13 year old wants IM access...

Well, you can set it so that he can only accept connections from folks on his buddy list, then monitor that buddy list closely. In addition, there is usually a history that you can look at for each of his buddies.

chispita73- If a 13 year old is going on the internet, he needs to know the uncomfortable facts. Did you tell him about predators? Did you tell him that people may lie on the internet, and pretend that they are who they aren't?

IMO is it not enough to tell him just to chat with friends. He may very well be curious. It is ok to get monitoring software for YOUR comfort, but that won't teach him anything. He needs to learn about the danger of conversing with strangers. You need to teach him to come to you and report to you when something seems "fishy" to him.

At 13, he needs both the structure of you monitoring what he does on the internet. He also needs to internalize the knowledge of the dangers of the internet, so he will be prepared if something untoward develops.

Good luck. It isn't isn't easy, but children need to learn to protect themselves.

A young colleague of mine told me that he didn't think anyone under 16 should be allowed to use the computer without a parent in the room with them.

He's a very recent college grad with younger brothers and sisters - very protective of them.

He gave me a lot to think about in our discussion. IM'ing? Not an option, according to him. I've been reconsidering quite a few things about the net. Noddy's recent comment, on another thread, about this not being a toy - really hitting my ear now.

Boys are about a year behind girls. That's all I'm gonna say.

It's a very scary world when we open up the doors to the full internet to our children. I could not agree more with Phoenix, ehbeth and cjhsa about protecting our children and teaching them how to protect themselves. Noddy's comment that ehbeth referred to about this not being a toy hits the nail right on the head.

Thank you all for your comments and advice. I went home on Friday and talked to both of my boys about the dangers out in "the cloud". We made rules, no chatting until homework and chores are done and only when either my husband or I are at home. We also made it clear that time is limited to 30 min and it must be earned.

That all went well with the 13 yr old but the 10 year old wasn't very happy. We made it clear that the age to start chatting would be 13, with some exceptions. If his brother is on w/ friends and he wants to say something to them or if we (adults) are on he can chat with our friends & family but no other time. He wasn't very happy but that's life and we used one of the examples in another thread... The internet is like a dark street and we wouldn't send him out into it alone so if he wants to go an adult needs to be with him at all times..

It's a very scary world when we have to worry about this. Freaks and weirdos out there to get our kids.....

Things weren't this scary when we were growing up... We didn't have cell phones or IM to talk to our friends, we just walked outside. I always tell my children stories about what it was like when I was a kid. They laugh and ask, "how did you ever make it without technology?" I smile and enjoy knowing it had it good growing up but, I fear for their future because it's only getting worse as they grow and have children?

I try very hard to give them the "facts" of life.. at the appropriate age but none the less I don't want them to loose their innocence too young!

Isn't that the truth? When I was 13, I wasn't even thinking about sex. (GROSS!!!!) but now we have 13 years olds pregnant all over the place. Innocence is lost so much sooner now.

It's so disheartening to see so many of our youth of today wanting to grow up waaaaay too fast. Innocence is lost too early. My daughter was reading me an article about teen pregnancies and it was incredibly shocking to me to hear that our own small town of 153k people has the 3rd highest pregnancy teen pregnancy rate in all of California! And it wasn't even wide spread throughout our town but limited to a very small sector on the south side. The statisticians had interviewed one young girl of 17 who was already a mother twice. She became pregnant with her first one at the age of 12!! And her second at the age of 15!

Something is horribly, horribly wrong....

Lady J Isn't that the truth...?

Just 2 weeks ago we went to my son's middle school for orientation and they were talking about all the changes our kids were going to be facing. Since that meeting I have noticed things in my son that I had not noticed before. Was it because I was being a mom or because I was in denial of him growing up? Who knows, what we do know is that while he was not interested in girls when school started that has changed.. He takes more pride in his work, his appearance and his attitude is changing.. I can't say it's for the best but we do bring him back down to earth and remind him about just what your comment above said…

I tell him that "little" boys and girls should not be kissing nor having sex at such a young age. My husband and I made him think about and draw a chart with his friend's names and some a couple of girls… Then we told him to draw lines from the 2 girl's names to all the 5 boys, including him. It was a lesson on how if he kissed one of those girls it will eventually mean that he and all his friends would have kissed her too. He was horrified and then we took it a step further and just said, now imagine if you were all having sex, you will all eventually end up with each others germs.

I think we did right by telling him early, of course now a days girl's are having baby's at 9 so I don't think it was too early. Besides, they say the earlier we tell our kids and the more we repeat things the better the chance is of them remembering what we said…