Parents who have children who are online must keep track of many different things, including what is acceptable online behavior and what is not. Writing things down reduces the confusion and gives both you and your family a starting place as all of you figure out what kind of relationship your family will have with the Internet. What your child does online will be influenced by rules and values expressed by schools, classmates, and others outside of your family. It is up to you to make sure the rules and values that are important to your family shape what your child does online.

A family Internet use agreement gives you the chance to make one or more of your key family values a part of your child's online experience. The agreement should have a combination of practical rules for using the computer and for being online, as well as at least one or two key values that you think your child should have in mind whenever he or she is online. When you sit down with your child to talk about the online agreement, it would also be a good time to talk about what those values are and to put them in writing

Every Internet use agreement should contain at least the following:

* General rules about what is allowed and what is not allowed

* Additional rules that directly support your core family values

* Family rules about online privacy

* Family rules about computer and online security

* Family rules about acceptable and unacceptable online behavior

* A place for both you and your child to sign the agreement

If you want to take a look at sample Internet use agreements for your family, you can take a look at the Family Forms Pack from Speedbrake Publishing. This downloadable document at http://forms.speedbrake.com/ contains several forms that you can print out and use to help manage your family's online activities. These are the same forms mentioned in the Todd Curtis book "Parenting and the Internet." The following forms and documents are included in the Family Forms Pack:

* Ground Rules for Using the Computer and for Being Online

* Sample Internet use agreement for an older child

* Sample Internet use agreement for a younger child

* List of Online Activities

* List of Data Storage Devices an

* List of Additional Software

The last three lists will help you manage your child's online activities by keeping important information about user names, passwords, data, and the software that has been added to your family's computer.

About the Author: Dr. Todd Curtis is the creator of the web's most popular airline safety site AirSafe.com (http://www.airsafe.com), the director of the AirSafe.com Foundation, and an expert in the areas of engineering risk assessment and risk management. He has applied those basic principles to the problem of managing Internet use, and has put many of those insights and lessons learned into his book Parenting and the Internet (Speedbrake Publishing, 2007), an easy to understand how-to guide that parents can use to manage the activities of their online children. For more information about the book and how it can help you, visit http://books.speedbrake.com

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