Page 201 - Resources and Support for the Online Educator

Household Guidelines • Chapter 7

One of the other purposes of household guidelines is to strive to have your
kids self-regulate and monitor their actions online. You shouldn’t feel like a
hawk constantly circling around your child when they go online or chat with
someone via social media. While you should still be aware of what they are
doing in general, you need to also encourage them to make the right choices.
Once they leave your house after high school, they will have to make those
choices completely on their own at that point. If you hand-hold them for too
long throughout their teen years, they won’t be accustomed to self-regulating
bad behavior or making correct choices on their own.

Shared Ownership and Scenarios

When you set out to create rules of the household (whether it be for tech-
nology or not), you want to include your kids in this process. If they have
some early say in the brainstorming phase of rule creation, they will be more
likely to follow the rules and adhere to the consequences of breaking them.
This brainstorm process can also be a covert opportunity to discuss the ratio-
nale behind certain social media tools or the actions of your child (and his/her
friends) online.

In collaborating with your child, be thinking and discussing possible
scenarios that they might encounter and how they would handle these. Going
through scenarios can help unearth some ideas about rules and consequences
for negative behavior or breaking the rules.

Here are a few scenarios to think about with your kids and some possible
ideas for rules or guidelines about the behavior.

Screen Time Binge Scenario

Your child is going on a marathon of television watching, YouTube viewing, or
gaming. You know that this isn’t good for their brain, eyes, or health, so you
try to intervene.

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