Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion internet parental control

Hello all. We have a 4 yo who has been reading and writing since he was 2 and using the computer since 1.5 yo. We recently bought a new computer and so he was unable to reach his sites with the favorites button. Foolishly, I showed him how to use Google. At first he was just searching for PBS kids, curious George, Mickey Mouse and Barney. Last week, however, I saw him laughing in front of the computer and when I looked, he was watching a stand up comedian on you tube. I am now worried about what else he may come across. Can someone please help this computer illeterate how to choose a good parental control program...and how does it work?

I have Norton on my PC, along with the Internet Security that protects against viruses, I got the free add-on pack for parental controls. It's OK, but there are always some things that get through that I'd rather not have a small child see. I don't want GS9 to be exposed to the almost endless gore pictured on the front page of most news sites.

Agreed with MON -- we have laptops, so it's easier, but ds6 is never on the computer without one of us sitting right there with him.

The quickest fix might be bookmarks -- set up a list of all the websites he visits (PBS Kids, etc) and/or pre-approved sites that you've found, and tell him he can go to any of those. If he's interested in something else, he must have a parent sitting with him, period.

That's what I'd do, anyway. Ds6 knows how to use Google but he's just not that interested -- he's too busy playing WoW.

yes, we have laptops and now we have all his sites under favorites and he is never alone when he is using the computer but he is still curious about Google and Yahoo and I am worried about those rare times when we don't have our eyes on what he is doing.

Try Cosmeo. It's not free but it's full of neat educational games, movies, plus the search engine is directed only to approved sites.

You can get an offsite proxy provider to route your internet through for everything. They can provide a white list for you and a gray list for you to approve.

I'll look around.

Kidzui.com I just installed it on DS's computer the other day. Love it!

That looks pretty good. Free version? Or paid?

We have a 4yo as well that has been independent on the computer for years it seems. When we got our new computer we gave him our old one to use since he was so into using them. We have it set up for his bookmarks, and we check the history from time to time. He really is a rule follower though, so he doesn't really do much other than playing his games on line (wheel of fortune, fowl words, jigzone, etc.) We also have a page bookmarked for questions (It's a site for kids but I can't remember what it is). It has a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia on it as well. He can go there and search for something and things that are not appropriate don't come up. Back in September we had looked at the history and apparently he had googled one day "why does everything change so much?" Which somehow got him to a yahoo page, which then talked about pregnancy. He was apparently only on it for a second and it looked like he tried to log in and respond to a question, LOL. But he has never done anything like that again, and that was before we had talked to him about it. And there was a time last year where he tried to order 2 tickets on-line to a local kids concert. We were in the room, and thankfully he doesn't know about credit cards and we had a talk about that too. He also gets emails from the wiggles fanclub (don't ask why...he apparently signed up for it a while ago and gets updates). So he clicks on some of their links. We are usually in the room with him because it is our toyroom...but he knows that he can't do anything other than his game sites unless we are there....but I still may check out the other controls because you just never know...an accidental click could be quite scary.