“I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Boys & Girls Clubs of America. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.”
Did you know that June is Internet Safety Awareness Month? I didn’t, but the timing is perfect considering the kids will home for the Summer. My boys are 9 and 7 years old, but they both own a tablet that connects to the Web. Even with parental blocks, they still have limits on how much time they spend online and I monitor their use by having them use them only in my presence. It’s going to be soon enough that they will both be Tweens and my worries will increase as they begin to interact with friends online. That’s when I begin to worry about Cyberbullying. As a blogger, I am probably more aware of the technology that our kids are using compared to the average parent. One in three parents actually believe that their kids are more tech-savvy than they are today. The fact is that you can’t keep your child safe if you don’t understand the technology. I’ve spent sometime today visiting CyberSafeFutures.org and watching the informational videos. I would like to say that the facts shocked me, but I already knew most of them. One in three teens have actually been victims of Cyberbullying. It’s so sad. I was bullied as a child and I’m so grateful that this technology didn’t exist back then. Now as a parent I need to stay informed in order to keep my child safe.
The Boys & Girls Clubs Of America (BGCA) is focused on child safety. Together with Sprint they have put together videos, tips, discussion cards and even a Cyber Survivor Challenge Quiz to help parents ensure a safe future for their children. This is an excellent resource for parents, adults, and young people on opening up a conversation and talking about being cyber safe. BGCA cares about making the future safe for every child.
On another post that I did for BGCA, I found out that my brothers actually have experience with The Boys & Girls Club of America. We have a 15 year age difference so most of their youth has been lost to me. Here is what my oldest brother Walter had to say about BGCA:
“The Bronx Boys Club opened up many opportunities for me and my brother as a child as well as many of our neighborhood friends. Because of programs at the club where we used to congregate every day, we were able to participate in what was called Project Broad Jump at the time which was a great summer program for kids from poorer neighborhoods that otherwise could not afford to go away to camp. The first summer we spent 6 weeks commuting each day to a very prestigious prep school in Manhattan. The teachers were great and there were great sports programs while the second summer we spent 6 weeks sleeping away at an equally prestigious school in upstate New York. None of the programs cost my hard-working parents a cent. What we didn’t know was that they scouted the most promising kids in the program and offered us full scholarships to those very schools that our parents would never be able to afford. I know it changed my life. I went from being one of the smartest kids in my local Bronx school to just average in the more intense curriculum of the prep school I got a scholarship to from 7-12 grades. But it made me work harder to achieve and it made me see what I needed to work on. It enabled me finally to get into an Ivy League School and I often wondered how my life would have turned out had it not been for the local Boys Club in the Bronx. I will always be grateful.”
“I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Boys & Girls Clubs of America. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.”
Ruth says
internet safety really really worries me! I am still trying to figure out how to handle their youtube searches which are minecraft related. They can end up listening to someone talking about minecraft and then hearing a bunch of curse words.
beyourbestmom says
I know- it is scary. I can’t imagine NOT supervising them.