Mia: Oh dear, I'm here. The Google-child dilemma.

When your kids are just old enough to use Google, you’re in a bad place. I’m there.

It’s funny how parenting watersheds creep up on you. I’m in this weird place at the moment where my two youngest kids (aged 8 and 5)  think I know everything and my teenager suspects is certain I know nothing. At all. About anything. At all. Nothing.

This means I spend my days fielding urgent probing questions from the little ones such as, “why don’t fish have ears?” while simultaneously trying to impress upon my teenage son helpful life lessons about drugs, sex, politics, alcohol and feminism which he ignores.

I’ve never hidden from my children that there are many answers (e.g.: fish ears) that I don’t have. “Let’s ask Google!” is my response dozens of times a week. Google is so great and I have no idea what parents ever did without it. Openly, I Google all sorts of subjects my kids bring up and it’s an invaluable source of information, videos and images.

So I should hardly have been surprised when I noticed my daughter Googling independently on the family iPad. Gah. How did this happen and what do I do now? Fortunately, her first search was “Cute babies” but a small typo could have led to “cute babes” and oh my God.

“You’re not allowed to Google anything yourself,” I told her quickly and that is now a family rule which I’m confident will be upheld for at least a few weeks before it collapses in a screaming heap alongside “You will not have more than an hour of screen time per day”. Wish me luck with that.

Soon after I imposed this new rule, my kids had some questions about how Google actually worked and what it was. “If I, like, Googled Mia Freedman,” ventured my daughter, “would anything come up?”

It was the week of the media storm around “stripper gate”  and in my head, I looked a bit like this:

"Um, yes darling, you would find lots of things about Mummy but remember you're not allowed to Google by yourself. Only with a grown-up."

And here's how I explained Google to her: "the internet is like a huge library with every book in the world and Google is like a magnifying glass that looks quickly through all the books and finds all the times a certain word or thing or person has been mentioned."

My son, thought for a moment. "So, what if you Googled…….PENIS?" he asked, as both children exploded into fits of giggles.

I consoled myself with the fact that my 5 year-old can't yet read, write or type. And while my 8 year-old can, she's more likely to follow rules.

If they decide to join forces, I'm stuffed.

Do you have rules for You Tube and Google in your house? How do you police this stuff?