Getting on the same page with your partner about parental controls
It’s not unusual for one parent to be the initial driving force for introducing parental controls, but the effectiveness of tools like Kidslox is amplified significantly when both parents are playing from the same playbook.
Below, you’ll find a short discussion guide; questions it’s usually worth discussing with your partner about how you plan to implement household technology rules together.
Ideally, you’ll have this discussion before introducing the parental controls to your child, so that the rules and the message connected to them are coming from you together, otherwise there’s a risk of the software becoming “dad’s parental controls” (or mom’s). That said, even if the initial moment has passed, it’s never too late to realign.
When having a conversation about the importance of parental controls with your partner it’s important to find a calm, distraction free time (a big ask for parents, I know), or at the very least to make sure that you don’t have this conversation in the midst of an ongoing conflict about something else. It’s easy when we’re already worked up, to unintentionally bring an argumentative attitude into an unrelated conversation.
The guide below offers some useful places to start the conversation, but it’s not exhaustive. You’ll find that as you talk through the different points, your knowledge of your child and of each other will develop these themes in the direction most useful for your family.
Discussion guide
Give space for each parent to respond to each question:
1. What does a healthy relationship with technology look like to you?
2. What concerns you the most about our child’s device use or about them having a smart device in general? Some common concerns include:
- Screen overuse/addiction (+ knock on effects on behaviour, relationships, health, sleep, schoolwork, etc.)
- Contact with inappropriate content
- Possibility of encountering online predators
- Engagement with toxic online communities
- Possibility of cyber bullying
- Irresponsible use of personal data
3. What rules would we need to have in place to guide our child towards a healthier relationship with technology and to protect them from potential harm?
4. Can any of those rules be made more effective with the use of parental controls? Note that Kidslox allows you to:
- Set daily time limits
- Set scheduled scree free times
- Lock down their device from yours at a moments notice
- Block inappropriate sites
- Get alerted about inappropriate searches or photos stored on the device
- See their location on a map
- See statistics about device use, including TikTok and YouTube videos watched
- And much more.
5. Especially for older children, it might also be relevant to discuss: At what age or maturity level (if any) is our child’s privacy more important than our interest in monitoring their behaviour? Are there any parental control features we’ll deliberately avoid using to give our child more privacy?
6. When will we review how well this approach is working?
- Make a plan to review your parental control setup a) after a few days, to make sure it’s working on a technical level, b) after a couple of weeks, to determine if the rules are having the desired affect and make adjustments, c) after a couple of months – when you’re more familiar with both the system and your children’s reaction.
Finally, it might be worth thinking about your own device use together:
7. Do we need to make any changes to the way We use our phones, for the sake of the example we set? Ideas some parents find helpful include:
- No looking at phones while talking to other people (especially children)
- Having dedicated non-screen times and/or places – e.g. the dinner table
- Turning off notifications for social media and/or gaming apps
- Not using screens a) for an hour before the kids go to bed, b) for an hour before going to bed ourselves
Once you’ve decided together on some rules to try, it’s time to introduce them to your child. Where possible, do this together, emphasising that these rules are about helping and protecting the child, and agreeing with the child about a time to review how the rules are working after a set period.
While the guide presented here is for a single conversation, it’s likely that this topic will become an ongoing dialogue, both with your children and with your partner. Be open with them about this from the start. Be ready to talk further about the habits revealed by monitoring, or to make adjustments to your plan if the results you see justify them.