Last weekend my eldest child (6yo) asked if he could start to play Mine Craft. Now, as an avid gamer married to a game developer, this was a huge step for us as a family.
We have had in-depth discussions about how we would enforce healthy boundaries around our children accessing and engaging in video games- what would that look like for us.

With the best of intentions we have talked about things like, only gaming on weekends, our kids need to be actively involved in either a sport or a social club to be able to have access to games, we are avoiding online gaming as long as we can, we are strict on the ratings of games and what we think are acceptable ages to engage with certain content.

It wasn’t until looking at module one that I realised, for all the good intentions we have we have missed out on a crucial factor for safeguarding our children and raising competent and safe digital citizens. We have overlooked the collaboration needed to support them.

Digital Citizenship is not only my job to teach them – but we need to include them in the process and we need to look at what the school is doing so that we are consistent in our teaching our kids about this. We can still have certain rules at home that may not always align with the boundaries at school, but it is the collaborative discussions and consistency that will support our children in being good Digital Citizens.