How To Shield Your Kids From Your Potty Mouth Texts
I have a text group chat with friends on my phone that would burn my kids' ears off; we complain, we gossip, we joke and it is not for public consumption. Now that all three of my kids can read, I have to shield my phone from them so they don't lose their innocence too early.
That is, until I got a Windows 8 Phone -- the Nokia Lumina 920. [I was given the phone to test along with some other bloggers for a month during the busiest time of the year in a #holidayswap].
The phone has a feature called the Kid's Corner which the kids can access without going on to my main page. This way they can take pictures (the camera on the Nokia is a little too good!) and play Angry Birds, without once going near my e-mail or texts. I can choose what content they see, and I can change it up to keep it interesting.
Phew.
Now using a new phone is not an easy feat for a dinosaur who is used to a clickety keyboard. But I am adjusting slowly. Thankfully, my son the Xbox nerd already has a Windows Phone so he has been extremely helpful with tips, and also set up a nice Xbox avatar for me, just in case I want to join him in a game.
Even he hasn't been able to circumvent the Kid's Corner though.
We have had similar issues on our main computer of the kids having access to my open links (and my unfinished posts - ugh!) and colour printer. So we set up three separate accounts on the computer with three separate logins and settings. We have higher monitoring on their accounts so we can track the sites they are visiting and we get warnings if they venture into places that have questionable content. So far, no red flags -- even from the 12-year-old's account. Unless, he is somehow circumventing us on that too.
Kids having access to the content that we create is a big issue. How do you handle it? Do you turn over your phone to your kids? Do you worry?
Want more chaos? Last year, I wondered when my daughter would start to hate her Christmas Eve birthday, not yet is the answer.
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