Parent/Carer Support
The following activities and services are offered by external providers which may be beneficial to your family. These services focus on strengthening student’s wellbeing or academic capacity. While these are not explicitly from a Christian worldview, they do provide insights based on human wisdom and evidence based research. However, personal discretion will be required in whether these services align with your own beliefs. These are NOT fully endorsed by the College but are made available for families to make their own judgement and decision.
Helping Boys Cope Better at School
Maggie Dent has written an interesting article that details reasons why some boys are struggling at school. It provides strategies, tips and tricks for helping boys in particular to cope better at school. Click here for the article.
Safe on Social – Roblox
Safe on Social writes an informative article for Primary and Secondary Stage 4 students about how to ensure our children are safe on Roblox.
Roblox is a sandbox game that many parents think is cute and completely fine for little kids to play. It can be, if you have the proper parental controls, but most parents don’t. It is also fine if you sit and supervise your kids’ use of Roblox, but let’s be honest, we are all busy, and most of us use our kids’ gaming as time for ourselves – a little time out. And that is ok as long as you have everything set up correctly.
There is always a risk of grooming and your child seeing something that makes them feel upset or uncomfortable.
In every session that we ever hold with kids, a vast percentage say that they do not tell their parents when they see something terrible online or something happens because they are scared you will ban them from gaming.
Please never ban your kids from using games if they speak up,if you do, you may drive every conversation you want to have with them underground and be entirely in the dark about what is going on. Absolutely ban them if they break a rule like having their phones in their room after a 6pm curfew for example. But please never ban them is they speak up. They are often just asking for help.
Roblox has an issue with what we call “Condo” games. They are there for a short time (usually only an hour or so) before they are reported to or discovered by the Roblox algorithm and taken down in a reasonable attempt to keep kids safe.
Here are a few tips for your child’s Roblox account:
~ Make sure your password is at least eight digits long with upper and lower-case letters, plus a number included.
~ Change the passwords at least every school holidays.
~ Enable account restrictions by clicking here and following the steps. Through this above link, Roblox has some great safety tips. Please take the time to work through them all with your child. They will then learn to do this with every game they use with your guidance.
~ Keep gaming consoles and use of games in the family room.
~ Make sure your kids know that if anyone threatens or bullies them on a game if they speak up and tell you or another trusted adult immediately that you can help them. Teach them how to take a screenshot.
~ Please make sure you tell them that they can talk to you about anything they see online that makes them upset or feel uncomfortable without the risk of being banned from playing.
Kids always tell me that they get anxious, angry, and agitated when gaming. Especially if time is up when they are right about to complete something. Some kids, who are Neuro Diverse, often love gaming but struggle a little more than others to control their anger when they have been gaming.
One thing I have suggested, and I have seen it work through experimenting with close family and friends. Buy them a sketchbook and encourage them to draw and design their games. It is like journalling for a gamer – it calms their mind, helps them regulate, engages creativity. They love it! You will soon see them spending hours working on the drawings of the characters, writing the script and design of their game. I have even seen kids plan it right down to listing the songs they want to use in their games.
We can never discount the fact that there is a lot of opportunity for kids in the gaming industry – everything from being a music producer through to gamification of training in the corporate sector. Encourage the good stuff through responsible gaming – check the classifications and set restrictions that work for you and your kids.