Parental Control Apps
Mobile apps for parental control are great tools for helping parents to control their underage kids. This post shares the mistakes to avoid when using them.
Mistakes to Avoid when Using a Phone-Tracking App
With moral darkness covering the earth, and our kids becoming easy prey and targets for all manner of corrupting agendas, a 21st-century parent has a mountain of parenting challenges that none of our parents could ever imagine. For instance, it was something abominable and uncommon for an 11-year old teenager to impregnate a 12-year old girl and enter the Guiness Book of Records as the world’s youngest parents. But in our digital millennium, it has happened and it looks normal. However, we can take advantage of the parental control apps and capabilities the digital revolution provides and remain on top of the game. At least there is a ray of hope that even though you may not stop the birds of moral perversion from flying over our kids’ heads, you can stop them from building nests by using a reliable app.
Image Source: Flickr
However, it is necessary to know that even though these parental control apps are effective to a great extent, you need to exercise caution so that you don’t sabotage your spying mission. By avoiding some of the mistakes we shall discuss in this post, you will be in a better position to reap the best out of your monitoring mission. Remain with this post to learn more and become more effective in using your chose parental control app.
Don’t React to Your Parental Control App’s Results too Fast
To many parents, these applications are tools for tracking what their kids are doing on the Net and off net using the phones they have entrusted to them. By having this fact imprinted at the back of your mind, you should be prepared to get only two results—positive or negative. Positive results will mean that the mobile phone is not having a negative relational, emotional, or moral impact on your child. On the other hand, you should also be open to negative findings where you discover that your child is wasting their study time on social media, playing games, watching dangerous material on the Net, or even exchanging explicit images over the phone. With this awareness, you should be ready to know when and how to respond to any of these potential discoveries.
However, the biggest challenge here is not getting the information but what you do with it. To many parents, the first reaction would be to “confront” the teenager and lecture them. But if you are looking for a lasting solution, you should know the best moment to “attack” the discovery and how to do it. If you find that the extent is a serious addiction, for instance to porn, you should consider looking for professional help. If you react too fast and too furiously in a critical manner, you should be sure that you will aggravate the situation. For instance, your child may conclude you no longer trust them and it may take a long time restoring that broken trust and shedding off the new criminal image they now have now embraced.
Therefore, you should approach the issue with the patience of a caring shepherd and a devoted counselor and not a police officer who has caught a criminal in the act. When initiating the redemptive process, always remember these two facts:
- You should make the correction without breaking the parent-child connection. In this case, the connection is more important than the corrective measures you are taking.
- A good parent should not dissolve a relationship because children have committed wrongs, but rather, they should dissolve and resolve the wrongs because they are committed to their relationship with their children.
Spilling the Beans
Another blunder that some parents make is failing to live up to the essence of parental control apps and spying—secrecy. Never approach your spying mission with a police mentality where you think by letting the child know that “big brother” is watching them you will get an upper hand. On the contrary, you will only sabotage the entire process, make them more rebellious, and begin doing the same things even more. The saddest part of such a reaction would be that they might change tact and get a secret handset to do their dirty jobs.
Forgetting to Log Out of Your Account
Another blunder that some parents is failing to log out of the account after using the smartphone they are monitoring. If you leave the account running, you will be allowing the little brat to know that you are spying on them.
Parental control apps are great tools modern parents can optimize to monitor what their minor children do with their smartphones. However, the level of success they will get from your monitoring efforts depends on how well they use their apps. By avoiding the mistakes we have shared in this post, you will be in a better position to reap the best out of your parental regulation efforts.