Talk PANTS and help keep your child safe
Simple conversations – like crossing the road safely, bullying and dealing with strangers – are subjects that you and your child might talk about. Rightly so. But what about staying safe from sexual abuse? It’s a conversation no parent wants to have but thankfully, with the help of our friendly dinosaur Pantosaurus, it doesn’t have to be scary.
By talking PANTS you have a simple way to help keep your child safe from sexual abuse – without ever using scary words or even mentioning sex.
Internet Safety
Top 10 Tips for keeping your child safe online:
- Consider using internet filtering software, walled gardens and child-friendly search engines. Use your browser's controls as some offer differing degrees of security for each family member.
- Check out what child protection services your Internet Service Provider (ISP) offers - do they filter for spam, for instance? If not, ask them why.
- Keep the computer in a communal area of the house, where it's easier to monitor what your children are viewing.
- Tell children not to give out their personal details. If they want to subscribe to any services online, make up a family email address to receive the mail.
- Children love to chat, but make sure they only use moderated chat rooms and encourage them to introduce you to their online friends. Make sure they know never to meet up with online friends without telling or taking you.
- Encourage your children to tell you if they feel uncomfortable, upset or threatened by anything they see online.
- Involve your children in writing your own family code of acceptable internet use. Remember that what's acceptable for a teenager isn't necessarily OK for a primary school-aged child, so get their input. (Have proportionate responses if the family guidelines are not followed).
- Computer kit is expensive so bear in mind that a child with a laptop may be vulnerable when carrying it to and from school.
- The web's a great resource for homework, but remember to use more than one site in research to get broad, balanced information and always reference your research sources.
- Surf together. Go online with your children and become part of their online life. The key to safe surfing is communication. It is important to keep your child safe in the real world and the virtual world - log onto the link to web-sites on internet safety.
Keeping your child safe on the internet
KEEP SAFE ONLINE!
In the ever changing world we live in, technology is expanding and being used in many different and exciting ways, helping us expand our horizons. With new technology being released all the time, we are open to a vast amount of information and we are also able to communicate with a whole world of new and exciting people. Whilst this is extremely exciting, we need to be sure to keep ourselves and our family safe online.
The Think U Know website is a great place for children and parents to find out more about keeping safe online.
Cyberbullying
We hear more and more about cyberbullying in the news all the time.
The internet and smartphones have changed the way kids can be bullied.
In this Newsround special Ricky investigates cyberbullying. He speaks to those affected by it, and those who have overcome it.