Helping Children With Additional Needs Practice Safety Online
Jenny Holt, a freelance health writer for a number of health sites and magazines sent us the following article to share it with our readers.
She also wrote the following articles:
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CYBERULLYING – THE COMPLETE RESOURCE GUIDE
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MOVING HOUSE: HOW TO MAKE MOVING EASIER ON YOU AND YOUR CHILD
HELPING CHILDREN RIDE THE STORM
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BENEFITS OF PETS FOR KIDS WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES
SPECIAL NEEDS GARDENING: SOWING SEEDS ON MANY LEVELS
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THROWING AN INCLUSIVE BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR A CHILD WITH ADHD
SAFEGUARD YOUR CHILD’S LUNGS BY ASTHMA-PROOFING THEIR BEDROOM
THE IDEAL ENVIRONMENT FOR YOUR HOMESCHOOLED CHILD
THE IMPORTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY AND HOW TO TEACH IT TO YOUR CHILDREN
EDUCATING KIDS ABOUT ORTHODONTICS
HOW TO BUILD CHILDREN’S CONFIDENCE BY TEACHING THEM CLOTHES MAKING
DEALING WITH CHILDHOOD CANCER DIAGNOSIS IN YOUR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILD
HOW TO INTRODUCE MEDITATION TO YOUR KIDS
GETTING YOUR CHILD INVOLVED IN A PENPAL PROGRAM
NURTURING YOUR LITTLE CHEF: HOW TO INVOLVE CHILDREN IN THE KITCHEN
BENEFITS OF HAVING A FISH TANK IN A SPECIAL NEEDS’CLASSROOM
TRAVELING WITH CHILDREN WITH ADDITIONAL NEEDS
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Thanks Jenny!
Helping Children With Additional Needs Practice Safety Online
With over 93 percent of teenagers using the internet and 73 percent using social media accounts, the need to educate children about online safety has never been more important. For parents of children with special needs, this concern is particularly relevant. As parents, you try your best to protect them and equip them with the right skills to become independent and safety-conscious, including when they are online. Recently, a survey by the London School Of Economics showed that children with special educational needs or disabilities are more likely to encounter harm online. Parents of children with additional needs often face increased challenges with their children, finding it difficult to sleep well or carry out simple everyday activities. So how can you teach your child to be safe in a digital world and make life a little easier for everyone?
Activate Age Appropriate And Parental Controls
Many apps and websites frequented by children now come with age and interest filters, which can easily be activated by changing the settings. Most of them also come with a parental control feature, such as Youtube Kid’s initial age selection option or Amazon Fire’s Parent Hub controls. Alternatively, you can opt to install parental control software or apps, such as Quistodo or OpenDNS Family Shield. This software often comes with content filtering, parental time limits, per-app controls, and social media monitoring. Open DNS also automatically blocks websites that the software has deemed inappropriate under headings like proxy, sexuality, and pornography.
When making these decisions, be sure to include your child in the process by talking to them about what you are doing and why particularly if it is being installed on their personal mobile device. This presents the perfect opportunity to get the digital safety conversation going and educate them about child-friendly behavior online.
Set Them Up With Child-Friendly Browsers
Another thing you can do is install and speak to your child about child-friendly browsers. For parents of younger children, they can make this a fun game by telling their children that these kid-friendly browsers like Kiddle, KidRex, and KidzSearch are made just for them, amping up the special factor. For parents of autistic kids that rely on visual timetables or PECs, use the browser logo as the visual representation in their timetable for screen time or homework can also be a great move. Of course, you could install these browsers yourself as a form of parental control. However, speaking to your child about them and using them in representations of their online activities helps them associate these specific browsers with their tasks online and that they are okay to use.
Set Rules On What Information Should Not Be Shared Online
Having access to their accounts as a parent means you can regularly check on their website usage and that they are not accessing inappropriate content. It also allows you to spot harmful behavior online more quickly and react sooner rather than later. Beyond that, making a list for your child on what information is personal can be helpful, particularly for children with special needs. If you prefer, you can print it out and leave it by the family or their personal computer as a reminder.
The confidentiality of personal information online is crucial if you want to keep details about your child, your family, and even your finances, safe. Data breaches and sharing are now a normal occurrence, with most recent notable incidents like the Verifications IO data leak bringing panic and worry to almost 80 million online users in 2019. With many children’s apps and software requiring payment details or personal information, helping your children distinguish between personal and shareable data will go a long way in keeping this information safe.
Talk To Them About The Dangers Of Unknown Emails
Finally, speak to your child about proper email etiquette. This does not refer to their writing style or punctuation, but instead refers to them not opening unknown emails or clicking on attachments from someone they do not know. If they do receive junk or unknown email, establish a ground rule that they check with you or another adult in the home before proceeding. Similarly, if they are receiving unwanted emails, instant messages or comments on a social media website, encourage them to share them with you and seek your advice on how to proceed.
We all want to keep our children safe both in the real world and online. While we can implement certain controls as parents, one of the best bets we can make is to give them the right information and tools to practice good data sharing behaviors online.
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