Monitoring Your Child’s Blog

Blogs are becoming increasingly popular and this popularity is not just with adults. Young children are also becoming interested in blogging. With the advent of social networking websites such as MySpace blogging is growing in leaps and bounds. Internet users now have a variety of options available to them for publishing and maintaining a blog. Additionally, the growing popularity of blogs currently available promotes an interest in blogging with other Internet users. Children are bombarded on a daily basis with a variety of blogs available online and are understandably interested in creating blogs of their own. In most cases children create blogs for social reasons but there are some savvy children who realize the potential for profit from blogging. While there are a great deal of benefits children can gain from blogging there are also some risks involved. Therefore parents should carefully monitor their child’s blog as well as all of his Internet usage. This article will discuss the subject of monitoring a child’s blog in greater detail.

Discuss Blog Expectations with Children

The first step parents should take when a child is interested in creating a blog is to thoroughly discuss the expectations with the child. The child and parent should have an open and honest discussion about responsible use of the Internet. This is important because these conversations can lay the groundwork for how the child will behave online. There are certain dangers which exist on the Internet but parents who understand these dangers and communicate with their children to share this potential for danger as well as information on staying safe while online are likely to have children who stay safe while online.

When a child is considering starting a blog, the parent should be involved in the process from the very start. The parent should not only be aware of the child’s intention to begin blogging but should also be aware of the child’s reason for wanting to blog and intentions for the blog. This is important because it can help the parents to set appropriate guidelines for the blog. For example a child may be interested in social networking through a blog but should understand there is the potential for danger with this type of blog. Parents should place limitations on the content of the blog and should advise the children to avoid disclosing personal information such as his full name, address and phone number on the blog. Other information which can be used to identify and locate the child should also be avoided.

Regularly Reviewing Your Child’s Blog

In addition to discussing blogging with the child and establishing ground rules for the content of the blog, the parents should also regularly visit the blog to ensure the established rules are being followed. Parents should review the blogs of their children on a regular basis but should not inform the children when these reviews will take place. This will help to prevent the children from altering the blog to eliminate questionable material during the review and replacing this material after the review is complete. This is important because it would be rather simple for the child to make changes quickly simply by saving files and replacing them with appropriate blog postings during scheduled reviews.

Monitoring the Blogs Your Child Frequents

Parents should also consider regularly monitoring the blogs their children frequent. This is important because the information children are viewing online can be harmful to children. It is also important because most blogs provide the opportunity for visitors to communicate with the blogger. In most cases this communication is in the form of comments which are left for the blogger and the blogger may choose to respond to these comments. In some cases the visitor may even have the opportunity to provide personal contact information to the blogger. Parents who remain aware of the blogs their children visit can review these blogs carefully to ensure their children are not behaving inappropriately online and are not inadvertently putting themselves at risk with the actions they take.

The Universe through a Child’s Eyes

There is something about parenthood that gives us a sense of history and a deeply rooted desire to send on into the next generation the great things we have discovered about life. And part of that is the desire to instill in our children the love of science, of learning and particularly the love of nature.

Your fascination with the universe and how to explore it as we so often do in the field of astronomy can be highly academic and dry as maybe it was if you took a course in astronomy. But when you get out there in the field at night, your equipment is just right and the night sky comes alive with activity, there is no other experience like it for majesty and pure excitement. And that is the kind of experience we want our children to come to love as much as we do.

It’s actually not a big jump from play to learning for children when it comes to learning about the natural world, science and astronomy. Exploration is a natural part of being a child and growing up in a fascinating world and universe. So if we can find ways to take that natural desire to explore and instill a life long passion for astronomy, we will have given our children a truly great gift.

So with a few simple family activities, we can instill that love of astronomy in our offspring. Here are some ideas.

* Make star gazing part of family life. You already love to go outdoors as often as possible to enjoy the stars. So don’t let that be your private passion. Get everybody into the act. The kids will love it and look forward to those nights as much as going to the circus.

* Make each new experience in growing into astronomy a fresh threshold. So the first experiences might be what you experienced as a kid, just laying on your back out in the country with the panorama of the stars overhead trying to take it all in. Go ahead and challenge them to count the stars. It’s a fun exercise and one they will save to use as a joke on their kids when they do this same thing in a few decades.

* Take them along the road of learning, introducing binoculars so they can focus on particular areas of the night sky.

* Now they are hooked and want to know about why some of the stars are brighter than others. They have no idea they are going to astronomy school and don’t even know it. You can tell them about the constellations as you point out how to find them by keying off the North Star. By being able to find things in that mass of stars and knowing there is such a vast amount more they can pick out, they are ripe for learning from star maps and about how the galaxies work.

* Think of their excitement as they notice the changes in the night sky. The phases of the moon and the effect of the rotation of the earth on the position of the planets. Help them find their favorite celestial bodies each night. Before long they will learn to chart the movement of the stars just like the early astronomers did.

* Now you will get caught up in the excitement of finding new things to reveal to your excited crew of fledgling astronomers. When you reveal that you are going on a safari to see an eclipse, a meteor shower or the once in a lifetime appearance of a comet, that gift will as big as anything you might spring on them for Christmas.

The wonders of the night sky will captivate your children the way it has you for years. And you will have done them the greatest favor you ever could do by making them lifelong lovers of the universe.