Giving your computer to Kids without any control is like giving the entire world to them. Nearly 70% of the contents on the Internet is full of Junks, for mature audience, violence, and other unsuitable stuff for minors.

Video with Brief Tutorial:

Kids must also have access to computer and Internet. It has become a necessity for them to play some games, learn a few things, and even to do their class assignments.

It’s easy for them to get into chat rooms not made for them, watch videos that is not made for them and so on. If you just give them the computer hoping your Kids will learn all good things, thing again!

To make sure your kids only get the content that is made for them, there are two options.

• Discipline them - Tell them you can’t visit this site, you can’t watch this kind of videos, you can’t goto these chat rooms etc. But will they listen to you? If not, you will have to stay with them while they browse. Staying with them all the time won’t be possible. Also, how much time should you give to them, say per week ? It’s the parents who must create a program to allow them to use specific amount of time on the Internet so they don’t become a computer hermit before finishing their daily works such as playing outside with friends, doing home-works etc. This step simply fails because YOU can never be with them at all time.

VISTA comes with Parental Control feature. If used, it cane be effective.

Here are the steps to setup the control.

Step 1

• Login with your Administrator account.
• Create user account for your kid. (If you don’t know how to do this, follow this line… Click Start > click Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > Click Add user accounts.)
• Goto Control Panel, click on the link as shown below.

Step 2

Step 3
As a parent it would be your responsibility to see what kind of sites your kids are visiting and what they are doing online. Like all parent control software, they are never 100% proof. Even though this Parental control can not block 100% stuffs. You wanna make sure they are making the best use of the computer.

Step 4 - Now setup the time frame during which he or she can use the computer. You can obtain this by clicking the Time Limits (See above Image)

Here, by default, all hours and days of the week are allowed. Simply block the days and hours you don’t want the kids to use. It is common to allow kids to use 2 to 3 hours a week until they grow old enough to handle on their own.

FAQs about Time:

• Q1. What happens if my kids run out of time? Will they lose data?
• A : VISTA alerts with a message about how much time is left as they work with their documents so they can save their work before PC shuts down.
• Q2. I only have one computer. Can this be used to create a time frame
• A : Absolute. In fact, this time management makes the rule easier on your part. Tell the kids, “We set our time-table on the computer guys. Now the computer is gonna decide when we can login, and how long we can use”

Any help? Comment and I will try my best to help you.

Ruben

———– Thought these might be useful, if you didn’t know….

External Resources :

Some useful sites for Kids

• http://kids.yahoo.com - yahoo’s space for kids
• http://www.kidsites.com/ - a directory
• http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Children/Sites_for_Kids/ - listings of good sites for kids
• http://www.miniclip.com/games/en/ - for some fun; games for your kids.