This week we welcome Nicole White as a guest blogger to the FaceFile blog! You can find her online at MyBottlesUp.com. Welcome, Nicole!

Facing front or rear-facing: when do you turn the car seat around?

Our son will be 18 months at the end of October.  My husband and I turned the Magoo’s car seat around to face forwards when he hit 16 months old.

Granted he’s a lengthy child.  You should probably know that my husband is 6’6” and I’m 5’9”.  We’re not capable of producing small or even average-sized spawn.

I was once approached in a parking garage and asked by a complete stranger, “Shouldn’t you turn her around by now?”

(The “her” issue is an ENTIRELY separate one that I will share in good time…)

But as this parking garage stranger asked me this, I found my blood pressure rising, wanting to respond with, “Excuse me, but why is this any of your business?!?”

Instead I counted backwards from 10, found my zen place and said, “Ya know, I’ve read that children’s neck muscles aren’t strong enough to face forward in a car seat until they are a year and a half,” giving parking garage stranger a look that clearly ended the conversation and slamming the car door shut.

Parking garage stranger then buckled her little bundle into their grocery cart, flipped her lusciously long ponytail and proceeded into Whole Foods, where I assume she bought an abundance of organic, gluten-free, soy-based food for said bundle who looked to be dying for some whole milk and Cheez-its, the Magoo’s snack of choice.

(For the record, I’m totally down with the organic, gluten-free, soy-based, whatever… Whatever works for you and yours).

So when do you turn your tot around to face forward in their car seat?  At what age was your little one when you made the big switcheroo and had them face forwards instead of backwards?

I’ve polled parents while on the playground and have come to the following conclusion: no one truly knows.  Some moved the car seat to face forwards on their child’s first birthday, sort of a rite of passage thing.

“Congrats son! You can now face forward and not have to watch me through the monkey mirror that sits on the headrest.  Here’s your birthday cake.”

Other parents waited until 16-18 months, like we did, having read or heard from friends that neck muscles of toddlers are stronger and better developed when they are closer to a year and a half, should you be in a car accident where whiplash occurs.

To be perfectly honest, my husband and I turned the Magoo’s car seat around to face forward because his legs were too long and climbing up the back of the passenger seat.  It was when he kicked the monkey mirror that sits on the headrest off that was the deciding factor for us.

At what age was your child when you turned him/her around to face forward in their car seat?  How did you come about making that decision?

Keep your kids surfing safely with these two new online tools

My 6 year old daughter has started to take notice of my husband and I working on our laptops, which leads her to wanting to learn more about computers. She likes to get online and has lately become a bit more adventurous on the computer. That concerns me a bit, so I did some research on parent-friendly surfing software that would keep me from pulling my hair out. Let me tell you what I found and maybe you can tell me what you’ve found useful as well.

The first tool is Littleye (www.littleye.com). Littleye is a software download that allows my daughter to visit only safe sites which are on a trusted list that educators and parents have approved. I can search their list for websites as well as create my own list of approved websites. Littleye also allows me limit her online time. The settings will lock her out after she has reached her time limit and only I have access to give her more time. Littleye is very easy to set up and there are several videos on the website that help parents through the process. When the Littleye download is complete, a small icon will appear on the upper right corner of the browser. Littleye can be turned on or off by clicking on the icon and entering the parent user name and password. By the way: don’t let your kids know your password!  Each child can have his/her own user name and password so parents can monitor each child’s activity. Another helpful feature about Littleye is that it will soon be available as an iPhone app. This will be a great way to check your child’s activity even when you are not by your computer! I really believe Littleye is great family friendly software that is worth the small expense of keeping your kids safe while they are on-line.

Another online safety tool (search engine) I like for my daughter to use is Askkids.com (www.askkids.com). Ask Kids is a safe, fun search engine just for kids ages 6 to 12. Kids and their parents can research topics in science, math, geography, language arts and history in a safe online environment. Websites in the Ask Kids core search index were selected by the Ask.com team as child-appropriate or as a relevant and practical sites for learning. Additionally, websites are filtered to remove adult content, which can give parents peace of mind when they are not with their child at the computer. AskKids.com has also created a website with online safety tips for children at Safesearchschools.com (http://www.safesearchschools.com/tips.html). Check it out, it is really worth the time to read throught the info provided on the site.

Bottom line: will I ever really have true peace of mind when my daughter is out of my watchful eye? Probably not. But at least I can now feel safer about what she’s seeing and doing online. I’d love to hear more about what other parents are using for online safety – leave us your comments below.

Are you and your child BOTH ready for a slumber party?

Kids love sleepovers, but letting your child sleep at someone else’s house without you can be nerve wracking. There are a few things you can do to help things go safely and smoothly and let you sleep through the night when your child is away.

If you don’t know the parents or living situation where the slumber party is happening, pay a visit the day before the event. Whether it be squalid living conditions, creepy Uncle Lou who is in from out of town or parents you aren’t comfortable around, you need to know the environment ahead of time to be able to say no. If you get there on the evening of the party and the situation has changed or there is something/someone you’re not comfortable with, don’t hesitate to take your child back home.

Make sure you’ve had the talk about the privacy of our bodies with your children. Don’t alarm them – just let him know they can call you at any time if they feel uncomfortable and you will come get them.

Discuss with the host parent(s) ahead of time any kind of dietary restrictions your child has. Whether it’s a food allergy or you’re raising a vegetarian, make sure the host parents know so they don’t give your lactose intolerant child something with milk in it. The same goes for bedtimes and movies. Make sure the other house isn’t more liberal about these things than you are comfortable with.

Make sure your child is ready for a slumber party. We’ve all heard stories about the mom or dad who had to pick up a homesick kid from a slumber party at 2 a.m. The thought of sleeping at a friend’s house is exciting and usually brings promises of being ready for it. However, you’re the parent and you know best. If you don’t think you child is ready for any reason, don’t hesitate to politely decline the invitation.

Slumber parties can be a lot of fun for the kids involved and can also give you a welcome night to spend as an adult and not a parent. Most times, it will be with one of your child’s best friends and you’ll already know the parents and living situation. If not, make sure you find out before hand. If there is anything that makes you uncomfortable: just say thanks, but no thanks.

Keep online predators away from your kids with these simple steps

It’s every parent’s nightmare: having a child fall prey to an online predator. Children, especially between the ages of 11 and 15, have a false sense of trust and an overblown opinion of their ability to make good decisions. They can become victims to Internet predators despite all the lectures, monitoring, filters and rules you may have in place. Sometimes you have to figure out what’s going on yourself, based on your child’s actions. So, what are the warning signs that your child could be lured into someone’s trap?

• Your child is a loner. Kids with lots of friends tend to go skating or to the mall or just goof-off together around the neighborhood. Children with few friends are often starved for companionship and will accept it from that “nice kid” in the chat room.
• Your child seems awfully naive for his or her age. It might seem cute to you that your 12 year-old has the same loving, trusting heart she did when she was eight, but this kind of personality will easily believe that the 35-year-old man two streets over is really another 12 year-old girl.
• Conversely, your child is a major risk-taker. Victims tend to fall in the two extreme ends of this personality trait. If your child has been getting in trouble for things he knows is dangerous or wrong and you’ve been pulling your hair out worrying about all the things he never got caught for, you may need to pay close attention to Internet activity.
• Your child spends a lot of time online. Studies have shown that 90 minutes of online activities outside of homework is the tipping point where children are more likely to engage in dangerous online behavior. Your child should have a balanced life with sports, art, music, reading and other offline activities in his/her life.
• Your child is secretive about his Internet activity. If your child spends a lot of time online but won’t tell you what he is doing then he’s sending up a red flag. There are all kinds of tricks, such as having a benign website ready to go whenever you walk by, that kids can use to cover-up their questionable activity.
• Your child is getting phone calls or mail from people you don’t know. Monitor your child’s phone, caller ID and outgoing calls. Make sure you know everyone who they’re in contact with. Same with the mail. If your child is getting mail, make sure he opens it in front of you (or honestly, open it for them).

If you have any suspicion something might be going on, take action. Move the computer to the living area. Put filters and tracking software on it. It could be your child doesn’t want you to know he’s illegally downloading music or it could be much worse. Don’t be paranoid – just be aware and make sure that you’re in the know.

Internet safety for kids: take these tips to heart

I am a single dad to an eight year-old girl. That puts her in second grade. She has been using a computer, like most kids these days, since she was old enough to click a mouse. Keeping her safe on the Internet gets more challenging every year.

In the beginning it was easy, as she was just playing installed games or using kid-friendly sites like Nick Jr. or Playhouse Disney. She couldn’t navigate away from where she was without my help. Besides, I usually sat there and played along right by her side. The chance that she could stumble upon an inappropriate site was next to none and the chance that she could be contacted by an Internet predator was zero, because she wasn’t the one doing the responding or navigating. Ah, the days of being Dear Ol’ Dad!

But as she got older and savvier about getting around the Internet, things changed. She wanted to be online, whether it was on Webkinz or Tygirls or any of the other sites little girls like to go to. But she still needed me to type in the URLs and she knew she wasn’t allowed to navigate away. She was also still sitting with me most of the time while she surfed, so my worries remained few.

Along came second grade and the discovery of Google images. She’s crazy about animals and was learning how to use tools like Google at school. Naturally, she started Googling pictures of animals. I would do searches with her, making sure I didn’t accidentally make any typos that would bring up a site she shouldn’t see. Eventually, she wasn’t satisfied and wanted to do it herself. They grow up fast, don’t they?

Since I couldn’t stop progress and thought it was important for her to start navigating on her own, I found a way to let her have at it: but I found a way to do it on MY terms. First, I tested strict filtering on Google. (Go to “search preferences” to the right of the box where you type your search phrase. Click on it, and on the resulting page choose the “use strict filtering” button about halfway down the page.) I won’t say what I typed in, but I will say that I am completely confident that Google filters out all the bad stuff. Then, I set her up with her own browser and set up the Google on that browser so I don’t have to check every time to see if it’s set. Confident that I had a kid-friendly set up, I handed her the computer and said, “OK, you have to sit here by me, but you can search Google for animal pictures on your own.”

To which she replied, “Yay! Thanks daddy! I’m going to look for pictures of beavers!”

With the wide variety of content on the Internet, we have to do our best to keep the questionable stuff away from our kids – especially kids who like to search for beavers, wiener dogs and cocker spaniels.