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Health & Fitness

The Tragic Death of Rebecca! Let's End Cyberbullying!

The most compelling reason I can think of for parents to monitor their kid’s computer device activity is Rebecca Ann Sedwick.  Rebecca was a 12 year old girl, who committed suicide after being cyberbullied by fifteen girls for over a year!  That’s fifteen parents that were oblivious to how their children were terrorizing this girl using computer devices.  Rebecca had her whole life ahead of her until she jumped to her death on September 10th.


"You should die," someone told the 12-year-old.  "Why don't you go kill yourself?"  If the parents of these fifteen girls had seen the ugly messages of hate their daughter’s were sending to Rebecca they would have put a stop to them and had a conversation with their child about appropriate behavior.   


Kids don’t learn how to behave offline without parental oversight and they don’t learn how to behave appropriately online either without parental guidance.

If we left kids to their own devices (and I don’t mean cellphones) there is no doubt that they would remain rather uncivilized creatures.  Part of our job as parents is to teach our kids to be civilized human beings.  No child likes parents insisting on decent table manners like chewing with their mouths closed, or not slurping their milk at the dinner table.  Kids don’t like writing thank you notes to Aunt Susie for the sweater they didn’t want. They don’t like to be reminded to say please and thank you.  They know that if they make a cruel remark to a child, and their parent sees it happening, that they will be having a conversation with Mom and Dad about appropriate behavior.

Offline parents pay attention to what their kids are doing and how they’re behaving.  They teach, they intervene, and they correct behavior.  Unfortunately, this kind of parenting has been largely limited to the offline world.  This needs to change.  We need to bring this same parenting style of teaching appropriate manners, courtesy, respectful behavior to the online world too.

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The offline world and online world are not two separate entities to kids today.  For kids the online world and offline world are one and the same and parents need to be engaged in both worlds to fully parent.

Parents need to do everything they can to monitor their child’s computer and cellphone activity.  Their kids need to know their parents are monitoring so that it becomes a natural deterrent to inappropriate behavior.  When kids know their parents are checking-in they think twice about what they’re posting.  When kids know that parents are checking-in, its easy to have a conversation with their child about what they’re doing online and how they’re behaving online.

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Parents need to begin parenting online as soon as kids go online.  When parents start at a young age, monitoring is then expected and integrated into a child’s life.  It’s seen as an extension of the same parenting that goes on offline.  Waiting until a child is a teen online is asking for push back.  A child that’s been allowed complete independence online will obviously resent supervision later.


Cyberbullying can be stopped.  We can create a civilized online world where kids respect each other and follow the same code of conduct that they’re expected to follow offline.  Let’s get started today…

Sadly it’s too late for Rebecca, but parental involvement, awareness and monitoring could safe another child’s life!

 

 

 

 





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