Kids’ Safety Online: Advice for Parents & Caregivers
What online games are safe for my 11-year-old to play?
Is my child a cyberbully?
How do I ‘supervise’ without snooping?
SafeOnline’s innovative online safety education for parents and caregivers delivers up-to-date information on topics related to online risks for kids.
Parents and caregivers will learn effective strategies to manage screen time, sexting, gaming and cyberbullying, and receive comprehensive, positive resources.
My presentations offer a lively experience that fuses academic research, contemporary technology and practical real-world examples.
Current online safety education workshops for parents and caregivers are listed below. Please contact me to discuss specific topics or situations that may be affecting your children.
Parenting Strategies for Online Safety
Setting limits and having rules for online use is important—but when do you start and what is reasonable? Ideally, we can negotiate, plan and talk with our kids to help them develop healthy screen time habits as they mature. This presentation raises parents’ awareness about how technology impacts children, educates them about setting technology limits in their homes and encourages families to be proactive about online safety.
"Merlyn was exceptional. She was relaxed, and professional
and communicated the information in a great way."
Gaming: the Good, the Bad & the Lonely
Gaming is a big part of all of our lives; from grocery loyalty ‘points’ to the immersive, social parallel lives we live. This is especially important when considering how our children game. Gaming is a powerful force with both risks and threats to youth—socially, developmentally—AND with positive opportunities for therapeutic healing and meaningful engagement. It’s important to see and balance all these factors.
"I liked that it balanced positive aspects of gaming with negative."
Online Pornography: Why You Cannot Wait Until High School to Talk About It
As much as we may want to postpone having ‘the talk’ with our children, having internet access means they are going to get their sexual health questions answered online if we don’t offer our views on it first. Pre-teen curiosity about sexuality is very normal, but without some guidance about how to minimize the harm that online pornography can cause to their sexuality preteens can be exposed to very, very hardcore and graphic images and videos.
This entertaining and frank discussion will help you feel better about having conversations with your children about online pornography and equip you with tools to guide their way to safer sex education.