Back from Camp

Well, we picked up the minions (the two that went to camp) and headed to Washington to visit family and pick up the other two kids from up there. So, now we have a total of five in the house.

While two of my girls were at camp, the third was raising hell at home and what I thought would be a peaceful time was actually MORE stressful than when all three are here. I think when they are here, they each bug each other, but without sisters around, the littlest one only had us to bug – and I think I covered all that below, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate it.

On the way back from WA, we stopped in Yellowstone to see the sights and camped out in the Grand Tetons for a night also. The camping was fun and the kids got to swim in a lake and we had a mini-birthday party for the newly-turned 11 year old. She is probably one of the most spoiled 11 year olds in the world. I think she got damned near everything she wanted for her birthday – including an LG Chocolate cell phone and a PSP.

She doesn’t act as spoiled as she is, which is good, and she actually seems to sometimes care about some people besides herself from time to time. Sometimes she actually responds in the first couple of times we call her and even periodically does what she is asked BEFORE we have to threaten to turn off her internet.
She made a little boo-boo on the internet yesterday and gave out her phone number in a chat room. I’ve checked google and the reverse directories and I know that if the number is searched it will never come back to her because its in my name, and because I check her phone records, I’ll know if she starts getting any odd calls. I gave her a good talking to about giving out personal information online and all that and I warned her that if she does it again, she’ll be off the internet. I hope she listens.

Actually, reading her conversations and chats online makes me feel better about how (im)mature she is. I see from her chats that she really IS still an 11 year old girl with silly 11 year old thoughts. I’m seeing that her mind isn’t as developed as her body (thank whatever gods you may or may not believe in!). I’m thankful that she is still a kid and her online activities are showing that. She acts older in public, but online, she is still a kid. And because I can see what others are saying, I know that she’s being a good girl and leaving any conversations that start to get out of hand.

Getting Back on the Horse

So, we got the call today from the Girl Scout Camp. It seems that Ember fell off a horse. She was not hurt too bad and picked herself back up and, after a little reassurance, got back on the horse. So, it was a good thing. She’s a tough girl, but sometimes her pride overrides her reason and she doesn’t like to take help from anyone. But, the Camp lady said that she was fine now and running around and playing – so she should be ok.

I’m actually glad that she fell off the horse. We were concerned about both of the kids that are away and I know that I miss them – crazy as it sounds. After thinking about it, I realized that this is the longest that I’ve gone without talking to them, and I miss talking to them and hearing what crazy crap they have to say. Even when I deployed to Iraq, I was able to call home a couple times a day – your tax dollars at work!

But, if they’re having fun, playing with other kids, maybe some of the real Girl Scout kids will rub off on them. I have a suspicion that it’ll be the other way around and our kids will end up teaching the goody-goody Girl Scouts some of how the “bad girls” live. I really don’t want a goody-goody Girl Scout anyway, I’d rather have my daughters the way they are, with maybe a sprinkle more sugar – they have plenty of spice.

Only two more days, I can’t wait to go pick them up. Everyone seems to miss the kids, even the blonde minion who only fights with them. Yesterday she asked if it was "the number two day" and I figured that she meant it was Tuesday so I told her yes. Then she said "only three more days until we pick up my sisters!" and she seemed excited and happy. You would think that one kid would be easier to deal with than three, but its really the opposite. When their are more of them, they entertain each other more and aren't always in your face. Sure, they have their moments, but for the most part, they take care of each other. Its nice to have siblings.

Summer Camp

Two of my daughter’s left yesterday for Girl Scout Summer Camp. Its only 6 days long, but it’s the first time they’ve been away for longer than a night or two. Sure, I’ve been away for 6 months at a time, but its different when THEY leave YOU. I hate being away, but its no better when THEY are away.

I would like to enjoy the time they are away, but the third little minion is definitely trying to make up for her sisters being gone. She has gone into overtime on nerve ragging. I think maybe the other two do a lot to keep her out of trouble and on track when they are here.

I hope the girls are doing well at camp, and I hope they aren’t homesick. I hope they are having fun and I hope they are excited to be there. I know when we left them, they were ok, no tears or anything (except that the older one may have had a few leakers on the way up to the Girl Scout Camp). Its funny – when I told her that I’d miss her, she said, “I can’t say the same… well, I will miss you too, but I’ll miss the electronics more.” In some ways I know she was just trying to play down what she was feeling, and in another – she’s becoming a great little Geek Girl. Just like her Geek Dad. Maybe I’ll have to get her a binary shirt that says, “I hate boys.”

Her birthday is coming up soon – and she is spoiled as hell. I think she’s getting everything on her list – and its not cheap stuff. Most of it is justifiable (in my mind), but its still crazy. At least she makes good arguments for what she wants. And who am I to argue with reasoning like that – she uses the same arguments I use for myself when I get obsessed about something.

I can’t wait to pick them up on Friday.

Obsession

In the past I haven’t thought of myself as an “obsessive” person. When I was a kid, my room was a mess – all the time. I rarely did homework and didn’t much care that my grades suffered for it. I HAVE always preferred to be with family than out with others. I didn’t even really like going to sleep-overs at my friends’ houses – I would rather be home. It appears that that was the first obsession I had – family. I don’t think its such a bad obsession – although sometimes I think my family might.

I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed some obsessive tendencies. For example, if I want something, I go get it – whether it’s a game for the PS3 or a new Jeep. I do the research, figure out what – exactly – I want, then I find it and get it. Needless to say, this makes me difficult to shop for – if I know I want something, I probably already have it or am in the process of getting it. Luckily, my wife is one step ahead of me in knowing what I want and so she is the only one who manages to get me things for holidays that I didn’t know I wanted (yet), but did. This Christmas it was a mini-helicopter and I love it. For my birthday, it was a catapult – who doesn’t need a catapult on their desk now and then? I love them. The bad thing for everyone else is that I can’t tell them what I want because A) if I can afford it, I have it or B) if I can’t afford it, neither can they (for example, my current obsession is to get my Jeep lifted a couple inches and get bigger tires – rough estimate on cost is between $1000-$4000).

Now, it appears that keeping my daughter out of trouble has become another obsession. Its hard for me to let her out of my sight. This morning I took her to her friends house for a sleep-over. I gave her all the usual warning and talks (safety briefs?) like, “boys are bad” and “all little boys want to touch little girl parts,” and the rules “no being alone with any boy,” “always be with a girl friend,” “no kissing or touching boys,” and I had to emphasize today that she doesn’t look like she’s ten. She used to look like she was 13-14 before she got her hair cut and streaked, now she looks like she’s 15-16. That means she (and I) has to not only worry about boys her own age, but much older ones who are much more manipulative. I take comfort in the fact that she usually makes the right decisions, and knows that we’re looking out for her. Also, its nice that she’s on post and not out in the city – I feel I have a little bit for power here. I know where all the little boys’ fathers work.

On the internet front, she is doing good. There are still stupid people on Zwinky, but most are harmless. And most recognize that she’s ten and they need to steer clear. The ones that don’t are the ones that I watch that much more closely.

Child Tracking

I feel like I'm almost ahead of the game here. Recently, there have been at least two instances of children (well, teenagers really), who have been kidnapped from their local surroundings – one outside of Target of all places. These girls were not doing anything dangerous, or even borderline concerning. One was just getting stuff at Target in the middle of the day – there is really nothing safer than that – I would think. But, instead of going happily to her car, she is abducted and found dead 15 miles from the Target store. The police were able to use her cell phone signal to track her location – but obviously, it wasn't quick enough or precise enough. Cell phone signals are decent for getting a general vicinity kinda location – but not enough to pinpoint someone's precise whereabouts.

For a couple years now, my wife and I have been debating with what is the best way to track our kids – specifically the older one because she is away from the house the most without us. I looked into numerous methods and devices and most were pricey and had no benefit to the child – which means that she would conveniently "forget" it or lose it. If something has no practical purpose to a child or adolescent, the odds are they won't use it – and it has to go with whatever they are wearing. Finally, we found just the thing we needed, it was small, useful, and has a 99% chance of being taken with my daughter wherever she goes because its her cell phone! Now, I know I just said cell phones are great for tracking, but this one is different. It doesn't track the child using cell towers, it uses GPS signal and satellites to pin-point her location – and she doesn't even know it. Rather than buying a $500 pager-like device, I got a used LG Chocolate (Verizon network) on Ebay and will activate it with the Chaperone service for $10 a month. For the, I get the ability to see where my daughter is, in real-time from any computer with internet access, or my phone. That's the best deal in child tracking going. And, my daughter gets to be the envy of all her friends – which will only go to reinforce the probability that she takes the phone with her! As long as she lives with us, she will have some sort of tracking device on her. At first, I wanted to track her to make she she was being good. Now, I think that the sands have shifted and I'm actually more concerned with something happening to her that is out of her control than her being places she shouldn't be. Am I overprotective? Probably. But knowing that won't change it. As long as she is safe and I know it, we're good. It doesn't affect her at all because she doesn't even know she's being watched. If I could, I would change the position of the satellites in the sky to watch her.

I think that sometime in the near future, I'll get her signed up for some sort of self-defense / martial arts class. And then, later on, I'll get her some calf-high leather boots with a concealed dagger – just in case. Better safe than sorry, right?

Privacy

How much actual privacy should a kid have? The real answer is NONE.
Ok, but that’s too simplistic and not realistic I suppose. I guess the privacy issue for me breaks down into two catagories – TRUE privacy and PERCEIVED privacy.
TRUE privacy is what things a kid does that the parents should not or would know about – ever. How much TRUE privacy is acceptable for kids under 18 living in my house? None. Ok, now that that’s cleared up…
PERCEIVED privacy is how much stuff a child does that they don’t think their parents know about. Things like all that silly stuff they do online, how long they stay up, whats written in the that secret diary locked away from prying eyes – that perceived privacy is what will keep kids from trying harder to achieve TRUE privacy – the more PERCEIVED privacy they have, the less they will go out of their way to hide things. After all, there is no sense in hiding things BETTER if they are already secured good enough – right?
My daughters have more than an ample supply of perceived privacy that they don’t feel the need to go out and get TRUE privacy. How do I know? Because I go through their rooms every once in a while looking for all those hidden things. And because I was a kid not so long ago, I know everywhere to look. Am I conceited enough to think that I know EVERYTHING? No. But I know about 99% of what is going on. The other 1% is probably not all that important anyway.
Bottom line is that kids don’t need ANY true privacy, but they do need perceived privacy so that they can learn what to share with others and what should be their own secrets. Before you let someone drive, they have fake cars, bicycles, etc to learn how to behave – its no different with privacy.

Blond Minion

Although this blog is primarily about dealing with my soon-to-be-eleventeen daughter, there are times when one of the other three does something worthy of inclusion. This weekend my youngest daughter (the four year old) had a couple near-misses with the grim-reaper (figuratively, not literally).

First, she had an incident last night that involved a whole tube of toothpaste – and then the subsequent clean up – the story goes something like this:
She was having a bad night, fighting with her sisters, being a nuisance to everyone, wouldn’t be good, wouldn’t be decent, wouldn’t be quiet – even for a few minutes. She got into trouble numerous times and eventually, she was on my last nerve. I took her upstairs in order to avoid further trouble – I put her to bed. Soon enough she came downstairs again, but she was ok for a few minutes. After that she started laying on, picking on her sister and generally being a brat. I saw it coming – she was going to push her sister too far and get whomped for it. She did and got smacked by her sister, and then proceeded to cry. I was done. I sent them both upstairs.
Not long after that, I hear the middle daughter saying something about “toothpaste,” and a mess. My lovely wife went upstairs to handle it because I was beyond my limit of crazy for the time being. Then she called me up. The bathroom had been decorated with nearly an entire tube (brand new) of green minty toothpaste. It was on the doorknob, the sink, the handles, the plunger, the toilet seat, the floor, the wall, and some had even been specially applied to the toilet paper – the rest of the tube had been used to freshen up the bedroom – especially the ladder that goes up to the top bunk.

Needless to say, the blond minion was in hiding. A quick search of the upper rooms was unsuccessful – only after a more thorough search did we find the toothpaste artist hiding in her sisters closet underneath some clothes.
Long story short – she was made to clean up her messes and then some. She finished sometime around 2 am. The other two daughters received splash effect from the bomb dropped on the blond minion and had to clean their rooms. This started at about 11 pm.

Then today, the blond minion went into hiding again. We didn’t know why until we searched through the upstairs – again – looking for her. She has some smarts and didn’t hide in the same place as before. Instead, she hid underneath her sister’s bed. One look at her told the story of why she was in hiding. In one hand she held her pre-school safety scissors, on her head – hair was missing. Mostly just a chunk or two from the bangs and sides, but enough to make her look silly. Well, we can’t very well make her put it back on, so she’ll just look silly for awhile.

Hopefully, this craziness is done with for now and we can go back to not playing hide-and-seek with her everyday.

Daddys Girl

Back when I got back from Iraq, Ember was more than a handful – she was very defiant, mouthy and unruly – which I completely attribute to hormonal changes she was and still is going through. At first I tried to take a hard line with her, setting very strict standards and rules, bedtimes, chores, etc. It didn’t work, she was defiant as ever and just had more to be defiant against. She, of course, hated me, blah blah blah.

Then I decided to take a different approach – I was going to turn her into a Daddy’s Girl. I started treating her more like an adult, with more freedom and less restriction. Actually, she just thinks she has more freedom and less restriction – none of the rules really changed – and in fact, she has MORE chores to do. It’s the illusion of freedom that she has. What she does get is more respect and she gets treated like a child less. We let her babysit when we are gone, we sometimes let her eat in the living room with us (we do it to get away from the relentless nagging of the children – I know, bad parents). She now has her own cell phone, a laptop she can use whenever she wants, an MP3 player, a TV, PS2, a bank account, and an allowance. Her chores are to take out the kitchen garbage every day, keep her room clean, and whatever random things I ask her to do - like empty the dishwasher, vacuum wherever and whatever we need done.

I have also given her more attention – hugs and kisses and stuff like that. Adolescents don’t usually like affection from their parents, especially in public, but she deals with in tolerably well and even voluntarily cuddles on the couch sometimes.

My goal of making her a “Daddy’s Girl” is progressing nicely.
Now, why would I want to make her a Daddy’s Girl? Because in order to help mold her into a young lady and strong woman, she first needs to become moldable. And then, I’ve always liked the notion that people will rise to the level that you treat them as. If I treat her like a lady, she will become a lady. If I treat her like a child, she will act like a child. I figure I have less than 8 years to make her into a strong young lady, and I can’t waste a moment of time.

School's Out

Now that school is out, my daughter has a lot more time on her hands. Thankfully, she is still sort of into Girl Scouts (now that she has moved up from a Junior to a Cadette). I am trying to get her to do something related to Girl Scouts every day, just to keep her in the groove and so she doesn’t turn into a internet veggie.

Zwinky

Zwinky is a chat site that uses stupid ass looking cartoon characters to interact with other kids / adults from around the world / country. Ember uses Zwinky as her primary chat source and cyber “hookup” site. Because she is only 10, her “hookups” only consist of being someone’s cyber bf or gf. And that personal typically changes on a daily or weekly basis – last week it was some guy with the screen name of Kraven (who she actually took a step further with and got his email address and was MSN Messenger chatting as well – more on that in a bit), this week its someone with the name hilc3. Keeping up with her cyber bfs is sometimes a challenge.

Back to the Kraven character. As soon as she added his email address to her messenger list I went and checked up on him online – MySpace, Facebook and all the rest – in addition to a detailed Google search. As it turns out he is 18, lives in Puerto Rico and really is no threat to come looking for my daughter. Their conversations were completely platonic. But, I’m always leery of anyone who talks to my daughters.

This new guy is a little different. He’s still playing the bf/gf game but he’s a lot more possessive of my daughters character than the other guy. She hasn’t given him her email address, so that’s good. He’s also more physical with his chats – more kisses, hugs, etc. I don’t like it and so I’ve created my own Zwinky character to monitor what shes up to in real-time. I am, however, very proud of my daughter’s reaction to Hilcs advances – she pushes him away and says she’s 10 and doesn’t do adult things. She knows the limits we’ve set and sticks to them even when she thinks no one is watching. That is conforting. Of course, if she didn’t I’d block her MAC address until I had time to “retrain” her.

Zwinky is not as kid friendly as VMK (Disneys Kid Chat area), and allows more of the “bad” words – in fact VMK doesn’t even let you say “hot” – so the kids have worked around it and now they ask each other if they are “hat.” Since when do 10 and 11 year old kids care if they are “hot” or not?

Zwinky still doesn’t allow outright profane language – it automatically “(bleeps)” obviously bad words. But if they put a space somewhere in the word, it allows it. The funny thing I’ve done with Zwinky and my daughter is to tell Ember that Zwinky emails me when she does something that is not right. It works great because it gives me an outlet to let her think that someone is watching what is going on and if things get out of hand, we WILL know about it.

It gives her freedom with a safety net.

Perfect Keylogger

I originally got PK back in the day when I may or may not have been spying (with permission) on a brother-in-law. It was my first time spying, but it was productive and definitely a learning experience. I learned specifically NOT to use an email address with your name in it when you are having someone else’s computer send you stuff (a big time n00b mistake). Since it was discovered, I stopped using it – until now.

Perfect Keylogger, by www dot blazingtools dot com, is the best spying program I’ve used. Initially, I installed it on my daughter’s computer and had it set to send logs every 5 hours. Since then, I’ve cut the time back to every hour and then every half-hour. I also have it take screenshots every 3 minutes. Its fantastic.
The only problem I’ve had with the keylogger is antispyware and antivirus programs. I like to keep my network safe, but everything I’ve installed always wants to uninstall Perfect Keylogger (go figure). I have since removed the spyware checkers and AV software. I now manually check her computer for other bad software when she sleeps.

PK gives me the ability to check on my daughter at any interval I want without her knowing about it. And I can check on her from anywhere. I love it.

So, not to cut this short, but I have some logs to go read.

Daughters' Father

I’m starting this blog just to keep myself up to date on what its like to raise MY daughters (specifically my 10, almost 11, year old who thinks and feels that she is 22 or so). I have a total of four daughters ranging in age from nearly 11 to 4. However, at the present time, only one is advanced enough to make keeping up with her a challenge. Once the others grow up, I’m sure they’ll get their share of the spotlight as well.

I’d have to say this all really started while I was away in Iraq. During that time, she grew up way too fast. She developed hormonally and physically and changed from my cute little girl who played soccer and t-ball and loved school into an adolescent girl who chases boys, surfs the internet from dawn to dusk (and beyond), and loves chat rooms – the mostly kiddie oriented ones like Disney VMK and Zwinky (which isn’t all that kid oriented, but does have stupid little characters that you dress up).
I’ve read all the stuff about watching your kids online and all that and I do. But, I also know from personal experience that kids always have ways of doing stuff when the adults aren’t watching. My 10 year old (lets call her… Ember) is no different. I intentionally give her some freedom online to do what she wants and go where she wants. However, I also have ways of keeping very good tabs on everything she does and what she is exposed to. I know that there are things she is seeing that are what I would consider well beyond what she should be seeing, but I am also seeing how she reacts to it and how she does or does not participate in it. The world is not a sheltered place where kids only see the good and fluffy side of the world. At schools, even the best schools, there are kids who are past their age in experience.

This blog is about how my I am monitoring my daughter and her activities in the internet world and real life. I would put this up on my MySpace, but I have no doubt that Ember will have her own MySpace soon enough and I don’t want her knowing how well I’m watching. She’s a smart girl and I have no doubt she could find ways around what I have watching her.

So, if you found your way here you are either someone related to the issue at hand, have been invited to view this window into my parenting skills (or lack thereof), or have stumbled randomly upon this for some unknown reason and have read through all the stuff above without getting bored and going away. Regardless of who you are – welcome. And if you know who the daughter in question is – DON’T TELL HER ANYTHING!

Thanks.