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A podcast for homeschool families brought to you by Sequoia Grove Charter Alliance. Encouragement, tips & tricks, interviews with HSTs and curriculum help.
Rebecca: Welcome listeners to the Sequoia Breeze Podcast. I'm so glad you've chosen to spend your time with us today. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio. Today I get to welcome Tricia Brandow with us, and we are going to talk about the interesting, tricky, and sometimes uncomfortable conversation about digital literacy and Internet safety for our kids. Welcome, Tricia.
Trisha: Thank you. I am so excited to be here.
Rebecca: So tell us a little bit. You've got several hats that you wear. Introduce yourself a little bit. Who are you?
Trisha: Well, I am first and foremost, I'm a mother and a wife, and my family is very involved in our schools. My husband, Scott teaches in our virtual academy. My two kids, Dylan and Luke, are in high school, and they are students in our school. I'm employed with Feather River. I'm in HST, and I am also the Adventure Academy program coordinator.
Rebecca: So all those wonderful classes that our kids have access to have you to think in the background.
Trisha: Well, me and a whole team, yes.
Rebecca: Awesome. Well, I am really curious about this topic. I've noticed it's a constant struggle with my own kids how to teach them to recognize safe websites, how to help them search safely, how to keep them on track while they're doing their schoolwork. Sometimes it's not even anything that's dangerous, but if they're on the computer, then it's easy to, as we all know, get super distracted. So I am here to learn from you today. This is not a topic I know everything about, and we're just going to talk about it and hope you say the things I want you to say. I can't wait to see what you're going to teach me today. So tell us a little bit about what brought you to learn about this topic.
Trisha: Yeah, great question. And the first thing I will say is I don't think anyone knows everything there is to know about this topic because technology is just ever evolving. So we got to dive in somewhere. And really two things brought me to learn about this topic. Number one, as I said, I'm a mom, and my kids, we live in this world with technology, and for a long time, my approach was to keep them away from the Internet as long as possible. So I did all the things when they needed to learn how to type. It was like, okay, well, I'll have an old computer, but I won't connect it to the Internet. But that actually creates a lot of problems because when you don't connect a computer to the Internet, it can't update. So then there was a lot of frustration surrounding technology, and as they got older, you really just can't escape the need for technology sometimes. And at the same time, when I was involved with Jhva, we saw this huge need for our kids and their parents to be educated about digital literacy, how to use the Internet safely, and the tools that are available for them to learn to navigate this digital world. So I think it was in the spring of 2020, I did a digital literacy and Internet safety parent education talk. I didn't know a lot at the time, but in preparation for giving that talk, I just dove in to the research. And ever since then, it's just been a passion of mine because there's so many great resources and so much for us to learn. And I think sometimes as parents, we kind of fear the unknown, but we need to talk about this. We need to learn about it so that we can prepare our kids.
Rebecca: I think my first realization of what a big task this was was when my oldest was in about, I don't know, fourth grade, maybe, and we were doing a writing curriculum that doesn't actually exist anymore, that focused on she was going to do a research project. So first they had a whole unit on how to research safely online. And that was kind of fascinating to me. Like, it hadn't occurred to me that slowly, over time, I've learned if it's a website, that tells me something, if it's a gov website, that tells me something. But unless we teach her, then she doesn't know. And if it's a something random website, that tells me something to do. And so that was my first kind of glimpse of, oh, there's there's a real this isn't just like, let's teach you how to type and how to turn on the computer. There's some really specific steps in educating her and the rest of my kids and how to use the Internet and the resources that are available to them in a safe way.
Trisha: Honestly. And it's also a conversation that we have to be having ongoing, because what you're going to tell a five year old about a computer is going to be very limited to the experience and the device that they have. But as they get older, even if your kids are not on social media, like, many families choose to keep their kids off social media. So you would think, well, I don't really need to worry about cyberbullying because they're not on social media. However, if your kids are communicating with others online, we really do need to have a conversation with them about appropriate online interactions. It's everything from not sharing a picture of someone without their consent, being aware of tone, being aware of what's okay, to share what's not okay. And it doesn't have to be done all at once. And parents, we don't have to know it all. The beautiful thing is like, I think the most exciting thing I have to share today is that there are so many resources available to us that have done the work. We just need to be conscious of our role, that we have to have these conversations with our kids, and we can use the resources at our disposal.
Rebecca: I think part of what you were just describing about how to interact with people online is simply Internet manners, which I've realized my kids have messenger kids. And again, like, oh, you don't know these things. You don't know that sending 40,000 messages to one person is annoying. Don't do that. But that's why they have messenger kids. So you can learn in baby steps with other kids who are also sending 40,000 messages. This is rude. Let's change this. And those are super simple things, but it's all beginning just like teaching your baby to say please and thank you, step by step. We can get there.
Trisha: Absolutely. And I think realizing that we so there's a term that they use. They say our kids are digital natives. They've been born into a world with technology, like a technology rich environment. Most of us parents are what we call digital immigrants. So we were not born into the world with smartphones. And I was just thinking about I remember in college was the first time I had email, and AOL Instant Messenger was new, and it was all new, right? And I remember I had an aunt who would message me on AOL Messenger all the time, and I'd be, like, trying to do homework, and she's messaging me, and I didn't know how to handle it because I'm like, well, she can see that I'm online. So I felt like I had to respond every time. And it caused a lot of stress because that was so new. We didn't really have Internet etiquette. And the same thing, like, remember chain emails that used to go around? It took a while for us to realize you can't abuse people's email addresses. Just because you have them doesn't mean you get to use them. So we have to give ourselves a lot of grace. We learned it, but we don't have to be experts because you're right, but.
Rebecca: We also learned it as adults. Yes, as an eight year old.
Trisha: But what you said is, like, we do as parents, we mentor our kids in manners all the time, and it's not always how to set the table. Sometimes manners is as simple as, hey, that guy said hi to you, and you didn't even look up and acknowledge them. You do it on the spot, right? So you don't have to get really overwhelmed with needing, like, an official curriculum. It's just being aware that, yeah, we cannot expect our kids to know Internet etiquette because we didn't even know it.
Rebecca: But I think, too, you're talking about keeping them off social media in many ways, and I'm all for that. And this isn't even a fear of digital safety things. I'm just kind of a little House on the Prairie kind of girl. I use technology when I have to, and it's not something I personally embrace, but I don't want to keep my kids completely off social media and then have them leave the house and try to navigate that world on their own. And while they might be able to, if I've created mature wise if I've helped my kids become mature, wise adults, it's not fair. That's a lot of trickiness to try and navigate and to jump into. It was one thing for us to navigate it as adults as it developed and as we figured it out, but to just throw them into the vast world without having giving them the opportunity to learn with us and to help them navigate with us, I think is not really fair.
Trisha: Yeah, this is such a good point. It reminds me of if any of our families have been with us for a number of years. You may remember we had a parent night with HR mom, and she's a mom that gives a lot of great parenting advice, and she's a former HR executive. And one of the things that really stood out to me when I went to hear her talk was she talked about how when our kids are babies and, like, say, birth to five, they're learning curve. They're learning all these skills. Right. But at some point in their childhood, it's really common for us to continue doing things for our kids that they should know how to do. Right? And so at some point, we keep doing their laundry, making their phone calls, setting up play dates. We do all these things, and then all of a sudden, they become seniors in high school, and we panic because we're like, they don't know how to cook an egg, they don't know how to make a phone call. And all of a sudden, this learning curve is just so steep, and it's unreasonable for them to gain all those skills. So just what you said I'm not saying that yeah, I don't know that we necessarily need to just say, hey, give your kids social media at a young age so they can learn these skills, but be aware that we don't want to launch them into the world unprepared. So there's ways that we can say, even if you don't want your kids on social media, you can have conversations about your own social media. Like, oh, I realized I'm spending too much time on this. You do those kind of think aloud, or you give them opportunities. When they have to send a teacher a message, they have access to various things. That's how you start those conversations, I think.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think my 14 year old is on some of those chat apps for some of the activities that she's involved in so that she's getting I don't have to be the filter for all of her information, but she's not on a lot of other stuff. I'm not interested in her having that pressure or her phone doesn't stay in her room at night, and so I don't want her feeling like, oh, no, but I've got to check those certain messages and things. So what do you think most parents fear as they when the topic of digital literacy or Internet safety comes up. Do you think most parents know what digital literacy means?
Trisha: That is such a good question. I think there is fear around this topic, and I think the big fear is we don't know, we don't understand technology enough, so it intimidates us, right? So it's a really good question. And digital literacy, I like to liken it, too. We all know what literacy literacy is, right? When we teach our kids to read and write, we're teaching them vocabulary. We're teaching them how to decode language. We're teaching them how to use language, how to write, how to read. Digital literacy is the same thing. How to take the digital devices we have and understand, like what's a Web browser, what's an app, what's spam some of the common vocabulary and then etiquette. We teach our kids grammar rules. When we're teaching them literacy in Internet or digital literacy, we're teaching them some of just the rules surrounding technology. And that includes not just societal norms, as far as you don't send a chain email to everyone in your inbox, but it's also your family's rules. What are your values around technology? That's an opportunity. When we're giving our kids digital literacy, we can be teaching them our own family values.
Rebecca: So how do we know when our kids know how to read in digital literacy?
Trisha: Wow, that is such a good question. And I don't think our kids can ever be 100% digitally literate because of the nature of technology that's ever changing. Right. So this is fresh on my mind right now. A great example is if families may not be aware of open AI.
Rebecca: This is a very new I've been.
Trisha: Thinking about technology, right? Where this technology exists that can think and write things for you. And it's very good. Well, I got to be honest, I'm not even totally literate, but you better bet, like, I'm trying to get ahead of it, right? Because as a teacher, good luck.
Rebecca: My husband has been playing with this thing to see what it's all about, and I said, Tell it to give you a half hour podcast about the importance of reading aloud to your children. And in three minutes, there it was, a whole script, and it was good. It was really good. Which, as you're talking and you're saying it's never going to be complete, I'm thinking the conversations I'm having with my freshman in high school and the conversations that I will be having with my kindergartener are going to be very different.
Trisha: Yes, because technology is changing. But one thing that doesn't change is, as a parent, you have family values and you know how to mentor your kids. So just in the same way that when they were learning how to walk, we were there right beside it. We didn't know. No one taught us how to teach our kids how to walk. We just kind of figured it out. We're like, oh, they're stumbling. Here, let me help them. When we taught them how to ride a bike, when we've taught them about their first friends, there's not really a manual on it, but we kind of look at where are their gaps, right? Where do they need some support? And I think the big takeaway when it comes to the fact that you can't be 100% digitally literate, even our most techy people in this world, they're constantly learning is if we just embrace the fact that we need to be in constant conversation about it, and we also need to be aware of what our kids are doing online. So one example would be, I recommend you said you don't let your daughter have her phone in her room at night. I don't think any kids should have Internet connected devices in their rooms at night because, well, you can't monitor what they're doing. You may have filters on your computer. There are a lot of parental controls available to us, and I do recommend parents learn about them. I have some resources to share. But the reality is, because technology is always evolving, those filters are always going to have loopholes. So one of the values could be we don't use devices into the night when everyone should be sleeping because that's a healthy thing to put in place. And so you don't have to know all the answers, but there are thinking about things that are concerning. That's the first thing. What are parents worried about? To go back to your original question? Okay, so we should be worried about them encountering inappropriate content. We should be worried about strangers contacting our students. We should be worried about cyberbullying. And that doesn't mean we have to live in fear, but we need to be aware of it. And cyberbullying, it's one of those things. It's interesting because we want to protect our kids from it, but we also need to talk to even our sweetest kids. We got to have a conversation with them about what cyberbullying is so they don't accidentally do it. Because just like we didn't have all the norms in place when we were learning technology ourselves, sometimes kids need help translating good behavior in real life translates to good behavior online. Just because someone's online doesn't mean there's not a real person on the other side of the screen.
Rebecca: Sometimes I will well, I want to back up. So maybe a better word instead of worrying. Like we don't necessarily need to lay awake at night and worry about these things, but we do need to actively be involved in teaching our kids how to prevent or be aware of these things to let us know. Maybe that sweet kid isn't going to be a cyber bully, but maybe they need to be able to recognize if they are being bullied. This isn't okay. They don't get to say those things to you. You need to sound an alarm here.
Trisha: And there are some really great resources out there to help kids learn this. Common Sense Media is a really great resource, and they have a curriculum that is I think it starts at kindergarten and goes all the way up to 8th grade, and it's age appropriate. And one of the videos I shared some with one of my Adventure Academy classes, and it was the target audience were younger kids, and it was all about this character playing a game, and then someone said something mean to him and it gave them very clear, easy steps what to do. Walk away. Tell someone you trust. Don't dwell on it. Do something positive. And so, yeah, we definitely want to arm our kids with tools, but those tools exist. We just want to put them in touch with our kids.
Rebecca: The other thing I was thinking about as you were talking is that I think sometimes we can say, no, you can't have a phone. No, you can't be on these sites. No, you can't do this. And we don't tell them why. So then they push and they push and they push and they push. But I've found that at times, if we hear about an incident or we see a kid who's for instance, my kids have had times where they've said they just sat on their phone the whole time and I was so bored. And we'll use that as a teaching moment of that's a really hard thing to combat at your age. And that's why I don't want you to have a phone yet, or somebody who's I don't know, somebody whose video got out of control on social media. That is not something I want you to be subjected to right now. And so we don't do this yet. When you get older, when you're able to control this better or understand the reasons behind it, then we'll go there. But not right now, because they don't want those things to happen to you. And they may not like it, but when they understand it, they're a lot more cooperative.
Trisha: Yeah. In our family, one of another area of interest for me is just understanding the adolescent brain and just all that goes on in adolescence where their brain is in this area of rapid growth. They say aside from the brain growth that happens between birth and age two, there is no other time in our life that our brains are more neuroplastic than adolescents. Your brain is growing and changing, and there's all these things. And so my own kids, my kids are 15 and 17. I mean, I have one that's almost an adult, and we still have these conversations. Like, my 17 year old has proposed several times that he is responsible enough to have unlimited access to gaming. And he is a great kid. He is so responsible. He is doing all the right things, but yet we still say, here's why here's why we still have limits and our family. The big thick is your brain is still developing and there's nothing you can do about that other than give it some more time. So we want to delay this unlimited access to technology to allow your brain to develop those healthy neural pathways so that you still remember how to engage with people and how to do all those things. And so, yeah, giving them the why is so powerful and he doesn't love it. He still tries to convince us that he can have unlimited technology and we do give and take. He does get to play video games and sometimes he gets to play a lot. But we just aren't crossing that line to unlimited because we're like, let's your brain grow up a little bit.
Rebecca: You can be a mature teenager and still not quite understand the effect of all of the dopamine shots and all of the chemical things that are going on, or all of the ways that the various creators of the various types of technology and games and things that we're using are trying to addict us. I just read a book about how to break up with your phone and it's incredible that everything on your phone is there to get you to keep coming back. And I'd rather spend time with my kids.
Trisha: It's funny, we talk to our kids about that too, that you are brilliant, you are wonderful, you are so smart. However, you are not equipped to stand up against these advertising and these technology creators that are making billions of dollars to addict you to these devices. It's not a fair fight, right? So that's why we put in these limits.
Rebecca: So I'm going to change topics here in just a second, but before I do, I do want to say so parents who want to find resources is about how to teach their kids how to navigate the internet safely, how to find information that's trustworthy, not false sites and that sort of thing. What's the difference between A.org and a dot gov.edu and those kinds of things? Do you have some resources that we can send parents to for those kinds of things?
Trisha: Yes, I have a whole slide deck that has everything from really good books to read. It's interesting. I prepared these slides for that parent presentation I referenced a couple of years ago and when I in preparation for this podcast, I revisited the slides and it's like, oh my goodness. Constantly. There are new resources available, but what you'll find in those is really, really great books to educate yourself. I'm a big fan of audiobooks. I'm busy so I do most of my reading on audio and so a lot of the books are available on audio. There's a great podcast that I just found called the Safe Tech Family Podcast and it really hits on every area that you might want to touch on as a parent to learn about Internet safety, digital literacy. There are also those curriculums like I referenced. Common Sense media. The FBI actually has put out a curriculum called SOS It's Safe Online surfing, I think totally free. So the fact that the FBI has come out with a curriculum lets you know that the research is out, that we really need to be teaching our kids these things. And people are putting google has a really good curriculum. They have lots of ways to teach kids about these topics, about whether it's being a good digital citizen, which is like having good manners online, or how to prevent or what to do if you come across inappropriate content. And since we're talking about resources, there is one more in case it doesn't come up. I want to make sure parents know. There is a book that I have linked in there that started the first edition of this book was targeting ages, I don't know, like seven to ten or something. It's called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures and now they have one that's targeting even younger kids. This book I was not aware of when my kids were younger, and I really wish I was, but it's written for kids and it starts that conversation for you about kids. How do we be safe and what do we do and why? If we come across something and how to teach our kids not to feel ashamed if they come across something inappropriate, but how to handle it.
Rebecca: I find that conversation tricky because I don't want to ignite curiosity.
Trisha: Yes, that podcast I was talking about, the Safety Family podcast, she interviewed the author of that book and she said it's the number one question that she gets. And I'll be full disclosure, I actually don't own the book. I wish I did so I could tell you more about it. But when I went on Amazon to put the link in my slideshow, I want to say it has like 6000 reviews or more and five stars. So I read through those reviews and it was everything from grandparents to just saying, this book was so good. This book was so good. Usually a book like that, if you're going to have exactly what you said, those concerns, it would come up, but apparently it introduces the topic in a very kid friendly and appropriate way.
Rebecca: I will be looking into that. That's really interesting. I just have to go back to the whole FBI curriculum because I'm simultaneously impressed and terrified that exists. Okay, so we're going to talk a little bit about Internet safety. So parents, if you're in the car listening to this with your family, this may be a point where you'd like to pause it and listen to it later. We're not going to get into anything terribly detailed, but we'll just let you decide whether or not you want that topic to come up in front of your family right now. So clearly there are some really startling statistics about when kids are first introduced to ****, whether that's accidentally, or friends with phones or whatever, little kids at school sharing things. So in addition to all of the ways that we want to prevent distraction, or we want them to be safe from people who might be trying to trick them into inappropriate conversations, we also want to help them learn how to avoid either stumbling across or searching out those kinds of sites. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Trisha: Yeah, the statistics. And I feel like if it's okay, I would like to share the statistics. Not because I want to scare parents, but because I think we all need to be aware that we need to have these conversations sooner than we're ready. Unfortunately, in 2019, the statistic was by the age 1150 3% of kids have encountered oh no, I'm sorry. That's by the age of eleven, most kids have their smartphone. But it's somewhere between the age of eleven and nine, nine and eleven that kids have. Most kids are having their first exposure to Internet ***********, whether it's accidental or on purpose, and it's just devastating. But that's the world that we live in. How do we take that statistic and still let our kids function in this world that's digitally connected? So, a couple of things that I recommend. One again, the slides that we referenced, I have various tools that I can recommend. But really having some kind of filter on your home Internet, whether that's through your router or on all of your devices, I actually recommend, I think a combination of both. Most routers come with a way to set parental controls where you can filter explicit content out. And then most devices have parental controls. So things to be aware of, obviously phones and computers. But also if your video games are connected to the Internet, even if your kids are not playing video games that have them with other people, most video game consoles do connect to the Internet. I even remember the Wii when the Wii first came out. It has an Internet browser in it, so don't be afraid of it, but be aware it's there and look into what parental controls are available to you. Usually you can get most devices that are marketed to kids have parental controls where you can filter whether or not you want it to have browser access, what kind of games you want them to be available to them. So that's the first layer, I would say. Definitely make sure that your internet has some sort of filter and you're utilizing parental controls. And I mentioned earlier about having, when I was first going down this road of navigating computers with my kids, I thought, like, old technology was the answer because it doesn't have to connect to the Internet. But actually, in addition to the fact that the technology doesn't work well if it doesn't get regular updates, it actually makes. It way easier for the parental controls not to work because when things are out of date, the parental controls on newer devices are much easier for parents to use. So that's one thing to be aware of. And then another piece is to realize that no parental controls can replace your direct parenting. I recommend it can be really hard in a house where everyone's utilizing technology at once. I know when kids have online classes, we want them to be able to focus, but to the extent possible, I recommend having all internet connected devices in view of the family. So not allowing your kids to be in a room by themselves with the door closed now, it may work that they get to do that for their class, but then I recommend the device comes out of their room because it's really easy for them to get sucked in. And if you're just observing your kids, quite often you as a parent can tell something's wrong and you can catch something sooner before it becomes a problem. So those are two things that I recommend, just basic, basic monitoring and just being aware that I wish there was I wish I could tell you that if you buy this technology, it will keep your kids safe. I wish it existed. It doesn't. But since we are on this topic of inappropriate content and just protecting our kids from ***********, there is a documentary that I have linked in my slides. It's called fight the new drug. And what I really appreciate about this documentary is it is unlike anything I have ever seen. I heard an interview from the creator of this documentary and he was really motivated to create something that would reach kids themselves, not just parents with scary statistics, but he likened it to the anti tobacco campaigns from when we were kids. And really that resonated with me because I feel like I remember as a kid feeling very empowered to go, EW, tobacco. Why would you do that? That's gross. I don't want that. His goal is to teach kids to feel empowered to go, EW, I don't want to look at that. Why would I look at that? And so the documentary, it's a three part series and it talks to them about the brain and what *********** does to the brain. And there are some very alarming statistics. It talks about addiction and then it talks about the ways that *********** is fueling other industries that they may not be aware of. And so I would recommend first parents, watch it yourselves so you can decide when your kids are ready. It's not for young kids, but I would say most teenagers, I cannot recommend it enough and it might be uncomfortable. My kids did not want to watch it with me when I was like, you guys were all going to watch this? And they're like, Are you serious, mom? I do not want to watch this with you. But because we watched it, it made me feel more comfortable having conversations I don't want to have with them. But I was like even just last week, because I was preparing for this show, I'm driving with my kids, two teenage boys, and I was like, hey, so let's talk about ways that you like, how do you respond if your friends have something and something they want to show you? Have you ever role played in your head? What are the words that you're going to use? How are you going to respond? And again, no one wants to have this conversation with their kids. But I think if we destigmatize the conversation, if we stop pretending it doesn't exist and just acknowledge this thing exists, we don't like it. It's not good for us. But let's take away the shame part of it. We can help our kids understand that when they come across something, it's in their best interest to talk to us about it so we can help them.
Rebecca: I think I'm really intrigued by the documentary because when I hear all the statistics, I just want to crawl in a hole and shut down. I just want to go live on the prairie, take away all the technology. I don't want to talk about it. It's scary, it's icky, and I don't want to go there. But obviously I can't live my life like that. I can't raise my kids like that. That's not a healthy way to do it. But I love the idea of letting somebody else open the conversation, but you're sitting there with them. And so now we all know what we all know. And so now we have something we can talk about and we have a reference point. And I find with these concept, there are other parents who are so much more comfortable with these conversations than I am. It's not my thing. So some of you are giggling a little. Listen to this. But I think for those of us who it does make us squirm and we don't want to talk about it. This is an area where I think you fake it till you make it. You act like you aren't uncomfortable so that you can say what needs to be said. And if you act like you aren't uncomfortable, your kids will be considerably less uncomfortable because you've presented a this is going to be normal for us. This is something we do, and slowly everybody will just get a little bit easier with it.
Trisha: Yes, and I love that you said that because it reminded me of another thing that I think is crucial. I talked about being careful. So one of the things they say is that *********** thrives in shame. The addiction to *********** thrives in shame because there's shame attached. So it happens in secret. And then people get into this hole and because they're ashamed, they don't come out of it. So my other piece of advice is parents. We all know it is not if, but it is when our kids are first exposed to something terrible on the Internet. I cannot emphasize this enough. Be careful that you don't be careful. This sounds so strong, but I urge you to try to avoid shaming that child like it's their fault. Because if we really think about it, there is a, I don't know, multibillion dollar industry that is making sure this stuff exists. So it's not fair to our kids to try to avoid it. Like it's going to happen. So even if they are the ones who initiated the search, right? It's so hard. I'm just going to say this. The first time I found out my kids had seen something inappropriate, I was devastated. I was in my bedroom sobbing and my husband came in and he was like and he's not normally the one that's like, hey, it's not a big deal. No, he was like, look, it is a big deal. But this happened and they're kids and it happened. So now we have to move forward. And so ever since then, if something does, I really try to keep myself from overreacting. And if I need to go cry about it, then I go cry about it and come talk to my kids when I'm more composed. Because it's heart wrenching to think of your kids seeing something. And so it's so much more productive for them if we can come like, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I'm so sorry that you saw that. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about and that's a piece of advice I would like to just pass on is let's be careful not to get mad at them. This world is unfair when it comes to those things.
Rebecca: And not being mad at them doesn't mean you don't necessarily take action that might need to be taken. Like, we need to tighten up parental controls. Or maybe devices need to go away a little more often for a while until not even as a punishment, but as a protection if you're not making good choices. Walking to a terrible example for home schoolers, walking to school where there's times where for your own protection, I'm going to give some new limits and they may not live there forever, but it's going to happen right now. So I think not shaming doesn't mean in action.
Trisha: Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you said that because yes, for sure. When I was first preparing for this digital literacy talk, I decided to purchase well, I consulted my kids. I was like, hey, not that they had the final say, but I involved them in the conversation. I was like, hey, there's this parental called control called custodial. I'm going to buy it, we're going to try it. It's going to go on all our devices and then it's going to allow me to put controls on your phones. So they were greed. They're like, yeah, because they were really convinced of wanting to be safe on the Internet, and they had both, I think, been exposed to things and they were motivated to have that stuff blocked. So today we still have it, and I think they probably super regret, right? Because one of my kids, he is 15 and he's in that adolescent brain and it's not just inappropriate content I worry about. He is the other side of this conversation. You wanted to have the digital distractions. He's like, squirrel, squirrel. He's so distracted by nothing that's bad necessarily, but it will distract him. So I love that sometimes I'll go in and all of a sudden I've blocked all the things and he's like, Mom, I can't get on YouTube. I'm like, no, you can't. You need to focus on your score.
Rebecca: Okay? So to get into a less cringy part of the conversation, I would love to talk about that because that is actually more than I knew the Internet safety conversation needed to have. But I was more motivated to have this conversation because I am realizing that as my kids are all on devices for school, that the distraction piece is a real issue. They sit down and they intend to do school. Let me check my email real quick. I'm sure we as adults have never had this moment, never. Let me check my email real quick and what's going on there? Let me click on that. And half an hour later, they haven't done what they're supposed to do. And so now their whole day has changed because, I don't know, I've never watched Reels for half an hour instead.
Trisha: Of doing them that I was supposed to do.
Rebecca: It happens and I struggle to control it on my own, but I'm not always sure how to help my kids mitigate that distraction piece. That again, billions of dollars have been put in place to help create for them. So how do we help them? Honestly, at some point when they're in elementary, maybe even junior high, we're not even talking about, they just need to be prevented from those distractions as an age level that we can't even expect them to be able to control that to a degree.
Trisha: Yes. There's a few strategies. Number one. Like I said, having them in sight when they're on a device is a huge benefit because I know for myself, my husband and I work from home. And so sometimes I'll be in a meeting for an hour or so, and I come out and it's like, oh, what have they been doing for this whole time? So the flip side is it's a lot easier to keep track of what your kids are doing online if you see them, like, all of a sudden you're going to look up and go, wait a minute, you've been sending that email for an hour. What have you really been doing? So that's one, just physically monitoring them helps. But there are chrome add ons, you can get I know adults that use these where you can set them. Even if your kids don't have social media. I'm going to use Facebook as an example. Some adults go, oh, I have trouble spending too much time on Facebook, so I'm going to set this limit so that it only allows me 30 minutes of Facebook every day. So those technologies exist. One thing that I think is a big help is to if you're going to allow your kids to scroll on Real, look on YouTube, play video games, have a rule with your family. Sometimes the rule could be you have to finish your school work first, and then you get this much time. However, the other idea is sometimes that reward of a break can help motivate kids. So after you spend, after you finish this assignment for math, you can set a timer and watch YouTube reels for 15 minutes, or that's another timers can be really helpful. But there isn't an easy answer other than monitoring, putting in place, setting ground rules. And I would recommend that if you're going to let them have some access, then let them know what the rule is so that they're not trying to sneak in YouTube when you don't know. Because if they're allowed to go to YouTube, say, okay, well, here's how much YouTube you're allowed to watch. But it has to be done under these conditions, right? Then they have permission and they're not trying to sneak it.
Rebecca: Right at the beginning of the year, when we were figuring out how many of the school Chromebooks to get that were offered to everybody, one of my kids, I said, you don't really need one. You've got a good laptop and do you want one? And the answer was, yes, I do, because I get so distracted. And so they wanted to be able to kind of keep school stuff on the Chromebook and all the stuff that is distracting on their laptop so that they wouldn't be overlapped and they could open up the Chromebook and just have school stuff and not even go there with everything else. And I thought that was an excellent answer.
Trisha: I said, okay, yes, you get one for you. That's a great answer.
Rebecca: I appreciate the self awareness and the speaking up and the thinking through a solution like so many different steps of that. I was like, you're great. Yes, you get that for sure.
Trisha: That's awesome.
Rebecca: So I know this is a topic that we could go on and on and on and on about for a very long time. You've given us already some great resources that will all be linked in the show notes. So parents, if you're driving and listening and you're thinking, wait, what was the name of that book again? You can go to the show notes when you get home and find that and find a link to that. So please look those up because these are some really great resources for helping us navigate this big and tricky and sometimes uncomfortable topic. Is there anything else that you would really like to leave parents with? Any other resources or thoughts?
Trisha: I just think that I hope the big takeaway here is parents. We don't have to have all the answers, but we already know how to do hard things with our kids. We just need to not be afraid of diving in, coming alongside them, and learning together. I mean, we're home school families. This is what we do. We come alongside our kids. Most of us don't know all the history that we're teaching our kids, but we dive in with them, we learn alongside them. And I hope that this has been an encouragement and not something hopefully we've learned that we don't have to fear. We just need to dive in and work with our kids.
Rebecca: Thank you so much, Tricia, for being here today.
Trisha: Thank you.
Rebecca: Listeners. If this episode would be helpful for somebody else that you know, please feel free to send this on to them. And if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. If you'd love to hear your solutions, what have you found works really well for your family to either minimize distraction, teach good digital literacy, or to help increase internet safety at your home. Email me at podcasts@sequoiagrove.org. Thank you for joining us on the Sequoia Breeze podcast. Today I've been your host. Rebecca LaSavio. I hope that this has been a breath of fresh air for your home school.