Saturday, December 11, 2010

What to Anticipate If Your Child Comes Into Trouble Online

Are the parent of a child or teen who uses the internet? As much as we would all like to believe that are kids are protected when using the internet, there are certain situations that may, unfortunately, arise. It is important to remember that most kids use the internet to converse with their friends or to make new friends, not just to do do research for school projects. If your kid finds themselves in trouble online and comes to you, do you know what you can or must do?

As it was before stated, numerous situations can develop online that have the potential to be dangerous. One of those situations is when private information is exchanged with a stranger. Has your youngster recently given away your phone number, address, or their email address to someone who they don’t in truth know?

If so, be sure to adjust as much information as possible. This could involve changing your home phone number or your child’s cell phone number or email address. Be sure to take additional safety steps, such as always being conscious of your surrounds, locking your home and car, and you could also want to contact your local authorities. Be sure to talk to your teen about the dangers of exchanging personal information online.

In keeping with exchanging personal information online, your child may end up talking to an adult, thinking that they are another teenager or close to their age. If that is the case, your child is likely commerce with an internet predator, who can be old sufficient to be a parent or a grandparent.

If your child has made contact, on purpose or accidentally, with an adult person online, has any personal information been exchanged? If so, change that information, like your child’s email address, cell phone, or even if your home phone number. Make sure that the contact stops straight away. Contact the authorities, school officials, and make sure that all family members know. Get as much information you can about the real person behind the computer. The police could be able to assist you do so.

Many high school and junior high school students use social networking websites, like MySpace. Sadly, many also mistakenly consider that it is a good idea to try to look “cool,” online and at any cost. Your child may post pictures or videos of themselves online doing illegal activities, like smoking or drinking underage, stealing, or doing drugs.

If this is something that your teen has done, be sure to take away the pictures or videos right away. If your child’s pictures or videos have been viewed by school officials or authorities, they may be facing punishment. A lawyer should be called if your teen is arrested. If your child is suspended from school or extra curricular activities, speak to school officials. What can be done by both you, the parent, and your child?

Online harassment is another ordinary problem that kids, namely junior high school and high school students face. This harassment can be done by a complete foreigner, an online friend, or a friend right at school. When friends have a falling out or even just a simple disagreement, many turn to the internet to seek revenge, as it is easy to hide behind a computer.

If your child finds themselves a victim of online harassment, the authorities should be contacted. This is mainly important if your child does not in fact know, in person, the individual who is making threats or spreading harmful rumors. If the individual doing so is a former friend or another individual at school, there are a number of steps that you can take. If you know the teenager and their parents, consider arranging a meeting, but be careful and use your best decision. Alternatives engage contacting the authorities or the school.

As you can see, there are a number of troubling and potentially unsafe situations that your child can find themselves in online. Just make positive that you, as the parent, take steps to help and protect your child.

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Learning Opportunities in Video Games for Your Kids

Who would have ever thought that video games - a form of amusement - might improve the minds of those that play them! The reality is that among all the cool graphics, the fantastic music, and the interesting plots, educational opportunities are be plentiful - and to find them, one only needs to look at them a little closer. Video games improve strategic thinking. Rare is the video game that doesn’t require its player to make a decision two or three steps ahead of a present situation. With steady play, players quickly learn the advantage of strategic idea and they begin to apply it to actual world opportunities.

Video games improve problem solving. Even though the similar could be said regarding any game, video games have established in study after study to improve problem-solving skills. This is since most (if not all) games are centered around a trouble and then challenge the player to solve it. In just one game, a player may solve anywhere from three to a hundred or more diverse problems.

Video games advance hand and eye coordination. If you find this hard to believe, pick up a game controller and try to plan around the game. Manipulating a game controller demands the same skills that it takes to maneuver a mouse around a computer screen.

Video games facilitate quick decision-making. One quality of video games that lends to quick decision making is its unprepared condition. The element of surprise is always around the corner and it’s what makes games exciting to play. To win however, players must be able to make smart decisions within a very short sum of time.

Video games provide for the imagination. We don’t actually understand the argument against things like television, videos, and gaming where people use the lack of imagination to hold their part of the debate. Some people claim that video games take away from the mind because games supply the mind with things in its place of hopeful the mind to come up with these things on their own. Bear in mind that these are the same people who say a stack of blocks is enough to grow a child’s imagination. Of course we couldn’t differ more. The descriptions in video games only fuels the imagination and gives it a coil board to form new potential that might not have occurred otherwise.

Video games give confidence exploration. In role-playing games, players must venture off the beaten path and explore the unknown. They have to open doors without knowing what’s following them. They have to go into areas of the game without knowing the consequence. And they have to interact with characters that they’ve never met earlier than. Inside these meticulous kinds of games, the chance to gather up the courage to explorer unidentified territory isn’t just available, it’s required.

Video games enforce memorization. Another feature of video games is its strong influence on memorization. The land portrayed inside some of these games is huge, yet accessing the maps can be cumbersome and troublesome to the game. To recompense, gamers will not only memorize a large portion of the terrain, they’ll remember the tasks required to get to explicit areas.

Video games teach consequence. All computer and video games operate off of an “action - reaction” principle. Do something, and the game will react. This is a great opportunity to learn about consequence - whether this opportunity is experienced from a gamer’s point of view or a programmer’s point of view.

Video games teach patience, dedication, and endurance. No great game can be conquered in a day. In fact, some of the best and most popular games take weeks or months to finish. These are just some of the educational opportunities hidden inside video and computer games. After closer investigation, we’re sure you can find more in addition to hours of fun and amazement.

Commerce With Teenager Video Game Obsession

The following piece of writing is meant for parents of a teenager who might be fanatical with video and/or computer games. Even as in some of our other articles we might sound as though we encourage obsession, we share a concern over teens who tend to shun other interests in life in favor for gaming behavior to the point where they withdraw from society. We would never encourage this kind of behavior, and that’s why we’ve taken time to describe some of the signs of game obsession and offer some advice on how to deal with it.

Recognizing the signs of teenager game mania isn’t as easy as one thinks. It always starts off as first, an interest, and it then starts to grow into an addition. The problem with identifying the start stages of game obsession begins with the teenager. By the time our children are 15 and up, they’ve educated some rather impressive debating skills. So when we question their motivations for repetitive game play, they might rebut our concerns with logic and even make it a point to question our own flaws as parents.

Because no parent ever really wants to come clean a flaw, we can sometimes cave in and convince ourselves that maybe 4 hours in front of a video game isn’t that bad. After all, we spend that much time at the computer, on the phone, or transmitting data back and forth between our Palms, Blackberries, and Cingular cell phones.

Be watchful not to fall quarry to the logical teen. Video games can be addictive and if the time spent playing them is not carefully monitored, they’ll consume everything that a teenager used to care about.

The moment you notice your teenager’s grades falling, homework missing, or social life preliminary to drop off, nip that game time in the bud. If you stay too late to restrict game time, you might experience pre-adult temper tantrums that you aren't set to handle correctly (cursing, breaking things, theft, running away from home, etc.). At this point, the child is obsessed and will do anything to get his or her hands on a game controller.

Another sign of mania is a behavioral change. A child obsessed with gaming will lose endurance with things and with others, be quick to anger, and act in response to situations without fully thinking of the consequences. If you’ve paid any attention to video and/or computer games, you’ll notice that they require this kind of behavior to win or to advance to a higher level.

It’s unlucky, but a teen obsessed with this kind of violent gaming is factually being trained to react in the way described above. That’s why it’s relevant that as an adult, you restrict access to this kind of entertainment and replace it with activities that slow thinking (such as art, music, theater, etc.) and expose your child to other non-violent pleasures (swimming, dance, skating, etc.).

There are a lot of debates circulating around about the impact that video games have on today’s youth and some of it might warrant paying nearer attention to. As a mother or father of a teen, you will do well with your teenager’s desire to “get his game on” by keeping a close eye out for undesirable changes.

Purchase Best Video Games for Your Kids

Visit any video game outlet and you’re bound to get overwhelmed by the hundreds of choices available - especially if you’re new to gaming. Interestingly, kids and teens seem to know their way around these places as if they were their second home. But for the adult, the typical video store looks like some sort of color paint explosion and sooner or later, all the games start to look the same. This guide is for the adult who’s buying a game for a younger person perhaps as a birthday gift or as a bribe. Whatever the reason, you’re going to be pleased about the following guidelines.

Explore this odd happening before setting foot inside a video store. There’s plenty of information offered about video games online, so to decrease disturbance offline, fire up your web browser and do a little homework. Visit the website of the gaming outlet adjacent you and then look for a link to the games section of the system that your youngster plays. Here’s a helpful chart to explain what all those odd letters mean.

  • XBOX 360 = Microsoft’s XBOX 360 System
  • PC = Personal Computer
  • Wii = Nintendo’s Wii System
  • PS2 = Playstation 2 System
  • PSP = Playstation Portable System
  • DS = Nintendo’s DS System
  • EA Sports = Entertainment Arts System
  • PS3 = Playstation 3 System

The key in is to locate the system on the store’s website first. The system, it’s accessories, and all of the games that work on that system will follow. If not, you may need to use the website’s internal search engine.

After locating the suitable games section for your youngster’s machine, check out the ratings of each game and create a temporary shopping list of age suitable material. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) gives each game a rating in an effort to inform parents what their children are playing. Here’s a handy reference to what the ratings mean:

  • C = Suitable for Early childhood
  • E = Appropriate for Everyone
  • E 10+ = Appropriate for Everyone aged 10 and older
  • T = Appropriate for Teens
  • M = Suitable for Mature Adults

Within your temporary shopping list, try obtain a game that’s built from the latest movie release. Little people love the new animated movies put out by Disney and Pixar, and they really enjoy re-living precious moments in the movie in a video game. That’s why when these movies come out on DVD, their producers put a few games in the “Special Features section” of the CDs.

If you can’t find a game that’s built from a movie that the child likes, try to find a game that centers around a popular cartoon character or one that attempts to educate.

If you quiet can’t find one that resembles something that you’ve heard this particular person rambling on about, first give yourself a slight slap on the hand. You should pay better attention. Then point your browser to the nearest Blockbuster or Hollywood Video website. Follow the same procedure outlined in steps 1 - 3 only this time, elect to rent 5 or 6 games that look appealing. This will give your tot a chance to play some games and select one to keep forever while you return the others.

If on the other hand, you did find a game in step 3 or 4, you can either check out online, or drive up to the store and buy it there.

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but the illustrations on the both video and pc game cases do a pretty good job of representing the game’s content. So if you see an design of fighting warriors, chances are the game will be more violent than you prefer. If on the other hand, you see an design that resembles what you’d see on the cover of an interesting children’s book, the game should be age suitable.