From managing what your kids eat to who they hangout with and what they access online, the task of parenting in today’s society is a challenging job, to say the least. You have the choice allowing technology to give you more stuff to police, as it relates to your child’s welfare, or you can use technology to your advantage.

What follows are some parental control solutions for Android phones and tablets to help you better manage what your son or daughter use their mobile phone for – we will be primarily looking at Android specific parenting control software, but many of these recommendations will work for other mobile platforms as well.

Restrict Children to Kid Friendly Applications

What do you do when you have a small child with you while you wait in a long line? Do you give them your cell phone for entertainment? You could, if you had a way to ensure that they couldn’t access an application that is inappropriate for them, or mess up data you have stored in an app you use for business.

With the right app you can block access to certain apps or better yet, only give access to educational software.  Here are some Android parental control apps you can use:

Recommended apps

• Smart APPLock – Can block access to a list of installed applications. This can be used to protect your privacy especially in situations where you need to lend your phone to a friend. You can also use it to keep children from accessing applications that they should not be using or seeing.

•  Android Parental Control – Like Smart APPLock you can also filter what installed applications your child can access

• Kid Mode: Play + Learn – Ideal for kids up to age 8. The app locks the child in by disabling the home button and engages them in fun and educational games, videos and art studio activities.

Know Where they are

Keep a bird’s eye view on where your children or family member are located by viewing a map-based identifier of where their cell phone is located.

Recommended apps

Life360 Security Center – Shows a map of where your family members are and will alert you if they are in close proximity to a registered sex offender. The check-in feature a favorite among kids and adults alike. Instead of the parent calling to find out if their daughter has reached a planned location the parent can request a check in and with the tap of a button she can confirm her location.

What is the Phone being for?

If you find it necessary to monitor how your child is using their cell phone there are solutions that can allow you to see what messages are being sent; who they are talking with; and what videos and photos they are using the phone to capture and send.

Recommended apps

Phone Control – Allows you to retrieve a list of installed applications, forward incoming and outgoing SMS to an email address you control, see who is calling the phone and get the GPS location of the phone.

Mobistealth – Once Mobistealth is installed on the phone it can be used to remotely retrieve an email log, website browsing history, copy of text/SMS and email messages, as well as a save a copy of videos and photos that were taken with the phone.  The software stores all these on a website from where the Mobistealth account holder can access the information without having physical access to the phone being tracked.

Who are they Talking with

A record of who your child is talking with can be just as revealing as the videos and pictures they have saved on their phone.

Recommended app

Mobistealth – Amazingly this software can record phone conversation and store it to the website from which the account holder can listen to the conversation whenever they wish. If you just want to see their contacts and call details logs, the app can do that as well.

One of Mobistealth’s best features is that it does its thing without the subject ever knowing that they are being monitored.

Final Word

Parents everywhere are challenged to protect and effectively parent their children. While technology has, in some cases, caused more problems, parents have an opportunity to use this same technology to stay one step ahead of their children, instead of it being the other way around.

We hope you found this resource useful and feel you have been given some tools to help you raise a positive contributor to society.

Author Steve McFarlane

Steve is the founder and chief contributor of this site. Connect with Steve on Google+