A few months ago my babysitting co-op decided to hold its monthly meeting at a local Thai restaurant, and naturally talk turned to our kids, their successes and struggles. At one point in the conversation one of the mom’s said, “You know, I read your blog. As soon as I came across it I just knew it was you.”
Gulp. It was the first time that someone in real life had come across the blog and “figured it out,” albeit someone who knew the whole story having heard it in real time for the past 8 years. I suppose what rocked me was the way she said it…with a sort of warning tone. She might even have said I should “be careful.”
What exactly, I wondered, should I be afraid of? The local superintendent? Schoolyard bullies? Other moms? C. and M.? Was I–am I–being reckless? Or naive?
On the one hand, this blog is linked on Hoagiesgifted.org and other well-read blogs. I claimed this blog on Technorati and I chose, when I set it up, to make it available to search engines. I’ve participated in blogging carnivals. The whole purpose was/is to provide information and speak out on topics and issues where there were/are few first person narratives. Judging by the comments I’ve received, people seem to like what they are reading and find value in it.
On the other hand I have told virtually no one that I actually know in real life about this blog, save a few friends who have no kids, my husband’s cousin who is a writer and blogger, and my mom, who looked at it once and said all the wonk education stuff was rather over her head. On Leap Day I did a mass Hello-from-our-Family annual e-mailing and made not a mention of it, although it could have given my stats counter a serious upward bump.
In essence, I’ve tried to walk a very fine line between specificity and generality. One serving the other. I’ve provided some detail when warranted, yet masked other details.
So why the queasy feeling? I’m not necessarily worried about pervy men in raincoats. It’s more the potential social or educational repercussions for my kids. It would be rather creepy for a kid or teacher to go up to one of them kids and say “I know all about you from your mom’s blog.” I would hate for my actions to impact them negatively, for them to feel used or betrayed by me, to have people be judgmental and whisper behind their backs…or worse confront them in an ugly way.
Which is why a story in last week’s Post about internet safety classes being introduced in Virginia tweaked at me:
Misunderstood text messages can lead to hurt feelings; parents, too, can dole out too many details online about their children; and risks abound in using social networking sites.
Hmm… too many details? Have I been guilty of this? I think about other blogs I’ve read that use real names for both the blogger and the blogger’s children, or even post photos. I’ve not gone that route. And what of print authors who for time immemorial have mined their private lives in service to their writing? Isn’t the first rule of good writing Write What You Know? In thirty years I might be chronicling retirement home dramas.
It seems to me that right now we’re in a very ambiguous place as to what constitutes privacy–and that there’s definitely a generational split. Some college students are essentially shrugging off vile postings about themselves on JuicyCampus.com. I look across the internet at the literally countless number of parent/mommy blogs and wonder if in a few years this kind of information will be so ubiquitous that everyone will just yawn.
“Hey, I read about the time you threw that epic tantrum at Target and then hurled Cheetos in the car. “
“Yeah, well bummer about that bedwetting.”
“Good thing we’re both in therapy now.”
Then again, there also seems to be some pulling back.
In December I was running errands when I got a call on my cell phone. “You posted my poem.” It was C. My heart dropped into my stomach and I broke out in a sweat.
Oh. My. God. She’s read the blog. “I’m coming right home,” I stammered and turned the car around. Now it’s not as if I should have been surprised. I had alluded to starting a blog. I had helped her set up a blog. I am sure she’d glanced the WordPress dashboard up on my screen from time to time. But I guess I had wanted to believe that she had refrained from reading it. What was odd, though, was that if she had been reading it, why that particular post among all the others would strike a nerve. “Mom,” she said evenly, “You should have asked. It’s my work.” And that was it. She didn’t express any outrage. She didn’t ask me to stop (I asked her if she wanted me to.).
As a matter of fact she’s commented to me recently that I need to post more often. I told her I was having some concerns about protecting her privacy. “Oh just comment on some education news story.” Which I can do. But it’s the personal perspective I have, through raising her and her sister, that IMO makes anything I have to say somewhat interesting.
Which leaves me in this ambiguous, weird place. So I’ll just add this: If you do happen to “figure out” who any of us are, please be kind. Be compassionate. And don’t hold it against my kids.
[Just came across a news story--after much searching--that deals with just this topic. From the Globe and Mail: No, I fine. I put pee-pee in toilet. The kids are mostly younger, some of these blogs are serious money making enterprises, and this quote is scary: "In a way I think of her as my property, my work of art."]
[Addenda: Just found this as well: The Blogger Mom in Your Face from the Wall Street Journal.]
It can be a tricky line. Now that my boys are older, I am more careful about what I say about them, but as early as a year or two ago, I started asking them for permission to post various quotes or anecdotes on my blog, and I respect their opinions.
However, a few months ago I wrote about a boy my son had mentioned to me. I did it without any clues to the boy’s real identity. Honestly, only my son, the boy (who wouldn’t have any reason to read my blog) and I would be the only people who knew about whom I was writing. But my son glimpsed the post after it had gone up and was upset. I felt bad because he clearly felt I violated his confidence, so that raised my awareness a bit. Also, he told me he felt obligated to alert his friend to the situation. Damn those gifted kids and their strong sense of justice
On the other hand, my boys are under the impression that millions of people read my blog (not true) and they relsih this false, odd sense of celebrity.
Each writer has to drawn her own line of comfort and security.
My husband and I run a small weekly newspaper and my husband writes a weekly column, which often features stories about our family. My husband never would write about our son’s extreme giftedness, but I suppose to many readers it was obvious. It was easier to write about things that our readers could really relate to- the basic childhood milestones, not about the fact we had a two year old who was reading fluently.
As our son got older, and did start asking other newspaper friends how they dealt with writing about their kids as they got old enough to really notice, and all said their kids were simply used to it.
I had more of an issue when I was asked to speak with a reporter from our state’s largest newspaper, who was writing a story about academic acceleration. I was told she was speaking to a number of parents. I figured since I was someone who was interviewing others on a daily basis, I really should volunteer. My son was 11 at the time, and spending about half his day in high school. We are in a small, rural K-12 school, so acceleration has been somewhat easier, at least logistically, since all the classes are in one building.
My son had done early entry to kindergarten, single subject acceleration up another two years, partial homeschooling, and additional grade skips. When the story came out, it turned out I was the ONLY parent quoted in the story, and the whole story was written around the spine of my son’s experience. My son has a different last name than I do, so his privacy was somewhat preserved, but it was still uncomfortable for me.
My son, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered in the least. The article came out the same week that he had his first real newspaper article published in a regional high school paper (he was 11 at the time).
Jodi S.
If it makes you feel any better, I lurch back and forth about these issues also. I tend to be guarded about what information to reveal about our family or our child, usually to the point of silliness, but I worry about people being able to put too much information together from disparate posts or disparate sources. Personally, I tend to be over-cautious, which is probably better, or at least I hope so — but at the same time, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about giftedness, homeschooling, curricula, education, and other subjects I’m interested in from blogs — including yours!
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