Tell Me When

I'm really bad at reading details. I'm a skimmer and that's burned me more than a few times in my life. Last week I was suppose to post on Stalking Prevention for the Tell Me When Blog Hop, to celebrate Stina Lindenblatt's new book. But I thought I was suppose to today, because today is when her book comes out.

So, better late than never:

When I was a teenager, we used to drive by the boys houses that we liked. We'd wonder if they were home, freak out if we saw them, and behave like giggly teenage girls, and then something happened that made me stop doing that. I saw a boy drive by my house. It was kind of creepy, and I realized what I was doing was just as creepy.

Although I suspect kids don't drive by each other's houses anymore, now they do it virtually.

Now I'm a parent of a girl who is about to be a teenager, which is scary as hell, especially when it comes to an online presence. I make sure I keep careful tabs on her facebook account. My kids are not allowed to have facebook unless I know they're passwords.

As parents it's our responsibility to monitor what our kids are doing online. Kids will always take risks. Studies reveal that 46% of teens surveyed would change their online behaviour if they knew their parents paid attention.

If you don't keep track of what's happening of your child's cyber life then you open them up to all kids of problems. Make sure nothing personal about them is posted, no school names, town they live in, email addresses.

In this day and age, parents need to be vigilant.

Make sure you check out Stina's book, Tell Me When, a NA story about a college freshman who struggles with the aftermath of being stalked and kidnapped during her senior year of high school.