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In cyberspace, no one can hear your kid scream

Angela Mollard

by Angela Mollard

05 Jun 05:50am

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Filed under: Blogs, Children, Parenting

36 comments

“Mummy,” my daughter said recently, in much the tone of Violet Beauregarde, the grasping spoilt brat in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “I want a blog.”

Start 'em early

I thought she said she wanted a dog – an oft-repeated plea that’s resulted in many weekends babysitting puppies from our local pet shop. But, no, she wanted a blog. “Why?” I asked. “What would you write about?”

She did that withering tongue-click thing that’s become so prevalent among seven-year-olds, it has me wondering if a little Botox in the soft palate might help.

“I’d write about China (she’s studying it at school) and things I like. And I’d take a video of me singing ‘Here Comes the Sun’, so when I’m asleep, you can click on my blog and still hear me singing your favourite song.”

Bless. It used to be my favourite.

So who, I ask, will read her blog? “Oh, my friends and the other twines.” Twines? Turns out she means tweens and, according to her, that’s any kid older than five.

At first glance, I have several problems with a seven-year-old having a blog. How can she have one when I haven’t started one yet? (I have great reservations about adding to the chronic verbal incontinence already spewed across the web.)

And what about that quaint little idiom about children being seen but not heard? I don’t hold much stock in such Victorian values, but do I want her adding her voice to the digital cacophony? Shouldn’t she be curled up in a chair in a daisy-sprigged petticoat reading Snugglepot and Cuddlepie with her needlepoint beside her?

Finally, is blogging more special because more people can share it, or are we adopting a narcissistic ‘look at me’ attitude towards utterances that were once contained in conventional conversations?

After much thought and a little research – ironically, on other people’s blogs – I’ve decided that children blogging is a terrific idea. (Although, I reserve the right to change my mind in 10 years’ time, should posts about ‘things I like’ start to include vodka snorting.)

Kids love an audience. Whether they’re cartwheeling or writing, if someone notices, they’ll do it again. And again.

Last year, a school in the UK started conducting lessons via a blog when it was forced to close due to heavy snowfalls. What started as simple maths lessons where kids had to do things such as measure the depth of the snow ended with them writing 5000-word articles. When the national writing tests rolled around, the number of 11-year-olds with an above-average score soared.

Blogging is like putting your hand up in class and always being chosen. It’s Zuckerberg meets show-and-tell. Writing solely for your teacher is one thing, but blogging with classmates is a pretty cool way to learn to respect others’ opinions. And, unlike their luddite parents, they’ll have technological literacy embedded in them without realising.

Of course, I’m not suggesting they wander alone in cyberspace. Access to their sites must be restricted, password protected and vigilantly monitored. Parents (and teachers) need to teach appropriate ways to interact online, but surely that’s as vital in the modern world as learning fractions and road safety.

Yes, I’d love my daughter to be losing herself in my vintage Enid Blytons. But for now, she’s beguiled by The Enchanted Web.

Catch Angela Mollard on Weekend Today, Sundays at 7am on the Nine Network

Most commented

36 comments

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    • ZSRenn says:

      06:10am | 05/06/11

      Ha Ha she would write about China and put video’s of “Here comes the sun.” It sounds like she needs an alchohol lock on her computer not parental locks.

      Reply

    • Rose says:

      06:35am | 05/06/11

      Who the hell are you allowing your 7 year old daughter around that she knows all about “blogs” and wants one?  Most 7 year olds I know are too busy playing with their dolls. I call BS on this whole article. I dont know any 7 year old that speaks that way your little girl does, and frankly if its true what she’s saying I think you need to 1) find her some new friends 2) send her to a psychologist. Most 7 year olds don’t even know how to spell or send text messages let alone blog. Quite frankly anyone who lets their under 16 year old on the internet with a facebook or blog profile needs to have their children removed from them immediately. It’s practically an open invitation to predators.

      Reply

    • jb says:

      07:34am | 05/06/11

      Give the girl a break, she’s a freaking journalist, her daughter is just watching what her mummy does, I think your nasty judgmental comments say more about you Rose than Angela.
      I’m a photographer and my 3 year old has a $1500 camera, most people look at the back of the screen but he looks through the viewfinder, they copy us and I am proud of what my little boy can do with his Nikon, he shoots with better framing than most people I know, but does that make me a bad dad? no and it certainly doesn’t make Angela a bad mum, in fact I dare say she’s actually pretty damned proud, oh and by the way my son has had his own facebook page since he was 1 year old…

    • ZSRenn says:

      08:36am | 05/06/11

      @ Rose of the nanny state. Lighten up!

      I agree with jb the mother is a journalist and the daughter is only copying her mother. Any parent would be proud that their children take interest in their career and wish to emulate it.

      I learnt to use computers so that I could have contact with my soon to be teenage daughter. It allowed me to face to face with her when other factors made it impossible to be with her. She escaped predator free with the proper usage restrictions were in place.

      I also think that this young girl might be light years ahead of her generation when she grows up with an extensive knowledge of the web and computers gained from an early introduction.

      We have gifted children or prodigies coming forward all the time in other aspects of life study and the arts. Now that we have joined the computer age is it not about time we start to see prodigies in this aspect of our life as well?

      My only concern with the article is that the girl wants to blog about China and sings old Beatles songs. This is strange behavior from someone of any age group.

    • Stephy says:

      11:08am | 05/06/11

      Rose, I hope you din’t have children. Restricting them from anything but dolls or trucks would become droll very quickly. As soon as my son is old enough I’m going to take him gliding. Oh my gosh, what a horrible parent I must be! But it’s what I love and I want to show him why I love it by giving him the experience for himself. Blogging is mild in comparison.

    • theodore says:

      11:49am | 05/06/11

      good god, do you really believe this?
      Television comes in colour now, the world too.

      Being tech savvy at the age if 7 is always a good thing if the parent understands whats going on, especially a journalist mother. 

      I’am very concerned about the 7 year old’s that you are hanging around, if they cannot do some basic spelling. Perhaps it’s a side effect of never touching a keyboard.

    • Jess says:

      12:25pm | 05/06/11

      Are you serious? I could read by 4 and write by 6 and I know plenty of 5 year olds who use computers and smart phones as well (sometimes better!) than adults. I dont think they need to go see psychologists because of it!

      Not all girls like “playing with dolls”, in fact I hated dolls as a little girl. Any family where the parents are tech savy are going to have tech savy kids and yes they’ll know what a blog is the same way they know what a newspaper is. Would you think a child was damaged if they said they wanted to write articles for a newspaper? It’s essentially the same thing. We’re not all stuck in the dark ages.

      And did you skim over the part about password protections, being supervised and taught internet safety? You’re probably one of those people that think sex education is “an open invitation” to teen orgies.

    • Groucho says:

      04:27pm | 05/06/11

      @ jb, I’m a violinist, and my 2 year old has a $1600 Stradivarius.

    • CompetitiveParentWithOtherwiseNoLife says:

      08:23am | 06/06/11

      My 2 year old daughter can play the violin upside down, under water.

    • Joe Jiudice says:

      10:25am | 06/06/11

      My 1 year old daughter has a $4 million real estate business and a $20 million guitar.

    • Grant says:

      01:19pm | 06/06/11

      Whoa whoa… 

      In civil society, we do not send children to psychologists because they want to write, don’t you think you might be over-reacting?

      I think anything that encourages children to write is an excellent idea.

      In addition, just like protecting and supervising your child out on the street, the internet requries the same vigilence.  Which the writer has addressed by stating the blog will be closely monitored and password protected.

      Your nonsensical, simple minded and incoherent statement is concerning.

      “anyone who lets their under 16 year old on the internet with a facebook or blog profile needs to have their children removed from them immediately.”

      Really?  Really?  Do you actually believe what you write, have a think about what you are writing and whether it makes sense next time, please.

    • Vince says:

      02:10pm | 06/06/11

      I am a plumber and my boy even at the tender age of 4 could do wonders with a toilet.

    • Lindy says:

      07:10pm | 06/06/11

      My daughters aged 7 and 8 both use blogs at school.  Successfully.  Safely.

      Banning them from using the internet will never work —teaching them to use it wisely is much sensible an approach than donning the tin foil hat and bagging other people’s parenting.

    • Leah says:

      09:14pm | 06/06/11

      Holy geez, what is your issue? I do volunteer work with primary school aged kids, and while I agree most 7 year olds wouldn’t know what a blog is, I reckon most of the nine and ten year olds do. So it wouldn’t surprise me if some 7 year olds - especially a journalist’s daughter - would know about them. I was using a computer at age 7, back in the early 90s, so I would think it normal that today’s 7 year olds are reasonably proficient at using the internet.

      And how old are you to know so little about the internet that you think it’s unsafe for anyone below 16 to have facebook or a blog? A blog is probably one of the safer things a kid can do on the internet. I’ve had an email address since age 12, my sister’s had one since she was about 7. One day when she was about 9, she called me into the living room and pointed to the screen, saying “should I download this?” She’d opened some spam in her inbox and had attempted to download the attachment. Fortunately hotmail’s auto virus scanner caught it and brought up the warning, which is when she called me in. I told her no, definitely not, and NEVER try to open an attachment from somebody you don’t know. Email is now considered one of the most basic uses of the internet and most people wouldn’t bat an eyelash at a kid having an email address. A blog, provided you monitor the information the kid puts on it, is actually safer I’d think. You don’t run the risk of downloading viruses and you can put security measures on it - eg, making it ‘private’ (so only invitees can read it) and moderating comments. It’s public, so you can see what your kid is writing (unlike emails).

      Similar goes for Facebook. You can put privacy settings on so nobody can see any of your profile unless you confirm them as ‘friends’. If you’re internet-unsavvy enough not to know these things, that is your problem, and you shouldn’t take it out on somebody else.

      jb… you have too much money if you’re letting a 3 year old play with a $1500 camera raspberry

    • deb says:

      07:54am | 05/06/11

      cant stand kids,any thing between the age of zero to sixteen. spoilt brats the lot of them.must haves.will haves.

      Reply

    • Fiona says:

      10:30am | 05/06/11

      Nice, not. Do you tell your family or friends that are parents that one? Bet that’s a real conversation starter.

    • loulou says:

      07:59am | 05/06/11

      Agree, it’s BS.  And silly

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      10:18am | 05/06/11

      Blogging narrows a person’s emotional range if the time they spend in front of a computer takes up the time they would spend doing other things.
      Children, especially, need to do a variety of tasks, and blogging is slightly addictive because, in effect, we talk to ourselves when we blog ; therefore, there is nothing at stake if the other party suffers a peculiar offence at our comments. We don’t feel or understand their pain, and to really make amends, well, really, is there anything at stake there ?

      Narrow perceptions stops us fixing problems ; any problems.

      Reply

    • Penguin says:

      11:42am | 05/06/11

      Football narrows a person’s emotional range if the time they spend on the feild takes up the time they would spend doing other things.  See what I did there.

      It is an activity like any other. It comes with benefits and risks like anyother.  For some reason people seem to thing that anything to do with a computer is bad and anything that is physical and outside is good.  It is a really simplistic viewpoint.

    • stephen says:

      08:01pm | 05/06/11

      Football is an activity, which is better for a lot reasons for the young.

      Computers were designed to work out the distance beteween here and Pluto.
      We now know the distance, yet everybody still thinks if they sit behind a machine, it will make them smart.
      This is the crux of the matter.

    • Aish says:

      10:52am | 05/06/11

      Letting your kids use the Internet in a guided way is very rewarding. I started access chat rooms and blogging when I was 12/13 - most certainly the last two years of primary school. I found it a great way to talk to people of my age and older about things my friends didn’t. Blogging at that age is extended creative writing - excellent for english!

      Either way, if you don’t support the idea, your child will most likely do it themselves. If she was not helped to blog now, she will work out how to do it within a year. Without your knowledge at all. Much better to guide and know about it than to pretend it doesn’t happen. Though many parents seems to prefer the head in sand option when it comes to the internet.

      Reply

    • Harquebus says:

      11:59am | 05/06/11

      The internet is an adult place. There are only two rules. TCP and IP. There is no such thing as Cyber-bullying but, there are bad parents who, raise cotton clad wimps.

      Reply

    • CJ Morgan says:

      02:13pm | 05/06/11

      Personally, I put it down to that Flash crap.

    • Harquebus says:

      03:33pm | 05/06/11

      I wish it was that easy.

    • Bob says:

      07:36pm | 05/06/11

      You forgot about UDP - Which is highly relevant for any voice or video communication.

      Also, these are better described as protocols, or languages than rules.

      And there is, the same as there is normal bullying or blackmail that can spill over from the internet to RL, or vice versa. The big difference is it’s quite easy for parents to monitor what their children do online.

      If you’re going to try sounding tough, at least try sounding like you know what you’re talking about.

    • Harquebus says:

      01:53pm | 06/06/11

      Bob, I know what I am talking about mate. If you want to be pedantic. I try to keep things simple here. Wanna take me on, let’s go brudda.

    • Gladys says:

      12:06pm | 05/06/11

      All my lovin’ is our Here comes the sun.

      Reply

    • CJ Morgan says:

      01:37pm | 05/06/11

      I’d say that interacting with others via the Internet would constitute part of the discursive repertoire of contemporary literacy.  As such, maintaining a blog is probably something to be encouraged among kids - with suitable guidance and parental controls in place.

      Uncoincidentally, the main way I stay in touch with my widely dispersed kids and grandkids is Facebook - again, with suitable parental guidance it beats the hell out of the phone/SMS.  I guess it’s like anything else between kids and parents: it’s all about communication, trust and responsibility.

      @ Rose: do you actually have much to do with kids?  Even dolls have their own websites these days smile

      Reply

    • Greg says:

      02:00pm | 05/06/11

      ‘Cyberspace’ is a word that no self respecting person should use, least of all a journalist. It’s right up there with ‘information super-highway’. It’s 2011; just call it the internet.

      Reply

    • Ash says:

      03:45pm | 05/06/11

      I had a blog (wasn’t called that then, but it was basically my own web page) as a kid… my parents got us the internet when it was hell expensive and hell slow, when I was around 10, and then didn’t know how to use it, so basically left us kids to our own devices, just checking occasionally we weren’t viewing porn.  It was really beneficial… I ended up teaching myself HTML source code from looking at how other sites did things (logic skills) to insert lots of flashing GIFs on my page. I practiced writing and had an outlet to express myself (obviously, without using my name etc). I improved my typing skills and had an outlet to express myself. Using Yahoo, I found other kids with websites and we posted in each other’s guestbooks and asked questions about each other’s countries.  All round, it was positive.

      Reply

    • scumbag says:

      04:30pm | 05/06/11

      Arrgghhh, she prob’ly said ‘Mummy I want a bog’. Give the kid a break.

      Reply

    • Phil says:

      05:42pm | 05/06/11

      Kids are no longer Kids.
      Very sad.

      Reply

    • Navy Blue says:

      10:45pm | 05/06/11

      I would just like to say, for the record and in public, my little girl thinks “We are the navy blues” is Daddy’s favourite song.
      And she’s right.
      Little genius.

      Reply

    • mike j says:

      08:12am | 06/06/11

      I think I’d prefer to read her blogs.

      Reply

    • Cat says:

      10:49pm | 06/06/11

      meh, if you are fine with it and prepaired to take precautions and monitor the whole thing very closely then no harm no foul. Problem is it becomes very easy to get lax with those precautions as time goes on and she is still going to need a high level of supervision for a good while yet - for me it would come down to whether I was willing to always set a time limit, always have to log in/out for her, always screen comments before she could see them, constantly monitor who had access and who gives her access to what THEY write, constantly monitor what her friends are writing to make sure IT is appropriate ect. ect. ect. but given all that could be avoided by simply telling her she isn’t old enough and she wont actually die without an online blog *shrug* I’m for option number 2!

      Reply

    • Anon says:

      03:41pm | 24/11/11

      Sounds to me like Angela has raised an amazing seven year old genius who is probably going to be ridiculously sucessful considering the direction the world is going….

      Reply
 
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