Parenting Blog

Making The Summer Safer, No Helicopter Parenting Required

Save 20% forever on Bark Internet monitoring and say no to helicopter parenting

There’s a helicopter museum near our house. I’m sure it’s lovely. I dunno, I’ve never been.

In the early days of my life as a stay-at-home dad a decade ago, that museum was something of a punchline in jokes volleyed between my wife and me. She’d wind me up with repeated nudging to take our girls to see the helicopters when I would bemoan the lack of stuff to do with them in our neighborhood — oh god, the playground again?! really? — but I wasn’t interested at all in helicopters.

I’ve never been into helicopter parenting either.

Our first born is a teen now and we trust her explicitly. It’s with most everyone else in the world — the mad world she’s growing up in and going out into — that our trust issues emerge.

Bark Internet monitoring Teen Warp Speed

The teen growing up at warp speed.

At age 14, with 8th grade in the bag, smartphone in hand and an entrepreneurial small business to run, she’s staring headlong into a summer in which digital communication will become queen as she keeps up with her inner circle of friends from a distance and continues to spread the word about her Loopholes Boutique jewelry.

Because I’ve been giving her my trust and the autonomy young people deserve, I have no interest in being the parent who commanders their kid’s phone at the end of each day to see what they’ve been getting up to on their smart small screen. But, at the same time, I don’t want to be the dad who’s ignorant to the early signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug or alcohol use, predators, or depression — not by her, inflicted upon her, or involving any of her old school mates, each of whom we know and love.

No Helicopter Pareting Required with Bark Internet monitoring

I’m calling on Bark to help me stay woke as a parent while keeping the teen’s autonomy in tact.

Honestly, I should’ve been signed up for Bark a while ago but, you know, life and I just didn’t know about it. Maybe you’ve got the same excuses. Well, had those excuses, because you’ve heard of Bark parental control now (HELLO!) and so now’s the time for you and I both to let Bark monitor our kids’ digital life to keep them safe online and IRL too.

After a few years of working alongside me as we penned articles for PBS, and editing video for some of my brand clients, my 14-year-old daughter is out in the real, and sometimes really scary, world with brand new people we don’t know personally — fresh friends, curious co-workers, and adults who aren’t going to be setting up biannual parent/teacher meetings — entering her life. This summer is about more than just Snapchatting with the old school friends. Our teen is a working girl now. Wait, that doesn’t sound right at all. She’s got a retail job, two of them in fact, and that’s a whole new world for her and us.

There’s a more pressing need than ever before to ensure our teenager is safe, happy and healthy as she sends and receives texts, emails and social media messages to and from any and all of these new people. But I’m not going to start winding up the blades of any helicopter now. Thanks to Bark I don’t need to change the way I parent to monitor her social media channels and online life. Bark has my back.

At just $99 a year (that’s like one and a half grande lattes a month to keep your kids safe and yourself sane!) and taking less than 10 minutes on our Android devices, I signed up and registered both of my girls devices and all their social media accounts on the Bark app. That’s $99 total to have all of your kids monitored and safe.

Within seconds I was receiving notifications of potential problems — a promotional email to my teen’s gmail got flagged for alcohol / drinking language (thanks for that, Evite) and sexual references were spotted on her Pinterest. I was cool with what those Pins were about, but man I knew immediately that I loved this Bark internet safety net!

Save 20% forever on Bark Internet monitoring and say no to helicopter parenting

The tween finishes the Bark setup from her Chromebook.

I didn’t need any phone support to set up Bark on my Samsung S9+, it was a snap, but free live help is available should you want someone to walk you through the process.

Even better, thanks to you reading this right now, Bark is gonna cost you even less — like only 1 latte a month, because you’ll save 20% today and FOREVER when you sign up for Bark from this link. You’re welcome.

It only took those ten minutes to be nestled beneath the Bark umbrella and with that came the kind of peace of mind a modern parent deserves, craves and needs to be the best kind of parent in the storm of their kid’s social media usage. Bark uses an innovative AI to monitor over 25 social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, Google G-Suite applications like Drive, Gmail, and so much more to protect your kid online and IRL — that’s 4x the number of social channels than other apps for parents to monitor social media. Oh and if your kid has multiple accounts on, oh I dunno, let’s say, Instagram, Bark monitors those Finsta feeds and extra Insta accounts they run for their entrepreneurial Etsy jewelry biz…for example 😉

Don’t make another excuse, don’t wait another day, sign up for Bark now before your own summer of small screen communication intensifies any more than it already has.

Now go out there and find awesome stuff to do with your kids that doesn’t involve a single solitary helicopter.

*OWTK has partnered with Bark for this story. All opinions expressed above are honest and unbiased, as always. Bark truly is brilliant and should be required for any and all children with smartphones.

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