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[mommydama]

I'm finding it hard to write about anything lately. My children's privacy has become very important. Recently, Zoe saw her name on the screen and asked me not to write about her. I explained that this was my journal, like her diaries. She asked if anyone was going to read it. I said yes. She got upset. So...no more writing about my kids.

Comments

[mommydama]

The girls have actually made videos they've asked me to post and begged me to put up pictures of such and such an event or whatever. It isn't that they don't kind of like having an online presence and sharing their lives with family and friends. When I post pics on FB they want to run in and see the comments. But Maria has asked on numerous occasions "Can just ANYONE see this? Or just family and your friends?" If I say that anyone can see it, she has asked me to take down certain pictures. I always honor those requests because I know how it feels to have what I consider "bad" picture of me "out there". I hate it. I'm just trying to do what I would want..Golden Rule again.

I don't know. I can't seem to write long entries about anything that doesn't cross "the bright line", as mercyorbemoaned put it. I try. Maybe I just have writers block or something.

Also...you guys are WAY MORE honest and open than I am. Or pretty much anyone I've ever met. My family was always honest...but not open to all but a very few. I'm just that way. But you knew that.

[altarflame]

I am really contemplating what sort of thing would make me stop talking about my kids online, now. I mean there is a picture I took of Aaron sucking his thumb asleep that he swore me to secrecy over, and it's never went up. Or the secret diary page of Ananda's that I found and told you about, even though that was sort of momentous for me. I don't know.

If they were teenagers and it was causing any sort of social problems for them or if they were adults who asked me to not post details of their adult lives, I know I would stop... beyond that I'm not sure where my "lines" are. I don't really think Isaac or Jake have the right to tell me to quit blogging about them, I am sure of that, as for why? I'm not sure. I guess I think they don't understand the internet or what blogging is or what it means to me or who is seeing it well enough to make that call at this point? They don't have peers who troll the blogosphere yet, either.

Anyway, I really do understand your line, and your golden rule, and I do generally try to talk to and treat my kids as though they have the same autonomy and right to respect that an adult does, within the guidelines of their needing guidance and consequences - I have almost the same exact standards as you about this sort of thing. Which is, I suppose, why this is so interesting to me and causing me to think a lot.

I don't think of you as someone not open and honest, btw. I suppose because you're very open with me? I mean I am not at all open with my fil or with my neighbors. Again this is an area where I think that really we are more alike than different. *shrug*

[mommydama]

There is a whole other side to this issue for me. When I find blogs by parents (men or women) that hardly ever mention their children, it totally freaks me out. I assume, wrongly of course, but it is a knee jerk kind of emotional reaction, that they are very absentee, uninvolved kind of parents and immediately begin not to take them very seriously. I am going to have to really work on that attitude if this is the direction I will head. I'd almost rather not blog at all then have family, especially, think my kids do not occupy a central place in my life and love.

I'm thinking reviews of homeschooling stuff, curriculum discussions, music and art and religious discussions are the way to go here, but I find it SO HARD not to talk about my kids! It is just ridiculous!

[altarflame]

I think all of that makes sense, in addition to books you're reading or have read and news items that catch your eye. And YouTube videos :)

[ariellejuliana]

I don't know about a kid's "right" to tell you what you can and cannot post on the internet, but remember that your stuff will likely still be there when your kids ARE old enough to care and have people come across it. It wouldn't be hard for high school kids to find, say, Jake Walker's mom's blog and go reading through the archives. Our blog is jungwirths.com and uses all our real names, and we intend to keep it, so I'm careful even now what I put there. I consider James to have just as much right to privacy as my husband, and am just about as careful of what I post about him as I am about posting about Paul (and I never post about Paul without clearing it with him first. Employers google potential hires these days). For my kids, it means no naked pictures, no "discipline problem" stuff when they're older, no potty training stuff, no personal stuff between me and them, pretty much nothing they'd be mortified to find at 13.

[altarflame]

It's really really bizarre to me, though, the concept that Jake would be embarassed by things we said and did when he was a toddler or preschooler... this again might just me being weird? But I feel like if someone only likes me because of their ignorance about various things about me, then it's not me they actually like at all. I also think everyone has "Stuff" and just because my stuff is out there it doesn't mean I have any more or less of it than anybody else... I don't know if this is making sense I guess, I'm not saying my kids have to have the same ideas I do about this, only that my own ideas are probably influencing my inability to see what the problem could be for them. Which may be shortsighted? But everybody - EVERY.BODY. - gets potty trained and has discipline problems...so while I respect your views and really think the things you say about respecting James are beautiful and obviously meaningful for your family, I would think a child of mine complaining about stuff like that being out there years later just needed to get over it and grow up. That seems akin, to me, to kids wanting to be dropped off down the street from their school so nobody sees their car/parents or whatever. Possibly typical but still ridiculous, that is. We all took baths as babies and we look nothing the same any more, come on. Again, though, this is me - I don't mean it as an argument so much as a clarification...

Grant's bosses are on his facebook where he posts pranks and complaints and pictures from home and all kinds of weird stuff like spoof videos he and Shaun make and money problems, and links to his personal blog and our family blog.

The thing is we don't feel weird or extreme or radical at all in daily life for this openness. We only realize it's weird or extreme or radical when we hear other people talking about it that way.

[aranel]

I hate to say this, but merely the fact that you guys are clearly religious and traditional-family-minded, and sometimes post right-of-center stuff in your sidebar links, could hurt your husband for academic job-hunting.

[ariellejuliana]

He's no longer planning on academia, but you're right that some stuff might have to go when he's actively looking for tech jobs, even.

[aranel]

Academia is nuts. It's so scary. Is he still completing the PhD?