Oh no, did I just become a conservative? Please God NO! The O’Reilly factor was just on. Please don’t ask me why the TV was turned to FOX News – ask the centrist Republican husband (who did NOT vote for Bush). I will admit, that I have been known to watch that program (when it is on) because I like to see how the “other side” is spinning things. Well, Mr. O’Reilly, before pitching the new golf balls that say “No Spin Zone” on his website and after he didn’t give his final guest the “last word”, mentioned that the only way to keep kids from getting seduced by internet websites/sex predators/etc is to not let the child have a computer in their room. And yes, I said “I agree with that”. Should I be worried that because I agreed with Bill that I am loosing my liberal tendencies? I hope not.
I think I agreed with him because I’m now a Mom and I really don’t want some sexual predator to target my child – I want to protect her. But I have to stop and think - by the time my girl is old enough to know/be curious about sex, where will technology be? In the last 16 years I went from having a Smith Corona Personal Word Processor with a built in printer and “data disks” to a laptop that connects to the internet from any room in my house. Blogs are the norm, e-mail is the way we all communicate – so should I deny her privacy and monitor like a hawk all her correspondence and surfing? I can put a firewall around her – so like Brunhilde (does that make me Woton?) – to protect her, but will that be enough? Is that too much? How much freedom do we give our children? How overprotective can I be? Should I be? By the time she’s 13 – her computer will be the size of her cellphone and she’ll be able to tap into the net from anywhere --wait – that technology is possible nowadays. So, who knows where we’ll be. Should I even start thinking about this now?
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