Internet Terms and Acronyms Parents MUST Know

26 Comments

1. At what point do we allow our kids to mess up? Did your parents read the letters you wrote or received when you were in school? Did they listen in to every phone conversation you had with your friends or boyfriends? Did they sit with you on “dates”? Did they run backgrounds checks on potential suitors?

   Yes, it is “easier” for kids to get into things they shouldn’t, but it is also easier for us to check up on them. I just don’t know how I feel about not letting my kids have ANY privacy – how do they mess up? If they don’t mess up, how can they really learn? What kind of adults will they be if they have never faced disappointment and never learned that misdeeds have consequences, even indirect ones – not necessarily the “Mom will yell” ones but the “I feel so guilty” ones!

   How will they learn to be trustworthy if they are never given the chance to prove that they can be trusted? How can they learn to apologize if they are never given the chance to need to apologize?

   I want my kids to be able to trust me with their fears and their screw ups. I want them to be able to come to me when they or their friends have problems. If I am constantly invading their privacy, they will never trust me and I will never know when something that they really need me for happens!

   IMO, I don’t care HOW tight the leash is – the Preacher’s Child is always the most sneaky and the least trustworthy (statistically). Why is that? Because they were given the least amount of freedom!

   Now, with that said, I don’t just let my kids do whatever they want, but I do give them space to mess up 🙂

   1. For me, how much privacy I allow the child depends greatly on the child’s age, and past actions when given the freedom to make choices. If they consistently show the ability to make mature decisions, can self-govern, and act in a trustworthy way, they are treated more as a mature adult. These children can be trusted with privacy. If they consistently make immature, potentially destructive decisions, they obviously need more hands on parenting and less privacy. In both cases, the children need to understand there are boundaries they should not cross, and understand what the consequences are for a breech in trust.

      A blanket rule doesn’t apply to all children and situations, and criticizing a parent who has children who need more supervision isn’t constructive.

   2. I’m all for letting my kids mess up while it’s safe at home, and understand we have different ideas on teenage rites of passage. However sexting isn’t private. Your child can be charged with distribution of porn and other charges depending on what they do. Even if your moral code is different than Crystal this can be more than a little mea culpa.

2. I just can’t believe some of those! My children are in their 30’s so I am glad about not being in that stage anymore. I agree my house, my rules, out at 18 or college. I didn’t put up with that vulgar language then and I hope parents these days don’t put up with it now, and its worse now. Spy often, and let them know you are doing it!

3. Sorry Kelli, I do not agree with you. This is a big ticket item for me.

   They are children. They should not be engaging in sexual and suggestive conversations with their peers.

   A child can be taught that fire will burn them without putting their hand to the fire. It starts by teaching them to respect authority. A child can also be taught how to apologize without needing to mess up first to learn what empathy and being sorry are.

   You can’t undo the damage that “sexting” can do to a child. Even though we see 15 year olds as “almost adults” the fact is, they are children. One thing leads to another and children must learn boundaries and not at the expense of their innocence. Especially in a day in time when they can potentially be prosecuted by law at a certain age for sexting. No matter how normal some people may think it is for tweens or teens to engage in sexual conversations, I choose to preserve their childhood. This is something I am not willing to bend on.

   1. I believe that if we don’t allow them some privacy to mess up, then they DON’T respect us. So, they don’t respect authority as we, as parents, are the authority.

      My parents allowed me freedoms on certain things and it allowed me to be much more open and sharing with my parents. I hope to instill the same trust in my kids so when they or their friends have problems, real problems – suicide thoughts, teen pregnancies, rape, harassment, etc – they are comfortable enough to tell me. I want them to know that as their Mom I will check into them, but I don’t have to know everything they ever do or say to their friends.

      Different folks, different strokes 🙂 I choose to NOT be a helicopter Mom, but I don’t just let my kids run wild either. I hope I am walking the tight rope between the over protective and “don’t give a crap” parents.

      But, parenting should be called a practice because until our children are grown and raising their own kids, who knows if we chose correctly or not?

   2. ” They should not be engaging in sexual and suggestive conversations with their peers.”

      Sorry, I know I am hijacking your great post here – you know that I respect your decisions to parent the way you see fit and I know you respect my decisions to parent the way I see fit. 🙂 We don’t have to agree to be raising our children the exact same way – I still love you and think you are raising a passel-load of great boys. I hope that I, too, am. 🙂 I also know that I am in the country and kids don’t tend to grow up quite as quickly here as they do in the City. If my kids do something somewhere at least 4 people are going to let me know. So, I don’t have to worry as much about them. 🙂

      But, I wanted to respond to that sentence above – I NEVER said they should be doing that and would never let that go. I faced that, in fact, with my 15 year old who thought he was being cute and funny. We let him know that it wasn’t ok in the least. We try to lead by example – my husband does disrespect me by being lewd and I expect nothing less of my boys.

      Back to the lead by example – people think we are prudes because we don’t use f or b curse words and don’t allow others to talk that way around our children. We don’t have alcohol in our homes. We try to always show our kids how married couples should act by touching and apologizing and spending time together.

      I hope I am teaching my kids to respect themselves and others, especially girls, but I am not going to handcuff myself to them 24/7 to be sure they are doing exactly what I say to do.

4. So, with that sms thing, do you have access to Snapchat stuff, too?

5. crud – can’t edit my comment ROTFL! It should say my husband “doesn’t” disrespect me not does. LOL!

6. My 40 year old daughter works for our small local police department as secretary to the Police chief and 2 officers who also work there. She comes home upset & depressed about all that is going on in our small town. She will come to me and although she never ever would give me specifics she will ask why parents will let their children do things like this.
   I told her that parents today want to be friends with their children. They don’t want to be the bad guy because then their children won’t like them. I told her that I would not allow her to do the things that the kids were doing when she was little because I loved her and her brother’s enough to say NO. That is the problem with parents today, The homeschool families are the exception in 99% of the time.

   1. We are not here to be our child’s friend. We are their authority. I love my kids with every fiber of my being, but we are not besties. You will respect and obey my authority.

      So many children have entitlement issues too. Like the kids who think they deserve a phone. Drives me nuts!

      I feel for your daughter, Jackie. This is a job I could never do!

7. I just have to add one more to this list because of my step daughter telling me guys would text this to her and I am just shocked at how disrespectful it is. Oh and also how extremely common it is for guys to ask girls to text them a nude picture!!

   DTF- down to f***

   Again, shocked but 100% true.

   1. Oh Shelley- that’s awful! Thank you for sharing.

8. Let me just put in a word from someone in this generation. I’m 19, so I know how kids text. Honestly, the only codes I’ve ever personally used or even heard of are the 9 and 99, which were mostly used on IM’s before text messages became a big thing. Plus, I only used that with my best friend, even when we were talking about nothing more than our 5th grade crushes. The only other one I’ve heard of is DTF, which is usually used in a joking manner, or by someone who is already too pathetic for most kids to pay any mind to. Yes, nude pictures are requested and sent very often, but it’s not an epidemic. Most pictures end at that- just pictures. I cannot tell you how many of these I have received, and how many I have completely ignored OR b*tched at the guy/girl for sending. In all honesty, you can raise your child in a very strict, overprotective household, but if they’re gonna do these things, they’re gonna find a way to do them, whether you like it or not. Constantly checking up on your child is going to make them want to rebel and it’s going to force them to learn how to be extra sneaky.
   I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I am saying it all because I know it is absolutely true, because I’m living it. Spying on your child and taking up their phone is not going to prevent any of this. It’s just going to make it harder for them to conceal, but they’ll do it anyways. It’ll teach them not to trust you, and they’ll learn to get around everything you say. Of course, not every child will take part in these activities. But if they are going to do it, they’re gonna find a way to do it. It’s really that simple.

   1. Aubrey- here is the deal. Kids ARE texting these things. Kids much younger than you. Potentially kids who are not even in your generation. As a matter of fact, I know of children who are 11, 12 and 13 years old actively viewing adult videos on their devices (phones, tablets, etc). Regularly.

      And as a parent, I absolutely will not run a household with limited rules simply because rules MAY cause children to rebel. Yikes, what is that teaching them? Children should obey. They should respect authority. The rules of our home are not extreme, they are very simple and in this case expect you to respect the opposite gender and to refrain from inappropriate conversations on any media.

      Further, when you prove to me that you are unable to follow these rules, privileges will be taken away. And if this makes you rebel more because you’re not getting your way, the consequences increase. You see I will sleep in your room right next to you if I need to. My job, which I take very seriously, is to protect you and to guide you. The more you rebel against me, the harder your life in my home will be. Be a respectful young man and things will run smoothly in my home. It’s really very simple.

      I am raising the men of our future. Then men who may marry your daughter someday. I am sure their upbringing will serve them well.

      We can agree to disagree on this one. I would love your perspective in 10 years when you’re in the trenches of protecting your children from influences that can and will destroy them.

      1. Wow! As a mother of girls I love what you are teaching your boys. I worry so much about the future spousal choices my girls will have. This is an age of boys being raised as disrespectful, entitled, porn watching children who maybe one day will grow up to be men, but in the mean time I have girls that will want a Man that will lead them in their marriage and stay true to them! What a struggle to raise children in a way that one day someone will be proud to call them a spouse! Thanks for sharing and for being diligent in what we are called to do as parents- protect and guide our littles.

         1. Thank you! These boys will marry someone’s daughter and I want them to be respectful, Godly men.

9. Oh my… I must be in the minority if I have two teenage daughters who are responsible, respectable, and trustworthy. As parents to 4 children, ages 9-16, we are by no means perfect. Naieve, sure – I didn’t know most of those acronyms. But we do talk frequently with our kids about sex and the importance of respecting themselves, setting boundaries for others to respect, and protecting their purity. And while the boys come knocking, they know that our girls will not put up with any sexual misconduct from them. Our sons are at the ages where we are beginning to discuss these things with them as well, as appropriate opportunities arise. We have developed a relationship of mutual respect and trust with our children, and while they know that we have the authority to demand access to any of their possessions (including their electronic communications at any time), it doesn’t need to work that way in our family. Demanding anything of anyone is not an effective way to communicate love, nor is spying on them or assuming that they are guilty of something because their peers are. I really appreciated you sharing this info so I can talk with my kids about it and hear from them what their experiences have been with these kinds of acronyms. I expect that they will be familiar with some of them, as they do have friends with much weaker parental influences than they, but I also expect that if I ask for their devices I would not find such discussions, because my children know that they are not mature enough for sexual relationships and do not desire the heartbreak and baggage that go along with them outside of marriage. In our family we protect sex. Our family entertainment does not consist of television, movies, music or music videos with sexually overt or suggestive content that would cheapen sex or make it something to joke about or use indiscriminately. Likewise, our kids’ Apple devices are all connected to my iTunes account which only my husband and I have the password to. Any content that gets installed has to be approved by us. They don’t have FB accounts or snap chat, and are influenced by our music selections. Yes, they have their own taste in music, but they also have a very broad taste including indie, jazz, reggae, big band, Irish, Latin, Christian and classical. Basically, we believe that as parents, we set the standard for behavior, expectations and achievement, and nearly (if not all) of that is led by example. I know that this all may seem idealistic to some, but I just wanted to share that it is possible to give our children the privileges of freedom and privacy (with reasonable boundaries) when a strong foundation of mutual trust and respect has been established. And I do believe that Aubrey has shared some wisdom in her youth; without those essential components of mutual trust and respect, we can’t expect our kids to see any reason to live up to our expectations of them, and they will go behind our backs in a spirit of rebellion. I do understand however that for some families those essential elements of good relationships have been broken, or never existed in the first place. If these parents’ motives are truly fueled by love and not a struggle for power, to them I would say, focus more on building a relationship so that your kids will feel safe talking to you about what pressures they’re facing and then you can help them to find solutions. I think most of us would rather spill our guts to a counselor than a police officer. 😉

10. The most annoying one out there is asl- age sex location. Its common on meet/dating apps like omegle and tinder. This is how alot of internet crime happens though, through giving out too much personal info.

11. Wow.
    Most of those I’d have no idea what was being said.
    Mine are too young right now for this — and I’m sure the codes will change by then, but it really is scary to think how technology has changed childhood sometimes.

12. I, myself being a young teenager, would like to educate you on a few things. And I am not trying to disrespect your parenting style nor be rude in anyway but I feel you should know a few things. Many of these acronyms are not being used and the few that are, aren’t addressed in this list. Like “asl”, do you know what that means? “Age, sex, location”, commonly used in kik chats and omegle. This is usually how most conversations open with a stranger. “Dtf” is another important one, meaning “down to f***”, as in you’re asking someone if they would like to have sex. I also don’t believe in some of the rules that have been set for your children. No online privacy? I understand at a younger age maybe, but at the same time, shouldn’t your child have been taught (from a young age), the issues of stranger danger and how it still applies online? Shouldn’t your children know that if they receive a message from an unknown person whilst talking to one of their friends, don’t you have enough trust in them to talk to you about it? Shouldn’t they know to do that? My brother (11 at the time) was messaged by an unknown man over Facebook discussing inappropriate things and he immediately went to my Mother, knowing the things the man was talking about were inappropriate and he felt uncomfortable. Instead of sheltering your children and keeping them in a bubble, as you say children can’t unsee things, shouldn’t they experience these things to know what to look out for next time? Looking over your child’s shoulder will only make them distrust and resent you. Young children who are taught right from wrong and learn from their mistakes with guidance from their parents will love them and thank them, children who are sheltered, unable to do anything, and constantly being watched by their parents will most likely rebel, feel unimportant, and distrust their parents. How can you trust someone when they don’t trust you themselves? I just believe a few of these things are being looked over. I have no intention to offend anyone and if I have, I apologize in advance. Thank you

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