Qustodio – The new way to monitor (Part 1)

I'm going to be bringing you a series, how long is yet to be determined, on Qustodio.  This is not sponsored by them, but my goal is to highlight what I've found to be a really great product that people should check out.  I want to give a little background on why my family went out on a search for this type of product.

One of my three kids had entered middle school.  I'm not sure about all parents, but everyone that I've talked to DREADED middle school.  It was the worst school years for them.  Well Katie and I received a phone call one day from another parent that we had no dealings with before this encounter.  This parent took us by shock when they went into detail about our child and how they knew them.  This parent then detailed conversation that was explained to them by their child, detailing how our child wanted to kill themselves, and was planning harm to themselves. (I want to quickly point out that it wasn't true, and our child has not harmed themselves, and never planned to, or said these things.) The parent then expressed how they read all of this also in text messages sent from our child to their child.

The first thing that went through our head was, "Yeah right, our child, pffftttt." We asked our child if they had said these things, and of course the answer was no.  We checked text messages on their phone, and nothing was there.  We in our minds, did everything we could to make sure our child wasn't saying or thinking of doing these things that we were alerted to.  After a day of prodding and promising that we weren't mad and just wanted to make sure that nothing was really going to happen, the truth came out.  Reality was, our child did say those things, in what they though was a joke in passing to friends about drama going on in their pre-teen life, both in text and as the parent that called us pointed out, verbally.  This was a shock to both of us, and we realized that we needed a better way to monitor our kids usage of these portable wands of power.

We started looking at all the different options out there.  We started with the cell phone carriers.  We are proud members of the Big Red V carrier, but found that even though in our area, they offer good cell coverage, they weren't in the big brother watching children market.  We then went on our search online.  There are millions of different options out there and the task is probably a little scary to take on.  Thoughts like, do we want our children to see and know we are watching them, or does anyone have a good option that I can try, started to swirl and ultimately complicated our searches.  

Katie and I finally found an option that we think, hands down, beats almost everything out there.  Qustodio. This product hand down offers so much in what we feel like is the best price.  They offer the ability to block website, view social media activity, balance screen time, control games and apps, location tracking and panic button (Cell phones, Android and iOS only), and on Android platforms (Track Calls and SMS).  They also protect and monitor tablets and computers as well.

In later posts, I'll go into the features of the software and why they are so important.  I'll also explain the huge difference between iOS and Android, and why it might not be in the best interest to buy your kids an iPhone.

Stay tuned for more to come, and thanks for reading

As always, if you are in need of Home or Business based support, please follow the links above to find out how Marks Consulting Services can provide you with the best support out there.