The Famundo Blog: Category Setting Limits

It's 9 o'clock. Do you know where you children are?

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:01:26 -0500

If you live in Japan, you soon will.

According to SankeiWeb, Japanese geverment (Soum-sho) is planning to spend 1.2B Japanese Yen (about 10 million USD) to build “a system for watching kids” using mobile phones, GPS, RFID tags, etc.

Allowance 2.0

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:00:00 -0500

The whole paradigm of children’s allowances has changed with the advent of online purchasing and the Wall Street Journal has an excellent (FREE) article on this new model, Allowance 2.0

The article mentions several software applications and online services that help with the allowance process.

EasyChild Software which has features like an allowance calculator and “weekly behavior chart.”

PAYjr, an allowance-tracking Web site.

My Reward Board features a chore chart and a cartoon piggy bank where parents can “deposit” allowances.

The is also a podcast, where Journal reporter John Jurgensen looks at the growing popularity of the virtual allowance and how parents are using technology to track their children’s spending habits. Listen to the podcast.

Why teens do dumb things

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:47:31 -0500

Why is it that after years of safe sex classes, drug abstinence seminars, anti-smoking campaigns, teens still go out and get involved with self-destructive behavior like drinking and driving, smoking, having unprotected sex, and so on.

The prevailing thought is that it is because teens feel invincible. They are young, strong, and smart. “It won’t happen to me!” they tell themselves. They have weighed the odds, assessed their own skills and smarts, and feel like they can get away with it, at least this time.

But a new study being done by the Association for Psychological Science discounts this idea and actually claims that teens overestimate their risk of getting HIV or lung cancer. But, they underestimate the consequences. Maybe they will get lung cancer, but how many years do they have to smoke before they get it? Maybe they will get an STD, but how bad can that really be?

Social acceptance and rebellion are also factors. Peer pressure can sway a kid who knows the dangers of drunk driving to do it anyway, regardless of the odds. The Cost/Benefit factor doesn’t even come in to play.

Adults, on the other hand, through experience, knowledge and insight, have an intuitive reaction to avoid risky behavior. It is a “gut” feeling that stops them from getting involved in these activities.

So how do we impart this intuition that has taken years to develop in adults, into our kids?

There is currently a study being conducted by Valerie F. Reyna and Frank Farley at the Association for Psychological Science where teens are being subjected to positive images of healthy behavior and negative images of risky behavior. It appears that this strategy may work better than the tactics that are currently being used.

To dig into this more, click here.

Reality shows are good for kids!?!

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:44:41 -0500

I’ll bet you never thought you would hear that. But according to the Parent’s Television Council’s rankings of the best and worst Primetime TV programming, reality shows are among the top 10 are Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, American Idol, Dancing with Stars, and American Inventor. Even Survivor is rated as Questionably Suitable.

My daughter is a big fan of DK Endurance and Mythbusters, both on the Discovery Channel.

For the complete list, click here .

The Kids are Alright

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 07:47:18 -0500

Via Tame the Web, there is a new book coming out which examines the new generation kids who grew up on video games and are now entering the workforce.

The Kids Are Alright: How the Gamer Generation Is Changing the Workplace by John Beck and Mike Wade.

Think video games are kids’ stuff? Think again. According to authors John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, all those hours immersed in game culture have created masses of employees with unique attributes. This new generation that’s 90 million strong has an amazing ability to multitask, solves problems creatively, and brings unexpected leadership to the table. But to tap these skills, we need to understand and appreciate the different ways gamers think and behave. The Kids Are Alright dispels common myths about gamers and reveals them as committed, team-oriented people who play to win.

From from Harvard Business School press.

Parent Covenant

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:03:27 -0400

We just had our annual parent meeting at our daughter’s middle school this week and, as we did last year, we ended the meeting with, for lack of a better term, a parent covenant. This is where parents agree to set limits on what our children are allowed to and not allowed to do, especially when it involves activities that include other children in the class.

This provides a real safety net when your children are having a sleepover or visiting a friend, you know that the other family has agreed to certain standards won’t be broken. It makes a very powerful statement when you can tell your child that the parents in the class have decided this as a group that some activity is not acceptable.

It is interesting how the concerns of parents have changed over the years with changes in technology . Although the Internet and e-mail is still a concern, there was much more discussion over issues like social networking sites, such as MySpace, and text messaging. These weren’t even on the radar when our son started middle school three years ago.

You can read my post regarding last year’s meeting here.

We are very appreciative that our school provides this opportunity and actually encourages this dialog among the parents.

CommonSenseMedia

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 06:55:00 -0400

I am very excited that Jim Steyer, founder of CommonSenseMedia, will be speaking at my son’s school next week. His talk is on The “Internet: Do You Understand How Much It Affects Your Children, How It’s Changing Their Lives and What You Can Do about It.” I’m very interested to hear his perspective on this topic especially now that I have a high schooler.

In case you are not familiar with CommonSenseMedia, get familiar. It is an incredibly valuable tool for parents, on topics covering all media, including the internet, movies TV.

You can sign up for their weekly e-newsletter, which covers all the latest releases.

I’ll report back after I hear his talk.

"Family-Friendly" Phone from Disney

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:36:02 -0400

Walter Mossberg has a review on Disney Mobile, Disney’s new mobile phnoe company and their “family-friendly” phones in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Generally, Mossberg give it a favorable review.

“Disney Mobile is good news for parents who have had a hard time cracking the whip on cellphone usage and bad news for kids who sneak calls at all hours of the night or who run up their phone bills with text messaging. If you’re looking for a way to keep better tabs on your family’s cellphone usage, this system works well.”

Read the whole article on Mossberg’s web site, The Mossberg Solution.

Parenting in the "MySpace" age

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:58:58 -0400

WebMD has some good advice on parenting in the age of social networking sites like “MySpace”.

Bottom line: Social networking should not cause you to panic.

The good news is that “94% of parents or legal guardians polled have taken actions to ensure their kids’ safe use of the Internet”

Read the whole article here.

Teens and Technology

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:47:00 -0400

According to an article on DrugNewswire “America’s teens are using technology like text messaging and the Internet to facilitate their drug use, and others are being exposed to drugs through technologies such as chat rooms and social networking sites.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has publishing an Open Letter to Parents this week which focuses on the ways in which technology can aid- teen drug use and outlines how parents can monitor teens’ digital activities.”

Parents can also visit the The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign’s web site Parents: the Anti-Drug for additional advice and information. The site features a complete, easy-to-understand tutorial about technology in teens’ lives, tips on decoding teens’ lingo online, as well as specific tools parents can use to monitor their teen’s use of technology.