A little over two years ago, I was in college and surfed the Internet for the first time. I was excited and could not wait to join the "Information Age" of the online community. I was writing a research paper on Neonatal Intensive Care Units and my obvious first choice of subjects to search was "babies". It took me 30 seconds and one click of the mouse to encounter my first adult site. My first thought was how simple it was to "stumble" into an adult site without premeditation to do so.

A year later, I was a new mom and for the first time we brought the Internet home. Again I was excited at the prospect of vast information at my fingertips, but this time, it was in my own home. It took me about one day to discover "chatting". I think it was about 30 minutes later when the addiction began. I was meeting people from all over the world, parents like myself looking for advice and friendship. I have to admit that it was chatting that led me to making webpages. It started as a challenge. I did not learn from the 1000+ page books I had sold at the bookstore, but from studying the "source" pages of webpages I liked.

If chatting was an addiction, creating webpages became my obsession. I was learning as I created, and loving it more each day. Soon the chatting took a backseat to webpages (although my ICQ still keeps me in touch with the wonderful friends I made *S*). From creating webpages I moved on to working as a Community Leader for Geocities. What a wonderful way to help children create webpages by joining the Enchanted Forest Community Leader Program. I have since left the program due to time constraints, but I discovered what I felt was a need to educate parents on Internet safety because of what I saw each day while "scanning" sites in a predominately "child oriented" community. I scanned pages daily that were created by children or their parents that contained enough information for me to almost pick up the phone and call their homes to say hello. Almost daily I encountered sites with adult themes or links in what was supposed to be a community for and about children. To give the Enchanted Forest credit, they work extremely hard at deleting these sites as soon as they are found, but the fact is, even in this type of community, there is the possibility of your child innocently surfing a site that may not be appropriate. Geocities is one of if not the most monitored communities on the web, and yet there are still no guarantees as to what your child may find.

So as you can see, I am by no means an expert. My only degree is one in nursing, not computer science or law or education. I developed this page for myself and for other parents that are discovering the Internet and trying to protect their children from harmful sites and strangers. My hope is that you will find the information I have provided useful and enlightening. Please feel free to email me with your comments or suggestions.