Contents below:

• Note to parents -- on safety for children on the Internet.
• Parental control products -- for Internet safety.
• Other hazards to your children -- product recalls and safety warnings from CBC's Marketplace.
• Other parenting resources.

I have attempted to make my "Kids Page" as safe a place for children as possible:

1. I have omitted my "flashing cursor" logo [above] from that page as possibly unsuitable for young children.
2. It is the only page without a link back to my main site so there is no unrestricted access to anything else on my site. If you go there by using a bookmark and not by following the link from my home page then the children cannot get to my home page with the BACK command (button to mouse-click on or keypress, depending on the browser).
3. I have attempted to check out any site added to that page for suitability for children and omit any that had anything I felt was inappropriate. It is impossible however to follow EVERY link on a site and every link from THOSE links, and so on. My access is limited to the Lynx text-only browser so I cannot view the pictures on a site without going to a public-access terminal to view the sites. It is not possible for me to monitor the contents of every site included for changes to their graphics. Also, sites may change contents at any time. If you find anything you disapprove of being on a children's page please let me know and I will examine the site in question at the first opportunity to re-assess its suitability.

There is a concern shared by many parents that their children may be exposed to undesirable material if they are given access to the Internet. You may be one of those parents. If so, the following links may provide you with more information on the topic and, perhaps, show you how to make the Internet a safer place for your children.

PEDINFO Parental Control of Internet Access
http://www.lhl.uab.edu/pedinfo/Control.html

The University of Oklahoma Department of Public Safety
Notes, Advice and Warnings for Kids
http://www.uoknor.edu/oupd/kidsafe/warn_kid.htm

NOTE:

Before settling on any one site blocking product, you might want to check out the criteria the producers of it use for blocking sites. If their criteria is too strict or not the same as yours, you could find that your child may be unable to access sites which you think are perfectly all right. In fact, you might find that, after creating a page just for your child, your child can't access the site you created for him or her as your entire ISP's domain has been blocked.

Reviews

Parental Control Product Review

http://www.neosoft.com/parental-control/

Individual Products

SurfWatch

http://www.surfwatch.com/

Net Nanny

http://www.netnanny.com/

Cyber Patrol

http://www.cyberpatrol.com/ -- NOTE: Cyber Patrol has, in the past, been filtering out sites on the grounds of their religious leanings in the mistaken belief that Paganism and Wicca are cults. To their credit, they have reversed that policy after being informed of their error in a flood of protests. For more on this, see: The Witches' Voice report on Cyber Patrol.

CYBERsitter

http://www.solidoak.com/cysitter.htm -- NOTE: Solid Oak has been accused of not only filtering out indecent material but also entire sites that are guilty only of being critical of Solid Oak. See the "Auschwitz Alphabet Mirror" site for more on this. They also filter out entire domains if there are any sites they don't like in that domain. If you are a parent with a page for your child on geocities.com then don't get CYBERsitter. Your child won't be able to view the page you created for him or her. They may filter out what you would find objectionable but they also will filter out a lot of stuff you might want your child to have access to. Since the parent can't determine exactly what is in their database of filtered sites and can't selectively enable or disable them, I can't personally recommend CYBERsitter.

Note:

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance have a report on their web site titled "How we were banned in Boston" which describes how this organisation has been blocked by both Cyber Patrol and CYBERsitter. Parents may wish to look elsewhere for software that gives them more control over the blocking, lets them override the software on a case-by-case basis, and has a blocking database that can be examined and/or edited by the parents if they wish to do so rather than have them bow to the arbitrary decisions of a committee the parents don't even know.

From CBC's Market Place come these warnings:

• New Market Place Recalls which include some hazards to children:
  • Twenty-one toys that present choking and other hazards.
• Children's Products -- other recalls of products for children.

• If there is a blind child in the family (or a blind parent who wishes to read to his or her child) you might be interested in visiting the site of Seedlings Braille Books for Children [NEW ADDRESS!] and find out what they have available.
• Braille-Books.com also carries a selection of children's books in braille -- as well as books for adults.
• Another source for braille books -- including children's books -- is the National Braille Press.
• I wasn't sure whether Kathy's Resources on Parenting, Domestic Violence, Abuse, Trauma & Dissociation belonged on this page or my "Crime..." page but finally decided to put it on both pages. Isn't that the typical Canadian solution, "When in doubt, compromise"?
• Bradley Olson's home page has links to a lot of resources, related newsgroups, and chat sites for those coping with autism in the family.
• The Family Village website has lots of resources for a family with a disabled child or parent including pages devoted to
  1. Adaptive Toys,
  2. Education,
  3. Family Resource Center,
  4. Family Village Book Store, and more.
  A Text-Only Version of their home page is available for the "graphically impaired".
• Kids Together, Inc. (Formerly Kids R Kids, Inc.) is another resource for parents with a disabled child.
• "Esmerel on the Web" is a family-oriented page that not only includes Esmerel's List of Disability Resources but makes available Unicorn Quest, an MS-DOS text-based typing tutor for children with one or two hands. If you have a disabled child who needs to learn to type with one hand, this may be a fun way for him or her to learn.

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Webmaster: Norman De Forest, <af380@chebucto.ns.ca>