I monitor and control our 8 year old son's Windows laptop using software I wrote myself. I update it from time-to-time based on feedback from him and my wife and observed needs.

He objects to it. He doesn't mind so much the monitoring, the thing he doesn't like is when it locks him out because he has been using it too much, and we tell him he has to do stuff (like his homework) to get more time. He thinks he should be able to use his laptop as much as he wants.

He tells me he is going to hack it and remove it. I told him I'd be happy if he learned how to do that. It would actually be pretty straightforward to disable. (It runs as a Windows service, and he has an admin account, so `services.msc` or `net stop` would do it.) And if some day he actually works out how to disable it, I'd be impressed. Since it is custom software, not off-the-shelf, he can't just download some script kiddie tool to do it automatically, he has to actually develop some understanding (e.g work out the Windows service name).

That said, while it would impress me if he worked out how to disable it, I'd soon get to work on working out how to harden it against that somehow. (e.g. lock his IP or MAC out of the network if the software isn't pinging a central server). And then see if he can break the hardening. I think such a game may be fun, and educational too.

My own plan: shield them until they are old enough to understand the concepts of trust and respect.. then pull back the safety net, but maintain quiet vigilance (like montoring (read only) the dns queries or system logs, and maybe keep access time window restrictions).

If that really want questionable content, it will be cat and mouse game. Build trust and respect... Give them enough rope to hang themselves... Occasionally do responses without admitting knowing... then punish if they cross your safety threshold, but then they will know you somehow know.. so a cat and mouse game will begin if they are not responding to the mutual(ish) trust plan.

That’s one thing I decided already not to do is spy on them. I could easily view his entire online life and sure maybe it would protect him somehow if he was getting into some really dark porn or talking to some pedophile or something, but it’s such a massive invasion of privacy I think I could never forgive myself and the justification is bullshit.

There are no shortcuts to good parenting, spying on your kids traffic is a massive intrusion into their life.

I hope at least to get to the point where they can talk to me about weird shit going on instead of me having to detect it for them right?

I see it differently.

I watch my kid at the park now. When he is older, he will get to go further with less intervention/overwatch on my part. Eventually of course go without me.

Same for online. At first I will be beside him. I will educate what to watch for, what the motives of the actors are and how to work with them. Baby steps.

Later, he will get to go online without me watching every move. But I will review DNS logs. And I will let him know I am doing so, preferably in front of him.

Eventually, he will go without me. Although I will likely have a traffic shaping thing so I can have some bandwidth too!

Tried that for a time with eldest daughter. Afterwards she went down hill fast.

Tried looking into what she had been up to. Burned the dammed phone.

Shit you’re giving me the fear…

Edit: I mean… any tips?

No social media.

It destroys mental health of many teenage girls.

No unsupervised texting.

Let them have friends at your place.

I was that teenage girl. It doesn't have the effect you want it to. My parents weren't "preserving my innocence" or "sheltering me from the bad bad world." They were just teaching me to hide better and to perform for them. I would get cash back at "safe" stores to avoid my purchases being monitored, my boyfriend bought me a prepaid phone, I hung out at the library all the time to use social media, I stayed the night at my girlfriends' houses and they would help me sneak out.

I'm now an adult in therapy dealing with all the coping mechanisms and trust issues I developed and unsurprisingly I have a very distant relationship with my parents.

What do you think they did wrong and might they have done better?

I guess one approach would be to tell them that you will be able to see their traffic. Even show them that servers have logs etc. After a time, show them how to use computers more privately, and tell them when you stop keeping logs.

Why would you want to do this? I will warn my children (when they are old enough) about pedophiles and let them know how pedophiles might try and manipulate then, by pretending to be friends or by threatening them or even by convincing them to send naked pictures and blackmailing them. I will let my kids know that no matter how deep they go they can always, and should as soon as needed, come to me or their mother for help. I don't see the need to spy on them or see what they might be searching for or looking at.

I could see this changing if I notice bad behavior. If they're hanging out with bad influences or ordering drugs online or something I might intervene electronically. I'm still undecided about whether to enforce electronics limits (I use mine a lot). It doesn't seem like you should default to intrusive parenting though.

This. Trust is key.

Depending on how you want to influence your kids interests, a friendly cat'n'mouse game might give them a very real education.

"No wifi access until you figure out how to spoof your MAC to this."

Lock down your network so well they're forced to become a l33t hax0r.

'Popular hacker software includes "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash"', well, technically they were all used to hack, just in the opposite direction.

Did exactly this, and it’s so far going pretty well.

Anything questionable, I can confront, or be prepared for, they know it’s happening, I’m good with it…

And then my punk ass teenager decided to change the id on the phone to get past the controls.

I’m mad, but more proud. Way to think around the problem!

You’re grounded.

“Hacking” has real world consequences if you get caught. Try harder, padawan.

The key to parenting is knowledge. If you don't know what they're doing you can't keep them safe or fix things. But if you punish them for being truthful you won't know what's going on. It's all about trust. So when my son spent $1000 using my credit card instead of shouting at him I told him it would be fine and I sorted it out. Getting really angry with him wouldn't have taught him anything useful. Meanwhile he now knows that even if he does dumb stuff I won't throw him under a bus

That’s the dilemma right, I had no filters… I mean, I had the anarchists cookbook at 11, people are being jailed in .co.Uk for possession of that these days.. I have the best intentions, but any kind of censorship is the antithesis of what I had growing up, and so the question becomes: I got that level of access to information because my parents had no idea what information was out there, and it spawned a lifelong interest in tech, infosec, and learning. So if I want my kid to have roughly the same, but yet I know there are also such things as pedos and brainwashing message boards, can i in good conscience let my little dude have the same level of access?

I mean, things have changed a bit. I would absolutely let him on the internet of my youth, but the internet of today is massively different..

I don’t have an answer for this yet…

Thanks to my dad attempting to restrict my internet, by installing a Disney Circle, and restricting all the streaming sites, meant that I learnt what ARP spoofing was, and how to avoid it (using the arpon tool). I learnt just a little bit more about computers and networking, by finding my way around restrictions.

(If anyone was to restrict their kids network, make it fair for them by installing lunix on their machines, so they have a fighting chance!)

Easiest way to beat a Disney circle is to go to 192.168.1.1 in your browser, find its IP and ban it.