There will be no computer in my children's rooms until they are 18 and not under my roof. I was a teen too and I didn't forget what it was like.

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Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. The only computer is in the den where I can see what's going on, and that won't change even when I have teenagers. We also don't allow televisions in bedrooms.

So what are you going to do when your 17 year old has homework they need to do on their laptop and they want quiet time to work?

NP. They are going to go into the family room, dining room, kitchen or another place in the house where it's quiet. But not upstairs.

We live in the 1940s vintage colonial, if you are downstairs in the kitchen it's not acquired, there is no family room, the only quiet place Nouse will be upstairs. With the families with similar layout of this do? Send them to our half finished basement?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. The only computer is in the den where I can see what's going on, and that won't change even when I have teenagers. We also don't allow televisions in bedrooms.

So what are you going to do when your 17 year old has homework they need to do on their laptop and they want quiet time to work?

NP. They are going to go into the family room, dining room, kitchen or another place in the house where it's quiet. But not upstairs.

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. The only computer is in the den where I can see what's going on, and that won't change even when I have teenagers. We also don't allow televisions in bedrooms.

+1.

You will regret this, OP. Be a parent and say no.

Office? Den? You all have big houses. We have bedrooms and small living/dining room, table next to kitchen so always loud. So if DS doesn't take Laptop to his room, no place to do homework in peace and no centralized place to do work (he had small desk and drawers in bedroom)

What do people do with small houses?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. The only computer is in the den where I can see what's going on, and that won't change even when I have teenagers. We also don't allow televisions in bedrooms.

Hopefully, when you mature with your kids and they actually become teens, you will look back on this post and feel a little embarrassed. For starters, teens don't watch TV unless their parents force them to.

Huh? My 13 yo and her friends binge watch Netflix. Sometimes on their phones while they're siting next to each other.
No screentime in bedrooms. At 9 pm the screens go dark (OurPact app) so even if they have them in their rooms they can only access the phone and alarm clock. They never use the phone. That's one thing we have to force! A phone call!

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Anonymous wrote:DC is interested in writing, animating, movie editing, programming, games, etc...Was thinking about having DC's computer in their room. Would probably prefer having the computer in the family room but we also have a 5 year old who enjoys bothering the older sibling.

Mom of teens: NO NEVER

Your kid will not be 10 forever and creating new rules is near impossible.

Electronics are not allowed upstairs in our house, since our kids were little. I cannot even try to imagine if they were allowed and I needed to create that rule now with my teens. Compliance would be hell.

fyi studies also show kids do better if they do homework at the family table. it's less lonely and they won't stop doing homework and go to fun websites (games, or porn, etc) when they hit that math problem they can't answer. They'll yell "mom/dad, what's x divided by y squared?" instead.

Wow, so your teens have had the same rules since they were born? Amazing! Do they mind that you are at their friends birthday parties? Aren’t you tired of cutting their meat?
I’m obviously being sarcastic. Rules change all the time. At 4 my children would not have knives at meal time. As teens, they do. At 5, I still went to birthday parties with them. At 10, no. It’s not that different with computers.

Wrong. All your examples show loosening of the reigns. It's entirely different to take away something that used to be allowed. Like sorry, son, you used to have a computer in your room but now that your teenage hormones are getting going, it's moving to the family room.

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely not. The only computer is in the den where I can see what's going on, and that won't change even when I have teenagers. We also don't allow televisions in bedrooms.

So what are you going to do when your 17 year old has homework they need to do on their laptop and they want quiet time to work?

Allowing any technology in a bedroom is a very bad habit to start. I can't imagine giving my 10yr old her own computer, let alone one in her own room. We as a family do not use electronics in our room. No tv's either. Bedrooms are for reading, relaxing, decompressing, and sleeping. Everything is charged downstairs. We have an office with computer, dining room, kitchen table, and a basement for homework.

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Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms are have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Do you really not know how to control access or view activity at the mac address level? One does not need to physically look over a kids shoulder to know what is going on or to prevent access. Plus do you hover over your kid in the family room 24x7? Are your teens not allowed on the computer when you are not home to viaually monitor their phones, tablets, and computer?

We have our kids MAC addresses on auto shut down to the wireless at 9pm and that's just a fraction of the controls.

I don't stand over either of my teens while they are on the computer. I wander in and out of the room, going about my business. The result is that they think twice about their surfing activity, because they know I could wander by at any given time. (This is a habit that will serve them well in their future workplace.) In addition, they are less likely to be watching videos, playing games, reading social networking sites, etc., when they are supposed to be doing their homework.

Look, I think screens in the bedroom is a horrible, horrible habit. I thought that about TVs back in the day, I continue to think it about computers and phones. Having screens in the bedroom tends to have an adverse effect on sleep. Having screens in the bedroom means that kids are more likely to be distracted from homework (assuming they are doing their homework in their room where the screens are.) And I prefer not to facilitate the growing tendency in our society to spend time in solitude staring at a screen instead of communing with humanity. So if having the screens in our home be in public areas means that my kids are hanging out in the living room/dining room/family room rather than spending all their time in their bedrooms, I call that a win. They can still choose to spend time alone in their rooms. They just aren't watching videos in there. This works really well in my family, and as others have noted, it's easier to enforce if you start early. In fact, at this point, I don't even have to enforce it, it is just our family habit. My oldest hewed to this habit right up until he went to college. Now, a sophomore in college, he does bring his phone to his room (and at age 19, this is certainly his prerogative), but he still uses his laptop in the public areas of the house and not in his bedroom.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms are have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Do you really not know how to control access or view activity at the mac address level? One does not need to physically look over a kids shoulder to know what is going on or to prevent access. Plus do you hover over your kid in the family room 24x7? Are your teens not allowed on the computer when you are not home to viaually monitor their phones, tablets, and computer?

We have our kids MAC addresses on auto shut down to the wireless at 9pm and that's just a fraction of the controls.

You must have a more sophisticated router all our does is time limit access control. How does MAC address filtering help with keeping them off harmful sites? Is the a white list service?

First and easiest is I review the logs of incoming and outgoing traffic. I have a list of domain names they are allowed, so EVERYTHING is disallowed that I do not allow. If they want another allowed domain name, the ask me, I review and then allow or disallow said domain name. If my kids can get into my router (and figure that one out!) given the fact that I have a strong WPA2-PSK key, or if they have managed to download undetected some sort of P2P client such as Bittorrent, then quite frankly, I will be impressed and pretty damn proud.

in all honesty, now that I have a 15yr old, I now only disallow a few websites and allow everything else. It is my youngest (7yr old) that I have to have tight reigns on. I just check the logs of my 15yr old and as long as I do not find anything objectionable (which I have NOT) then I let him be. We need to give our kids the autonomy to make good choices. Many of them will be reaching adulthood before we know it. My 15yr old has not let me down, so he gets more and more rope.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms are have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Do you really not know how to control access or view activity at the mac address level? One does not need to physically look over a kids shoulder to know what is going on or to prevent access. Plus do you hover over your kid in the family room 24x7? Are your teens not allowed on the computer when you are not home to viaually monitor their phones, tablets, and computer?

We have our kids MAC addresses on auto shut down to the wireless at 9pm and that's just a fraction of the controls.

We have a time capsule so not sure if it does logging like that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms are have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Do you really not know how to control access or view activity at the mac address level? One does not need to physically look over a kids shoulder to know what is going on or to prevent access. Plus do you hover over your kid in the family room 24x7? Are your teens not allowed on the computer when you are not home to viaually monitor their phones, tablets, and computer?

We have our kids MAC addresses on auto shut down to the wireless at 9pm and that's just a fraction of the controls.

You must have a more sophisticated router all our does is time limit access control. How does MAC address filtering help with keeping them off harmful sites? Is the a white list service?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms are have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Do you really not know how to control access or view activity at the mac address level? One does not need to physically look over a kids shoulder to know what is going on or to prevent access. Plus do you hover over your kid in the family room 24x7? Are your teens not allowed on the computer when you are not home to viaually monitor their phones, tablets, and computer?

We have our kids MAC addresses on auto shut down to the wireless at 9pm and that's just a fraction of the controls.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really bad to let kids have phone or computer in their room alone.

why? what is really bad about that?

You really aren't aware that there's a ton of content on the internet that would be really inappropriate for a 10 year old to see and would be super easy for them to stumble on to?

Also, victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying usually have comps in their rooms. Lots of unsupervised computer time.

Good luck. We found out our DD was having group chat between friends by sharing a Google document on their school issued accounts.

If you watched her, it looked like she was just editing a word document. In reality it was a group chat! Kids will find a way...

I think you're missing the point. You should make it as difficult as possible for your kids to find A way rather than help them along .

Yep, as a mom to teens, I agree with this point generally. E.g., I might not be able to prevent my teen from drinking or having sex. That doesn't mean I allow my DSs to drink beer in their bedrooms OR have their girlfriends sleep with them.

Fixed.