Family protection: how to safeguard your family

As a parent, keeping your children and family members safe is a top priority. Whether it’s online safety, cyber bullying, interacting with AI tools or ensuring your kids are keeping fit and eating well – protecting the health and safety of your family involves a lot of different elements. This guide brings together practical steps that may help support your family’s safety, health and financial wellbeing. 

How to protect your family online 

The need to protect your children as they navigate an ever-increasingly intricate world-wide-web in the modern-day digital age is a necessary step every parent must take. The internet has become an essential part of our world, and staying off it altogether isn’t a practical solution, given how much of our learning, living and leisure-time – not to mention work – takes place on it!

To help parents, The Queensland government recommends seven simple things: 

Safety strategies

Talking regularly with your children about online safety and setting age-appropriate boundaries can help them recognise risks and make safer choices online.

Communicate

Communicate with your kids as soon as they start using the internet. Discuss what they’re reading and watching online, and ask them about who they’re talking to online. Talk about apps and sites, and discuss what’s appropriate and what’s not. Also talk to your children about their online reputation and what they’re sharing online.

Track their online connections

Make sure you’re aware of who your kids are communicating with online. Check their social media and apps, and have regular open discussions about who they’re befriending online.

Monitor

Play an active role in supervising and guiding your children's online activities. You can do this by discussing possible risks and teaching them how to make smarter choices when online.

You may want to play an active role in how they spend their time online, especially for younger children. Australian government guidelines recommend limiting recreational screen time for children and young people aged five to 17, while also supporting regular physical activity and healthy sleep routines.

You may also want to keep a track of screens and devices. You can limit WiFi access by setting connections to a schedule, so you have more visibility of when your kids are online. You can also use parental controls and apps to block and track websites that are not suitable for your children.

Here are some additional ways to ensure online safety:

• Spend time online with your children by visiting sites together and discussing the content
• Guide your children on how the internet can be an effective research tool when used the right way
• Look into technology tools such as filtering software that’ll help block unwanted sites, and consider keeping the computer in an open or shared part of your home and not behind closed doors
• Nurture trust and open dialogue. In the process, you can benefit from learning about what young people are doing online whether it is blogging, chatting, or using social media platforms
• Make sure your kids know about potential risks, including strangers in chat rooms, illegal and disturbing content, or sharing any personal details
• Teach your kids about safety and security tools like spam filters and malware. Encourage them to delete cookies regularly and to create secure usernames and passwords
• Talk to your children about cyberbullying as soon as they start going online. Make sure they’re comfortable confiding in you or another trusted adult if it ever happens to them. Let them know how you will deal with cyberbullying, whether it is blocking the cyberbullies or reporting them to the school 

Personal information

Teach your kids about the importance of privacy and protecting personal information, and how photos and private data can be made public with a post. Sharing locations can also come with risks, so turn off location-sharing settings. Teach your kids to be thoughtful about what they’re sharing, and educate kids about staying in control of their digital footprint.

Here are some general tips to stay safe on a wireless network:

• Avoid using public wireless networks or Wi-Fi for sensitive transactions like banking and shopping online
• Make sure you log off after using public networks, and only visit secure websites (addresses should start with https)
• With your home Wi-Fi, make sure you change the default router settings to create a new, secure password. This reduces the risk of someone hacking into your connection and stealing your data 
• Set your router to use the most advanced encryption standard available, and turn off the SSID broadcasting so your Wi-Fi becomes invisible to others unless you have shared your Wi-Fi log-in details with them 

Network security

Educate kids about the risks of public WiFi and how to avoid sharing sensitive data on these networks. At home, make sure your WiFi connection is secured with encryption and a strong password, and that the network-name (SSID) broadcasting is turned off.

Device safety

Your digital devices – computers, tablets, and mobile phones – likely contain a lot of private information about you and your family, so take measures to safeguard them.

Here are some tips that could help keep your devices safe:

• Keep the operating systems on your tablets, phones, and computers updated so they have the latest ‘patches’ for identified vulnerabilities
• Use malware and antivirus software, and switch on automatic updates for these too
• Teach your kids about not clicking on links in suspicious emails or downloading files from untrusted sites
• Learn about phishing scams and avoid opening emails from people you don't know or click on suspicious email links. Emails can also be used to corrupt your device with malware and other malicious attacks
• Scams can also originate with SMS and on other channels like social media, so take extra care with these and be alert to the risk of attacks
• Avoid going online when you’re signed in as an administrator, as you’ll have full access and all administrator privileges and any malware would have the same level of access
• Activate your spam filters so you can block spam before it reaches your inbox

Cyber bullying

Cyber bullying is when someone engages in bullying behaviour using technology, such as a mobile device or the internet. It can be harder to avoid and even more harmful than other types of bullying as it can happen outside of school hours, and escalate quickly as harmful content can be shared fast and with a wide audience. Examples include abusive texts and posting hurtful content on social media.

As a parent, you can protect your children from cyber bullying by encouraging your kids to tell you or another trusted adult if they’re being bullied. You should also emphasise the importance of not sharing their passwords or giving mobile numbers and personal information to someone they don’t know well. Teach your children about using the strictest privacy settings for their online accounts, and show them how to block and report users.

Encourage your kids to friend only friends or people they know in real life, and show them how to be thoughtful and considered in what they post and share online. You might find it effective to friend your children, especially if you have younger kids, on social media to track what’s happening with them online.

Health

Balanced nutrition, regular physical activity, good hygiene and age-appropriate health checks can all support children’s health and wellbeing. Parents and carers can help by modelling healthy habits and speaking with a health professional when they have concerns.

As your children grow, you can teach them about making smart food choices and keeping fit and active, thereby empowering them to make their own positive lifestyle choices.

Nutrition and physical activity

Awareness of the value of nutrition and staying fit begins in childhood. Emphasise to your kids the link between nutrition and physical activity, and good health.

Be a positive example

By eating well and staying active yourself, you can be a model of positive behaviour for your kids.

Reinforce good habits

Encourage your kids to develop good eating habits from early childhood. Appropriate portion sizes, limiting processed foods, healthful snacking, and choosing nutritious foods are some of the key things to cover when reinforcing good habits. Follow the Australian Dietary Guidelines for kids [PDF] as a starting point, and draw on a range of free resources, such as those from the Department of Health for inspiration.

Good oral hygiene

Good oral hygiene is also a vital element in protecting your child’s health, so it’s essential to educate your kids about brushing and flossing effectively.

Communicate

Have conversations about the importance of nutrition and give them fun, engaging opportunities to learn about eating healthfully.

Physical activity

Provide opportunities every day to stay physically active and practice new physical skills.

Regular health checks

Regular health checks are important for babies and young children to see they’re developing normally. Checks also help you find any health issues, so you and your doctor can address them as soon as possible.

Birth

Your baby should be checked at or shortly after birth at the hospital or clinic. The check will typically cover the pregnancy and birth, as well as your baby’s weight, height, and head circumference. Soon after you might have the Neonatal Screen Testing and the Newborn Hearing Screening tests done.

1–4 week check

Up to a month after birth, you will ideally have your baby checked again. You can talk to the doctor about feeding, immunisations, and any health issues you’ve observed.

6 week check

It’s recommended to bring your baby in for another check at the six-week mark. This and the remaining checks can be done by your family doctor.

6–9 month check

Along with the standard physical checks, you can talk to your doctor about any issues you’ve observed, feeding, sleeping, immunisations, and any baby-care or development questions you have.

18–24 month check

Along with the physical checks, your checkup might cover any behavioural or development questions you might have for your doctor.

3 year check

When your child reaches the age of three, it’s another good time to see your doctor for a full medical check. Again, you can discuss development or behavioural questions you might have about your child, including questions about vision and hearing.

4 year check

The 4-year check is a good time to have your child checked by your doctor before they are due to start preschool. It’s important to have this check done before the classes start as it will give you the opportunity to find and treat any developmental, hearing, and sight concerns. You can also ensure your child is up to date with his or her immunisations.

Planning your family's financial future 

Protecting your family can also involve thinking about how they may manage financially if you pass away or are diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Depending on the policy terms and your circumstances, life insurance can provide a lump-sum benefit that your loved ones can use for expenses such as housing costs, debts, education and everyday living expenses.

We hope you and your family will never have to face these circumstances. However, planning ahead can help you feel more prepared if the unexpected happens. That’s why it can be so important to have suitable insurance cover. Unfortunately, the fact is that most Australian families have much less insurance than they should, with research showing many families in Australia are underinsured. The amount and type of cover that’s appropriate will vary depending on your circumstances, so it may be worth considering your financial commitments, existing savings and insurance, and what your family may need in the future. If you're unsure about the level of cover that's right for you, consider seeking professional financial advice.

Depending on the policy terms, Real Life Insurance can provide a lump-sum cash benefit if you pass away or if you're diagnosed with a terminal illness, with 24 months or less to live. This payment may help your loved ones manage financial commitments during what can be a difficult time. When reviewing your life insurance, you may want to check your level of cover to ensure it continues to reflect your circumstances as they change.

If you're considering buying life insurance directly, compare your options carefully, read the Product Disclosure Statement and choose a provider you're comfortable with. Depending on the provider, you may also be able to tailor your cover with optional benefits to better meet your needs. 

Keeping your kids safe as they grow

As your kids grow, you’ll want to provide them with the best support to help them develop and realise their full potential. A part of this involves protecting their health and safety, whether it’s addressing online-safety risks or good health and nutrition. Additionally, having a contingency plan with life insurance will give you and your family peace of mind they're financially protected for the unexpected.

Real Insurance is an awarding-winning provider of value-for-money insurance products. Find out more about our life insurance and request a quick quote online now.