none of them had, most had said at least 16. I hope it got them thinking when I pointed out that if none of them were truthful, how could they expect that any of the others they talked too were. I also said about school uniforms, names ect, giving clues away even if you didn't realise. One game I got them to play online had them chatting to another person in a chat room (not real, just computer simulated). One boy, who was really hamming it up, said about this cool chick who wanted him to go to a party with her, and she lived local. At the end the 'cartoon face' of the person was revealed. His exclamations of horror when he realised it was a 50-60 year old man was priceless. Without him, the lesson wouldn't have had so much punch, but it did get the message across. I just hope they remember it!

My daughter was very put out a couple of years ago when I refused to let her have an account, and insisted that her friends should take down pictures that included her on a school trip. She understands the dangers better now, and sticks to chatting on MSN to people she actually knows in real life.
It's sad though, Vicky had a friend to stay last weekend, and I've never had such a hard time. The friend didn't want to catch the bus into town, play cards, board games, nothing but go on the computer to chat to her 'online friends', never mind the friend she was visiting. They ended up watching 2 feature length films, and them some anime dvds we had. There was no giggly, girly conversations, and when I asked what she was doing next year she just said college, another question found out the subject, but she couldn't tell me how long the course was etc, I gave up trying to make conversation eventually. Unfortunately I suppose there are an increasing number of people who interact only with online friends, and do not develop people skills in real life.

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