For me, one of the major aggravations of the digital age is that each of us must manage a collection of passwords, just to access what is ours. And now I’m finding even parenting is not immune from password issues.

Andy has a multitude of screen/user names for Web sites and a few different passwords. His password path has paralleled his parents’. He started out with one very easy password to use everywhere, but that has mutated in several directions depending on site requirements (too short, too long, not the right mix of letters and numbers, too easy to guess, etc.). At one point he developed a complex numerical password based on the ages of everyone in our family, not thinking a few years ahead to when (now) everyone had aged. Now he recreates it by taking all of our current ages and subtracting from each. That’s a lot of work just to get into Club Penguin.

Now Alex has set up his first online “account,” after receiving a Webkinz animal for his birthday. And I felt things really getting out of hand when I saw Andy sitting at the computer with Alex, guiding him in how to make a password.

With kids this age (11 and 5), privacy isn’t such an issue, but safety is. Last week, I wanted to verify the parental controls in Pirates of the Caribbean Online, but couldn’t do that until Andy came home from school because I couldn’t log on without his password. And sometimes functionality rules. Recently, Andy did not log out of his Windows user account and left the house with Word open, which I was not able to access because I didn’t have his password. Argh!

I think it’s time for the family to invest in password management software. Or at least have a thorough group think on password strategies. Unfortunately, organizing passwords sits on the same to-do list as the task of organizing our file cabinet (the metal one). And the computer file folders? Let’s not even go there. So many organizational challenges, so little time.