From one of Rockstar’s weekly school emails recently:
“As part of our ICT curriculum we teach the children about such things as cyber-safety, cyber-bullying, email protocol…….”
“……..important to monitor your child’s internet use in the evenings and at weekends.”
“I would hope that no Kennedy student has a Facebook account, since they are not allowed to join if they are under 13, and because there is so much inappropriate material which young children might be exposed to. Please also keep a close eye on the use of any other social networking sites.”
Alright, then.
As Rockstar gets more literate and computer savvy, we were wondering where the line should be drawn so I especially appreciated the reminder – kids might get literate, learn to use the family laptop in a flash, but it doesn’t make them any more ready for what they might find there. That requires maturity and judgment that even adults sometimes struggle with.
So “No Facebook; School Rules” – excellent. Because No, none of your school friends might have accounts either. So you’re not missing anything. Glad we had this talk, son <dusts off hands>.
Rockstar does his surfing in the living room next to Kings watching tv (to the elder Mens’ occasional annoyance because Rockstar doesn’t like earphones) or with Little Miss and I horsing around in a bedroom. Basically, never alone. I remembered years ago our pastor describing how they put the home computer in the living room instead of their elder daughter’s bedroom like she really wanted, to better monitor her internet access.
OKOKOKOK Linky Party – in honor of No Facebook Primary School, this week’s theme is The Rise Of These Things, Thanks To The Internet:
1) Making Cats Famous. Think “Only On The Internet…..” Ergo: Cats in Tights. Just a little creepier than Puss in Boots.
Told ya.
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2) Telling us 30 things everyone else finds weird about Americans but which Americans don’t find weird. Can’t believe it took me this long to discover Wow, People Have A Lot Of Problems, With American Bread.
That’s when I also found this “brilliant” innovation:
The Doughnut Burger, also available with strawberry jam (pic from thedailybeast.com)
For more seriously scary food (chocolate-covered potato chips, anyone?), that’s here.
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3) The New Vigilantes. That’s about Anonymous, the hacktivist group. (“Hacktivist” itself is a new word, isn’t it?)
pic from wikipedia.com
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4) Another kind of monster. This one is two girls aged 12 and 14 face-to-face and online bullying another 12 year old til she leapt to her death. The 14 year old posted on her Facebook, “Yes I know I bullied Rebecca and she killed herself but I don’t give a f—“ After that FB post was when they decided to arrest her.
Never mind hacktivism, I remember reading on the World Education Games site last year that someone came up with a program to slow down the competition timer, when their kids took part in the Math and English rounds. (Basically the child has more time to work out the answers than other competitors). What the world needs right now are some gifted programmers to come up with serious child-and-teenager locks on social networking sites. (Sorry ah, very “1st World Problems-ish”)
Until then, we’re gonna have to work at making our kids not want to visit questionable sites. Darn, “Parenting” sure means a lotta work. Oh, and I met a father of a 16 year old who refused to accept his “Friend” invitation on Facebook because “It’s just not cool, dad.” Someone. Please come up with that lock fast.
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5) How Do I Protect My Girls From Princess And Porn Star Culture. Personally I never liked the whole Princess Must Be Pretty And Rely On Prince To Save Her general theme (they should have more Mulans), never mind the Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, Daddy? (true story that happened to an ex-colleague) horror show waiting to happen. So the internet’s good for promoting bad images? Let’s google some good ones too…
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6) 5 high schoolers practiced persuasive writing as an English class project in 2006, and their subject, one Kurt Vonnegut actually wrote back. He died the following year, but thanks to the internet, his reply is available to all, on Letters Of Note.com.
pic from lettersofnote.com
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
pic from thedailybeast.com
… ironically despite me not being active on Twitter anymore…………….
8) Ok Rockstar Picture Time. I’ve got a picture story today, too: To date Rockstar’s and now also our family’s pictures have been “borrowed” without our knowledge at least twice** – both times it has been thanks to readers whom we’d never met taking the trouble to drop us a line that we found out. (When the newspaper ad ran in Today, one reader in Singapore actually offered to mail us a few copies as souvenirs! I should keep the email as a souvenir…)
This time around, this pic of ours is up on Nissan Motor Malaysia’s Happy Families Facebook Page. I first heard about a week ago, and assumed it was swiftly taken down after, but then I received another message it’s still there. For the record, NO I DID NOT SUBMIT THIS PICTURE FOR A CONTEST:
And what’s with the caption? Anyway it’s from this post on my blog.
Then another reader found the same pic on three other sites and sent me the links with “The person who used it must think the picture embodies the happiest family moment.”
My dear internet friend, thank you. I still think it’s quite funny (and the links she sent me are here, here, and somewhere here.)
My attitude is somewhere between That Was The Pic They Chose??? And They Could At Least Ask….. Now, if they had used our pic for say, a Zombie Apocalypse ad my reaction would’ve been way stronger. Really hate the zombie craze.
Somewhere in all that is why I like the No Facebook Rule in school.
And this Good Weekend Skit is in two parts. Part 1 is titled Rockstar Steps Up.
Giddyup!
With Kings away, Rockstar thought to be the one to offer horsie rides. He thought she was SO adorable right up until she upped and sat on his face.
Rockstar was all “Mu-uummmm! GET… HER….. OFF! GEERROFFFF!!” This is because I told him off for shoving her off too hard. I didn’t expect him to then be worried he can’t not shove her too hard, and therefore not shove her off at all. She of course takes advantage of this. It cracks me up how she, half Rockstar’s height, finds her own way of getting back at him for all the Toddler Retrievals.
And so part 2 is a Flashback of Happier Times:
Way Back When (Rockstar went skiing near Canberra last summer)
That was probably the last time she was happy about being Retrieved. I happened to dig that up and use it as wallpaper – whereupon Little Miss saw it, smiled, and kept going “Ko,ko,ko,ko,ko,ko,ko,ko.”
That’s something I want to hold on to, because otherwise she’s sitting on her bro’s head.
The End. And the beginning of a good w/e…
**We received very professional apologies via email, Facebook and long-distance call plus the subsequent proper photo credit when Rockstar’s picture somehow ended up in a Mediacorp Singapore ad for holiday travel. And follow up post here.
On an aside, yet another reader from KL told me she’d fired a very problematic (think gangs and spiking their food) helper who then posted her kids’ pics on her Facebook profile pages – from back in the Philippines. With her contacting a few people at Facebook I think the pages were removed in about a week. (That is an understatement – she actually told me she did a lot of very impressive string-pulling and 6-degrees stuff, not just the Facebook Thing, to protect her kids. I hope she’s still reading, because I’m still very impressed. We’re Mums – Lugged The Load, Pushed Them Out, Don’t Mess With Us – comes to mind.)
Potato chips dipped in chocolate – scary food? I know here in KL, Royce chocolate has this product. For very few pieces, the price is considered expensive. Don’t think it is scary food.
The bullying news is quite disturbing. I think there must be courses to teach parents on how to support and guide victims of bullies so that they will not kill themselves due to the bullying.
Oh dear, Miss Rockstar, why did you sit on your kor kor’s face? Good kor kor for calling for help instead of just throwing you off his back like a real horse.
The caption of your “stolen” photo says it all – if you are always taking this kind of happy family photos like this example where the mommy obviously took a very good photo of the whole happy family (selca), you should join definitely join Nissan happy family contest. Time to get in touch with the Nissan facebook admin?
May all of you have a very good weekend!
Wah paisay I never heard of Royce til after your comment and I googled. I still find it hard not to find potato chips in chocolate erm….. not yummy leh – though i can see some ppl blogged they really liked it…
She throws herself on him in general anyways, sitting on his head or etc was like a “natural progression”… She gives all of us cuddles and tries to give kisses too, whereas he’s always had a personal space it takes a long time to be invited into (and various invasions could lead to “shut downs”…) Obviously she knows this, because she’s been chasing him all over the bed for cuddles and things for like, ever since she was mobile and he was reading to her…
Yeah will get round to letting them know, partly I’m thinking someone must surely have told them, if they told me, but……? Meantime weekend has been……………… show you in a bit.
Mun, I’ve tried several times to approve your second comment with link and its still not showing, so I’m going to copy and paste the link to that article here. http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/if-a-child-is-bullied-parents-offer-advice-on-when-and-how-to-intervene/?_r=0