Parenting In The Digital Age – Keep Your Children Safe #SprintMom

Parenting In The Digital Age

Parenting In The Digital Age – How To Keep Your Children Safe

When you are at work and your kids are not in school – do you ever wonder what they’re doing or where they are?

If your child is old enough to have a cell phone, do you ever worry about who they are texting?

Are you familiar with the content and the ratings of the video games that your children and their friends are playing – as well as the content available to them online when they access these games?

Does your teenager practice safe telephone habits when they are behind the wheel of a car?

My husband and I thought we were relatively savvy about the technological dangers that families face in the 21st century – and how to guard against them – until we attended an eye-opening seminar entitled Parenting In The Digital Age and discovered just how much information we still needed to know!

The Sprint Team & Digital Shepherds

Sprint Corproate Team Members Amy Johnson Baugh, Stephanie Walsh and Heather Wong and Digital Shepherds Tshaka and Kelli Armstrong hosted Parents In The Digital Age – a #SprintMom event!

Parenting In The Digital Age is a special seminar, co-hosted by Sprint and Digital Shepherds, that’s designed to teach parents about the dangers children face inside and outside of their homes, and equip parents with the tools they need to protect their families from these dangers.

Because this information is so vital, we’d like to share the information and resources you need to protect your children and provide your families with peace of mind!

Digital Shepherds – Safety Begins With Good Parenting

Kelli & Tshaka Armstrong

Kelli & Tshaka Armstrong are the founders of Digital Shepherds.

Fox-La’s Tech Ninja Tshaka Armstrong and his wife Kelli – the co-founders of Digital Shepherds – were the featured speakers and both presented captivating presentations about the new dangers that unsuspecting children, teenagers, and their parents face on a daily basis – and what we can do about it.

Kelli opened by introducing us to Digital Shepherds – the organization she and her husband founded after Kelli rescued her tween daughter and a friend from a potentially dangerous situation. Today, their non-profit organization works with parents, youth and educators to promote Internet safety, digital and media literacy and digital abuse prevention.

Tshaka shared how children are naturally curious, and how that curiosity can easily be exploited in a number of settings. Although he spoke in detail about specific threats and how to avert them, a good bit of the discussion centered on the need for parental involvement.

Tshaka reminded us that it’s up to us to protect our children and to set clear boundaries and guidelines – even if it isn’t always easy.

If you aren’t having conversations with your children that make you a bit uncomfortable, you may not be having the right conversations.

Tshaka and Kim are well-informed, passionate parents and speakers that we could easily listen to and learn from all day. We encourage you to visit them at Digital Shepherds and highly recommend them to your school and organization as speakers!

Sprint Apps And Resources Can Keep Your Family Safe!

Sprint Corporate Team Members Amy Johnson Baugh, Stehpanie Walsh and Heather Wong provided us with in-depth information about a number of safety topics and Sprint resources designed to help parents protect children during the round-table lunch sessions:

They also turned the spotlight on three important apps: the Sprint Family Locator, Sprint Mobile Controls, and Sprint Drive First.

Sprint Family Locator

Keep Your Kids Safe This Summer

The Sprint Family Locator is an awesome app that helps you to remotely locate your children’s devices on a virtual map from your mobile phone, PC or tablet and perform automatic safety checks throughout the day at the intervals that you specify.

For instance, you can use this app to ensure that your child safely arrives at school, at home and extra-curricular activities. You can activate up to 5 phones per account.

Sprint offers a free 15 day trial for Android or iOs and then there is a monthly fee of $5.99 per account.

Sprint Mobile Controls

Sprint Mobile Controls

Sprint Mobile Controls allows parents to clearly understand their child’s telephone, texting and app usage habits, to lock their child’s phone when needed, and to browse through their child’s contacts and apps to ensure the phone is safe. The fee for this service is $5.99 per month, per account.

Sprint Drive First

Sprint Drive

Sprint Drive First is a FREE app that allows Sprint users to lock their Android-powered smartphones when the phone’s GPS detects motion above 10 mph.

The app directs incoming calls to voice mails and silences distracting alerts. You can customize an auto-response to all text messages, which are held until the driver comes to a stop.

Now It’s Your Turn To Share!

What situations have you and your families faced – and what concerns do you have – when it comes to parenting in the digital age?

What solutions, apps and resources have you found that you’d like to share with other parents?

Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Disclosure: Create With Joy received promotional items for attending this event.

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22 Responses to “Parenting In The Digital Age – Keep Your Children Safe #SprintMom”

Read below or add a comment...

  1. Tshaka Armstrong says:

    Thank you for attending the event and for your kind words! We’re glad that parents like you came out and are sharing this information with other parents around the web and blogosphere. As my wife said, “it takes a village” and when we all come together and share this information, the village is stronger and, ultimately, our children and our homes benefit.

  2. Glenda Cates says:

    I did not know all of this but will be more careful as I have already had to bury one child and I do not want to lose another one. So thanks for sharing and for Sprint allowing you to.

    • Create With Joy
      Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
      says:

      Wow, Glenda – I don’t know the circumstances behind your loss but I am SO sorry for what you and your family have gone through!
      Thanks so much for stopping by. As you can see, there is SO much important information here to share – if you can help spread the information in any way with the parents you know, we’d greatly appreciate it!

      Have a wonderful day!

  3. Lisa Ehrman says:

    It’s good to prepare kids to be safe in this age. Thanks for this post and sharing it at What Are You Doing? Blog Hop.

  4. Wow, this is eye opening but I am so glad that there is a seminar and a family passionate about making sure children are safe in our technology world! Thanks for sharing with #SocialButterflySunday this week! Hope to see you link up again this Sunday 🙂

    • Create With Joy
      Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
      says:

      Hi Kelly, so glad you had a chance to catch this article – the seminar and speakers were amazing! Our heads were swimming when we left the seminar and we spent a lot of time talking about and processing the information we learned.

      Have a wonderful weekend and I hope you’ll share this information with your readers – you never know who will see it that really needs it, and who’s lives this information may save!

  5. Lowanda J says:

    Thank you for sharing. I have pinned this to my Counseling Page to utilize with my parents when they have questions.

  6. Leslie says:

    Thanks for sharing. Talking with our children is the first step in keeping them safe from pretty much everything, but it’s something so overlooked sometimes. It works across the gamut of parenting issues we deal with.

    • Create With Joy
      Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
      says:

      So true Leslie – good communication is the key to so many of the problems and challenges we face!
      Thanks for stopping by – have a wonderful day!

  7. Tanya @ Mom's Small Victories
    Twitter: momsvictories
    says:

    Sounds like a valuable resource for parents. Thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday linkup. Pinned to our linkup board and hope you join us again this weekend.

  8. Sherry says:

    Great tips! It’s so important to prepare kids for life in the digital age. Thanks for sharing at Merry Monday:-)

  9. Caryn says:

    Love this event. I hope they have one in my area. #sitsblogging

  10. Mary Hill
    Twitter: MaryHill16
    says:

    This is really important and valuable information. We use PagePlus and not Sprint. I am just learning about how to monitor my child on the cell phone. I know I need to know all her passwords and I check her messages frequently and talk to her about the importance of safety when using her cell phone or computer on the Internet.

    • Create With Joy
      Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
      says:

      There is SO much to do and learn – we can never do enough to keep our children safe!

      Even if you don’t have access to the Sprint apps, you should be able to find similar types of apps to help keep your daughter safe.

      So glad you caught the article – please help spread the word!

  11. Stephanie says:

    Yes, this information is invaluable. My children are 9 and 7 and their interest in the web consists of PBS games and the like right now, but I see the interest of our 9 year old slowly growing and we are being open and honest with her as much as possible about what is out there. She wanted a laptop for Christmas. I told her I didn’t have a problem with her wanting technology but that she would have ALL of the internet at her fingertips, not just a lap top. So we are still having the discussion, she understands somewhat and has scratched laptop off her cmas list. that should buy us at least another year until we can really understand setting up parameters and such. Thanks for this post!

    Stephanie

    • Create With Joy
      Twitter: CreateWithJoy1
      says:

      Thanks Stephanie for joining us and sharing your story – this information is SO important – I’m glad you found it useful!
      Please help us to spread the word!

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