To children nighttime can be a scary time as their imaginations run wild and the smallest sound or shadow on the wall can become a ‘monster’. Dr. Richard Sherman, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles says, “Monster fear is real. This is a very common problem among children between the ages 3 and 6.”

Between the age of 3 and 6 a child’s imagination becomes fully developed. Engaging in pretend play throughout this period is very common. Children can pretend to build a castle out of a blanket, rock a crying doll to sleep, or even have imaginary friends that they interact with on a regular basis. With all that is good, there is always something bad. In this instance, the increase of their imagination can also cause them to develop fears. For many children distinguishing between imagination and reality can be difficult.

Dr. Sherman advises, “Parents need to take these concerns seriously rather than simply telling their children that monsters do not exist.” It is equivalent to telling an adult to not be afraid while walking down a dark alley in a bad neighbourhood. The most important part about overcoming fear is how you handle what can not be changed. In other words, your child does have to go to bed and it will be night-time when this occurs. We can’t change that. But what can we do as parents to help alleviate the fears children may have as their imaginations run wild?

• To help your child cope with night-time fear, provide your child with a flash light that they can keep next to their bed. This way, they can shine it on any dark corners of the room at any time to see that there is nothing to be afraid of.
• Play games at dusk just as the sun is setting so your child gets comfortable in the dark.
• Don’t allow your child to watch scary shows that feature monsters.
• Try reading books about children who overcome their monster fears. A favourite is “Too Many Monsters” in which a boy learns that monsters are afraid of ducks and that quacking makes them run away.
• Some parents make it a nightly ritual to check all the places in their child’s room where a monster might hide and then reassure their child that their room is monster free.
• Night-lights can help dispel a child’s fears.

Long gone are the days when you can issue a punishment to your child that entails limited time watching TV and chatting on the phone. Most parents nowadays turn to where it hurts them the most - limiting their time on the Internet. The Internet has become more than just a source of information. In fact, for most children it has become a way to socialize and stay connected. While the Internet has served us well with its plethora of updated information, it is also, unfortunately, a dangerous place for an unsuspecting child or teenager.

Although most parents do recognize the Internet as dangerous place many of them do not realize the severity. According to a 2002 FBI report - Children that visit chat rooms are at a 100% risk to encounter a pedophile at one or more point at any given time. They also report that every two out of five missing teenagers is in some way Internet related.

If that isn’t scary enough, unfortunately most children will share personal information about themselves, their families, and where they live to complete strangers within chat rooms and other forums. Pedophiles can use these small tidbits of information to create a profile of your child. Innocent information like the name of a school, basketball team name, or town they live in can be used to locate them using Internet resources.

Thankfully there are ways to help protect our children. The Safe Surfin’ Foundation is an organization that works to educate the public about Internet crimes against children and how communities can protect their children from becoming victims. According to their resources, here are some suggestions of things that every child should know and do:

• You don’t always know who you’re chatting with online so never reveal personal information in a chat room or any other public forum. Personal information can include: address, school, town, team they play on, street name, phone number, or email address.
• Always use an online name instead of your real name.
• Be careful when filling out profile forms. Just because there are fields that ask for personal information doesn’t mean that they need to be filled out.
• Never meet with someone that you met online by yourself or in a private place.
• Tell a parent if any one harasses you or if there is any inappropriate content in a chat room or forum.

The Internet is something that children become accustomed to early on in this day and age of rapidly growing technology. My child began toying around with Internet games that I set up for him at around the age of 2 and at the age 3 years old was able to navigate the Internet pretty well on his own. One day, my child wanted to watch an episode of the ‘Upside Down Show’ immediately!! I didn’t have this show on DVD and to avoid a temper tantrum meltdown I turned to none other than youtube.com. All was well until my child clicked one too many times on the site and ended up face to face with an ‘adult’ parody of the show. Let’s just say it took some explaining and reassuring before I could rip him off the computer mouse. So how can we ensure that our children don’t run into this type of content before they’re ready? Listed below are features of child-friendly Internet software programs that parents can download to help shield their child from inappropriate content.

By installing this software on your computer you can:

• Limit the amount of time your children spend on the computer.
• Add your own security keywords.
• Prevent access to dangerous sites, and chat rooms.
• Filter from over 60 categories (adult, criminal, drugs, etc) sections of the Internet
• Set up automatic “locked-out” websites.
• Automatically blocks access to web sites based on Internet keyword searches.