Safe Search Kids - Education, Parenting, Internet Safety for All

Lawnmower parenting has been around for years but it picked up steam after an anonymous article was posted on a popular website for teachers. Since this trend is buzzing, it is something that needs to be talked about. It’s a parenting style that has made us appreciate helicopter parents and tiger moms even more.

Lawnmower parents are the overprotective parents who cannot stand to see their children struggle. Their intentions may be good but the consequences of such parenting are devastating. Before you follow this trend, you must understand that you are only setting up your kids for a lifetime of failures.

Some of us are already guilty of being lawnmowers. Just evaluate how you are raising your child whether it’s a toddler, preschooler, teen, or tween. You could be making your toddler wear a space suit whenever leaving home so they don’t catch germs, making your teen’s friends pass through a rigorous screening process to approve, or constantly checking their bedroom during the night to make sure they are sleeping. These are certainly signs that you love your child unconditionally but you could be preventing them from growing into independent and emotionally healthy adults.

Lawnmower parents are willing to intervene and mow down any obstacle that stands in the way of their child. This style of parenting, just like helicopter parenting, focuses on short-term goals. Such parents think “If I could make this thing easier for my child, why wouldn’t I do it?” When you are constantly removing obstacles from the life of your child, you are taking away their opportunities to learn problem-solving techniques and other skills.

Lawn-mowing parenting is not healthy for your children!

I would like to shed some light on ways lawnmower parenting hamper your children’s success:

• They won’t learn how to deal with life

The sting of rejection and the pain of failure could disappoint your child but it doesn’t mean you go above and beyond to solve every problem. If you do that, you are keeping them from developing emotional skills. They won’t be prepared for life after high school. They won’t be able to deal with conflict, loneliness, boredom, and anxiety on their own because they never got to experience these emotions before.

Early life stress actually expands the regions of the brain that help control resiliency. For example, if you console your child for receiving bad grades on paper, you are not benefiting them. You should instead be teaching a lesson that helps in character building and prepares them for the future.

• Their problem-solving skills will be zero

When you remove the problem before even your child knows it existed, how will they develop problem-solving skills? Scheduling meetings or calling your kid to ensure they wake up on time, etc. could make parents act more like personal concierges rather than authority figures. Imagine your child is in college and he doesn’t know how to get help. They must have the skills to figure out things without the help of parents. If your children don’t struggle, they will never learn and their character will never build.

• You are shattering their confidence

Removing obstacles from the life of your child means you are making them learn they can’t handle anything on their own. Your child will hence grow up with self-doubt and anxiety.  Their insecurities will make them feel they are incompetent.

• You are fostering poor mental health

Your parenting style doesn’t allow your kids to gain coping skills. It is understandable that you want them to be happy but ironically, you are sabotaging their long-term well-being. Providing access to online teen counseling can empower teens to develop resilience and independence while having professional support. You can’t take full responsibility for your child’s emotions by regulating how they feel.

The American Psychological Association Commission conducted a study on stress in America. Results revealed that the younger generation is more stressed out than the older generation. Millennials and Generation X reported a higher level of stress than the baby boomers. The study also revealed that when parents control the social sphere of their child, they hinder them from growing and developing essential social skills that help them during their adulthood.  Sheltered children miss out on so many learning opportunities. Lawnmower parenting actually makes your child maladapted to the real world, which can take a toll on their mental health.

Signs you are a lawnmower parent

If you are a lawnmower parent, you are simply removing your child’s discomfort in the short run rather than focusing on their needs in the long run. You must evaluate your parenting style if you want your child to grow into a healthy, confident, and adaptive adult. These are the signs that indicate you are a lawnmower parent:

• You do their laundry, clean their room, and even their dinner plates. In short, you are doing all their chores for them.
• Whenever your child comes home with a bad grade, you blame their teacher. You are even ready to talk to their teacher to cut them some slack or give extra time to complete a homework assignment.
• You don’t hesitate in stopping by their school to give them their forgotten belongings even though you are running late from work.
• You step into any situation that would make them uncomfortable. You are the one handling their business instead of letting them tackle the situation.
• You intervene in the sibling fights and even friend fights. Rather than letting your child figure out a way to solve the conflict, you remove the catalyst for them.
• You help them with their homework. Instead of letting them do the research, you come to their rescue every time.

You may not be doing all the above, it could even be one; but if you are handling a few or too many aspects of your child’s life, you must stop!

If lawnmower parenting is so bad, then using parental controls should be bad, too?

Since lawnmower parenting means you are being over-protective, some parents are arguing that using smartphone monitoring apps could mean the same. Well, not really. Whether it is built-in parental controls in apps that our kids use on a daily basis (like YouTube, Netflix etc.) or parenting apps, they are meant to protect our kids from harmful exposure. If you are putting screen-time limits on your child’s tablet or smartphone by using parental control device locking features, you are not keeping them from developing skills.

In fact, you are disciplining them and teaching them how to use technology in a healthy way. Likewise, with the location tracking feature and geo-fencing, you are making sure you know where your kid is without having to inquire about it. Since social media is full of vices such as cyberbullying, body shaming, online predators, catfishing, etc., to keep a check on your children’s mental health, parents have no choice but to monitor their conversations from time to time.

Supervising their digital lives isn’t a bad thing if you are teaching how to protect themselves from the lurking online dangers via monitoring app for parents or any other similar app like Qustodio. In fact, when you don’t set these boundaries, you are exposing your children to dangers that could leave a mark on their lives for a long time. With that being said, lawnmower parenting and using parental controls are not the same things.

How to tell the difference between helping and mowing things for your children?

I know, I know, you must be wondering how you can be sure you are actually helping your child and not being a lawnmower parent. No parent wants to see their child fail. They simply want to set their children up for success. Whenever you are stuck between helping and mowing, monitoring your child or trusting them, consider your child’s future. That will make it easier for you to decide. Back away and let your child gain experience by dealing with adverse situations. That, in fact, is the most loving thing you could do for them.

Teachers play a pivotal role in the life of children. Not only are they responsible for teaching them the foundations of a variety of topics and subjects, but they work to encourage, inspire and motivate kids daily. It’s all about prepping them for their future, which is made up of more than just a career.

With that said, teachers also need to be tuned in where the mental health of students is concerned. This means knowing what the signs of stress are in a child so that you can act quickly and appropriately. Here are some of the ways teachers can recognize the signs of stress in their students.

You See the Student Start to Withdraw

This particular sign can be one of the first red flags you notice and that’s a student pulling away or withdrawing from their friends and participating in class. This will be more noticeable in students who previously were very active and social in the classroom.

There Can be Physical Signs of Stress

Did you know that stress can also cause physical symptoms that make the child sick? This can include chronic headaches, stomach pain and discomfort and even muscles aches and pains. The fact is that stress does a number on a person’s immune system, leaving them more susceptible to catching illnesses.

Their Emotions are All Over the Place

A child who is stressed may also appear to have emotions that are all over the place. They can go from happy to sad in the snap of a finger and they may get over-emotional in situations that don’t warrant that kind of response. Some examples can include:

• The child is quick to lose their temper
• They yell when losing their temper
• They are overly anxious.
• They cry often
• They are irritable
• They don’t have a lot of patience
• They seem to have a hard time controlling and regulating their mood

Because their emotions are swaying from one extreme to the other, it can leave them feeling scared and frustrated, unsure of what they should do.

What Can be Done About It?

While it’s important to recognize the signs of stress, the emphasis should be on reducing and even eliminating it so that it never spirals out of control. Kids should be encouraged to use stress-busting techniques and tools such as learning meditation, which can be done throughout the day to calm themselves down.

Teachers also need to keep parents in the loop and let them know if there are any concerns. Speaking to the parents/caregivers can help shed light on what is happening. This also allows for everyone to be on the same page when it comes to how the stress will be addressed.

Recognizing the Signs of Stress in Students

Teaching kids how to deal with anxiety while they are young to avoid increased anxiety.  Over three-quarters of university students stating they hide mental health symptoms.

• 42% of university students experience a serious psychological issue for which they felt they needed professional help.
• The same percentage of students accessed counseling support last year, indicating that help is readily available at university.
• In January 2021, 63% of students said their mental health had worsened since the start of the academic year.
• 58% of students who struggle to manage their money say it affects their mental health negatively.

Understanding and managing anxiety is key to reducing issues related to stress as students move through their educational life.

Children, teens and young adults of any age need to learn how to:

• Understand and embrace anxiety triggers
• Learn Coping techniques and how to prepare for life in halls
• How to deal with financial pressures
• Managing academic pressures
• Discover the importance of a healthy lifestyle

Knowing what the signs of stress look like will help you to be a teacher that is tuned in and helps your students in every way possible. Just remember – the sooner you spot the red flags and act upon them, the better the outcome will be.

Teaching Kids to Mitigate Online Burnout

For those of us raised in the landline generation, social media can feel like terrifying new terrain. No sooner did we get our heads around Facebook, than it was deemed uncool by the younger generation, who quickly moved onto Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. It’s tempting to embrace being a ‘tech dinosaur’ and scoff at the latest craze, but as parents this is a risky strategy.

Our children’s lives are moving more and more online, into a rapidly changing, unmarshalled digital world. It’s essential we understand how they’re using social platforms, to keep them safe and to support their mental health. So, here’s 5 top tips to engage with our children’s virtual world and help them form a healthy relationship with social media.

1. Set boundaries

Setting boundaries sounds obvious, but it’s easier said than done. Particularly in the last year, allowing our children to get lost in their screens has been an easy way to give us much-needed respite. However, we know that too much screen time is detrimental to our children’s mental health and can affect their sleep, so it’s essential that we’re helping them to strike a healthy balance.

There’s lots of great advice out there about how to enforce time limits and set parental controls, but this will always work better if it’s done in collaboration with your child. Ask them how much time they think is appropriate and you may be surprised by how reasonable their response is.

It’s also useful to think about how and when they’re using their devices. Last thing at night can affect their sleep and first thing in the morning can risk them becoming addicted, needing their ‘fix’ the minute they wake up. Similarly, playing on Minecraft will have a very different emotional impact to scrolling through ‘beach body’ images on Instagram. Sometimes setting boundaries can be as simple as telling them to change what app they’re on, to give them a mental health break.

2. Educate them about staying safe

Again, this one can feel tricky when it’s our children who are the digital natives, while we feel more like anxious tourists. However, on a neurological level, children and young people haven’t developed the ability to gauge and assess risk accurately, so they need us to support them with this. As the digital world is moving fast, it’s impossible to keep on top of all the new platforms and associated risks, so educating our children on understanding the dangers is our best hope.

Letting them know the importance of protecting their personal information is essential, spelling out just how easy it is to give details away without realizing we’ve done it. Also, let them know how disinhibited we can become when we’re online. This is particularly pertinent when we look at cyberbullying. It may be that they fall victim to bullying and need our support, but it’s also incredibly easy for children to fall into the trap of bullying others, without even recognizing that that’s what they’re doing.

3. Take an interest

We’re often quick to judge what’s a valuable use of our children’s time and what’s a waste. Maybe we give them our full attention when they let us know about how they got on in their football match or if they’ve had a fall out in the playground, but when they start telling us about even the positive things they are doing online, we immediately glaze over.

While we may find it hard to enthuse about social platforms, we still want our children to come to us about them. Our children may have whole friendship groups, hobbies and an entirely different persona online that we need to know about. So have a strong coffee, take a deep breath and try to act interested as they talk about this aspect of their lives. By being curious and asking questions we’ll be better informed and we’ll become closer to our children too.

4. Don’t demonize social media

Similarly, it can be tempting to make dismissive comments when our children talk about their social media use. ‘What are you on that for? Get outside in the fresh air and spend time with your real friends!’ may be on the tip of our tongues, particularly if we’ve read up on all the negative aspects of social media, but all we’re doing is telling our children not to talk to us about their online lives – and that’s a dangerous message.

There’s lots of positives to social media. For children struggling with their mental health, they can find others in a similar situation and draw strength from them, and in the various lockdowns, social media did a lot to stave off the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many young people felt. Find out how your child is using social media and if it does seem to be impacting negatively on their mental health, help them to find more positive ways of using it.

5. Encourage real life connections

Finally, as with most things, it’s about balance. It’s okay for children to use social media but it’s important that they have other sides to their life as well. If they have a club or hobby that they enjoy, encourage them to keep it up. If it looks like they’re losing interest, have an honest conversation with them and agree together what they can do to maintain connections with the real world.

Encouraging our children to have their friends over is another way to maintain those real world relationships, as is making sure we’re spending quality time with them too. Days out, walking the dog, baking or getting creative together are all good ways to bring us closer to our children and are also a great way to engineer conversations about how things are going in their online world.

We don’t have to ‘lose’ our children to social media. By being open and interested in what they’re telling us, without overreacting or jumping to conclusions, they’ll know that they can come to us if they have a problem. By doing this we’re also modelling communication, compassion and problem-solving skills which are all cornerstones of healthy relationships. If they’re experiencing these in the real world, they’re much more likely to apply them to their virtual lives too.

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Helen has nearly 20 years’ experience working with children and young people.  As a primary school teacher and child and adolescent counselor she is passionate about understanding and supporting children. Helen is head of counseling at Mable Therapy, a company transforming the way children and young people across the UK access therapy. By replacing traditional therapy methods with immersive, game-based therapy and technology, the process of achieving goals becomes fun and rewarding.

In a world of easy internet access, our children are vulnerable to online criminals. There are several types of personal data that parents should protect for their kids. We’ll take a look at what you need to know to keep your family safe online.

We will also show a valuable resource that shows which apps for kids that collect the most data.  This data collection goes unnoticed unless parents are vigilant.

Your Children Are Vulnerable Online

Because we all use the web so much, it’s easy to forget about internet privacy. Companies, agencies, and other organizations track us when we are online: our location, our financial data, and our personal information, as well as what we buy. Even our conversations are recorded and stored by companies.

Companies use this data for marketing. Unfortunately, hackers and other criminals can access it to steal, defame, and otherwise harm our children. One of the main forms that kids are at risk is through the use of apps.  Apps are used for education, social media, gaming, messaging, and streaming entertainment.  These are just one facet of a child’s internet use.

Ways to Protect Your Family

The first step is to talk to your children. As long as your children are online, they are not too young to learn about internet safety. Set age-appropriate rules and boundaries for internet usage. Then, teach them to understand why you’ve put these in place.

The most important thing you can teach them is to avoid sharing information with people they don’t know. They should not share personal data, like their phone or address, online. Instead, they can give that info out via phone or text.

In the meantime, there are steps you can take to safeguard their privacy online:

• Use a VPN with your internet service to block unwanted sites and safeguard browsing features.
• Protect your browser by disabling tracking cookies and enabling private browsing in your options. That will protect their data and actions from being monitored.
• Use trustworthy antivirus services and parental controls to keep kids and their computers safe.
• Have your kids set up and store unique and complex passwords for all their accounts. Using the same ones repeatedly puts them at risk.

Besides these generic safety tools, there are several options you can employ to protect them during their most common activities.

Social Media

Just about all our kids are on social media. Unfortunately, this can be a dangerous place. To keep kids safe, you must teach them to keep personal data private while on social media. Here are some simple guidelines you can teach them:

• What we share online can be stored forever. Make sure your kids understand how to use good judgment and discretion when posting. If they are uncertain, start a conversation about what makes a good post versus TMI (too much information).
• Everyone likes to post photos. Sadly, family pictures can attract predators, cyberbullies, and other internet dangers. Teach them to respect others’ privacy by not posting pictures of other people without their permission.
• Many websites give you an option to log in using a social media profile rather than your email. That leads to numerous security dangers. Instead, teach your kids to set up a new profile via email rather than exposing social media data.

Virtual Gaming

Online gaming is another area that exposes our kids to identity theft, data mining, phishing, and other hazards. There are several protections you can put in place to safeguard their virtual gaming activities.

• Computer cameras and mics may be exploited with the click of an insecure link. Be sure your kids are not clicking anything suspicious or unverified while in games. You can also cover the camera and unplug peripherals when offline.
• Turn off location tracking on devices if possible whenever gaming.
• If you have secure Wifi or a VPN and antivirus software, you’ll give your child an extra level of protection against unsecured gaming servers.
• Finally, be sure to update applications and software regularly.

Online Shopping

Safely shopping online is a bit of a tricky activity since your child needs to enter secure data, such as location, phone, and credit card info. Teach your child to recognize safe sites for shopping (i.e., Amazon, Target) versus unknown name sites or links that redirect elsewhere. Additionally, kids need to be wary of clicking email links from unknown sources.

Posting a direct bank account link is also unsafe. Therefore, instead of using a debit card, have your kids use a credit card for an extra measure of safety. Kids should also protect their credit card usage by keeping their online receipts and looking for suspicious activity on their accounts. Have them avoid saving credit card data either with a retailer or in their cookies.

Online Courses

Since the pandemic, more children are relying on online education. Unfortunately, from 2018 to 2019, problems with student data security in classrooms tripled. Your child’s grades, progress, and other confidential school data are stored online and can be vulnerable to attacks.

Be sure that your educators and administrators take the appropriate steps to protect student privacy. Review your schools’ digital policies, including how information is protected and shared. Schools should use FERPA Sherpa, a government resource designed to help them protect student privacy.

Kids today cannot avoid using the internet. This puts them at great risk for cybercrimes. However, these simple steps can keep your children safe online no matter what they are doing. As mentioned, apps are now one of the ways most of us access resources and information according to our own interests. This is especially true when using smart phones and tablets.