BeBa

It’s a common problem, yeah? How to help our kids resist the temptation of the Internet when it’s supposed to be bedtime.

I remember when my kids were little and we parents would ask each other: Would you ever let your kids have a TV or computer in their room? My answer was always an emphatic NO. But here we are in this crazy age, barely a decade later, and my kids are gadgeted to the hilt with wifi-enabled devices: Nintendo DSi, iPod Touch, netbook. For the purposes of entertainment, who needs an actual TV or wired computer anymore??

For awhile I had a policy of collecting all the devices at night and redistributing in the morning. But that was back in the day when the only gadget they owned was a Game Boy, and those were not wifi-enabled.

So this was Scott’s brilliant idea: Our household wifi access is controlled by MAC address (every wifi enabled device has one)…

1. Wifi is open to any device from 5 am – 6 pm

Hey, if the kids want to get up at 5 am, I do not have a problem with that!

2. Children’s devices lose wifi access at 9 pm.

Yes, they hate that. (And when their friends come to sleepovers here they are appalled. Ha!) But they have gotten used to it. I kind of wish we’d decided on an earlier time in the first place, but for now this suffices.

3. Scott/Betsy devices never go down.

My husband would love to take our net access down as early as 6 pm. But he realizes that would be cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe someday I will be strong enough! But for now I really look forward to a little Words With Friends each night before I turn out the light.

Motivation

Even if the kids turn up with a wifi-enabled device that they’ve borrowed or have been gifted with, they won’t have wifi on it after 6 pm unless they give Scott the MAC address.

Those extra three hours prove very motivational in their desire to make full disclosure about devices. From the parental point-of-view it’s a beautiful system. And so far none of my kids are quite geeky enough to cross cyberswords with Scott and subvert this system.