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Parenting 2.0: Mom pranks son's MySpace as punishment

by Danny Mendez Apr 15th 2008

cookies
A sassy 13 year-old Virginian laid the smack-down on a vacuum instead of doing his chores and then was caught looking at porn by his tech savvy mother, who stumbled upon some very suspicious looking cookies (not pictured above) stored on the computer's browser. Unhappy with his recent behavior, how does a mother punish a boy in this day and age?

Grounding him to his room would only be a blessing: video games, TV, the Internet, movies, phone, etc. Getting him to do chores has already proved fruitless. Perhaps in another time-period, she would've beat him into a coma with a yard stick, but today's politically correct nation requires Parenting 2.0 -- officially trademarked, copyrighted, and owned by T-Mobile.

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Tags: internet, mother, myspace, parenting

Filed under: Internet, Kids, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware

Active Allowance - the business of running your family

WindowsMacLinuxby Jason Clarke Jul 28th 2007

Active AllowanceAnyone with school age children has probably struggled with the problem of what to do about allowances. More and more these days there seem to be legitimate (and not-so legitimate) reasons for kids to be spending money, but you probably want your children to start learning about money management a bit themselves as they start becoming little consumers.

One way to go about managing this process is to use a site like Active Allowance. Once you sign up, you can set up accounts for your children and checklists of tasks they must accomplish throughout the course of a week. If you pay for a Full account ($49.95/yr) each child gets a virtual bank account, and amasses virtual cash each week. You can choose whether to tie a monetary value to each chore, or simply require that all tasks be done for the child to claim their weekly allowance.

While it seems like a bit of overkill to use a web application to manage allowances, it may well be that children will enjoy the measure of control it gives them. It's certainly more neat and tidy than using a whiteboard on your fridge.

Tags: Active Allowance, ActiveAllowance, money management, MoneyManagement, parenting

Filed under: Internet, Kids, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

OpMom brings moms together for social networking and more

by Lisa Hoover Mar 7th 2007


Moms looking for a neat way to meet other mothers to compare notes and swap stories really ought to check out OpMom.com. A cross between iVillage and MySpace, OpMom -- shorthand for Operation Mom -- bills itself as a social networking and web service site for busy mothers. Though clearly in its infancy, OpMom already has sections filled with reader-submitted recipes, theme party ideas, and "circles", groups where mothers with common interests can gather and get to know one another in smaller settings.

Registration is easy and doesn't require users to cough up a lot of personal information. After registration, users have the option of creating a profile with as much (or as little) information as they are comfortable sharing. You can opt to simply provide a screen name for other users to see, or you can detail the ages of your children, your hometown, and even your religious affiliation. Privacy levels are easy to set as well, ranging from full access by all the site's users to only those whom you specifically allow to view your information.

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Tags: family, kids, organization, parenting, social networking, SocialNetworking

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