The best way is to watch over your kids! We pulled the computers out of the bedrooms and put them in one family room. The next best thing is to install parental control software that lets you monitor your kids no matter where they are. Road Runner subscribers can get it free.

If you’re not a Road Runner Subscriber, here’s link to Google via search keywords “Parental Control Software“.

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If your children are going online, chances are they visit web sites which ask for their name and email. Train your kids to make up fun, fake identities instead of giving out their real names and explain to them why it’s important. My kids use their favorite superheroes or cartoon characters when web sites ask them for their names. They have fun and it’s safe.

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Do your kids go online at home? When was the last time you surfed the web with them? Folks, nobody loves the Internet more than me, but we all know there is a really dark side that you can easily stumble into. Spend time with your kids online. Teach them to never give out personal information and make sure they know about the very real danger posed by online predators.

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I guess where there are kids, there are bullies. And where there are bullies, there’s a nonprofit organization funded by your tax dollars that’s telling us the obvious: it’s wrong.

Apparently 1 in 5 kids gets bullied electronically and text messaging is the most popular. A report by NCH gives you an idea of what kids are saying to each other, which sounds very much like what we used to say to each other back when I was a kid (except the “we’ll burn your house down” part):

“You’ve got ‘you’re big, you’re fat, you smell and nobody likes you’ right through to ‘we know where you live and we’re going to burn down your house and you’re going to die’”

In fact, there’s even a Web site: http://stoptextbully.com/.

Need more info? Cnet has a good article on it.

So what’s the solution? It’s the same one today that is used to be a long time ago: beat the crap out of the bully. Except now instead of fists, it’s hacking geeks to the rescue! Shut ‘em down, boyz!

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Did you ever wonder why kids learn about computers so quickly while we adults seem to have a hard time? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because our brains are too full of knowledge and have no more room to learn while children’s minds have lots of space. The real reason is attitude. When a child looks at a computer, they see a toy that they can’t wait to play with. When an adult sees a computer, they see more work ahead and are faced with feeling inadequate while learning new software. I can almost guarantee you that if you too saw your computer as a toy, you’d learn it just as fast as the kids do. Now, how can you do this? Go out, buy some games, install them on your PC, and start playing with it! In no time at all, you too will be a kid and you’ll see your computer in a whole new way.

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