Seven reasons you shouldn't publicly shame your kids as punishment

So, this happened. And it was only a matter of time, honestly. And it's sad, and horrible and words cannot describe the level of awful it is.

And I am not going to pile on the father who ended up on the internet scolding his daughter as he cut off all her hair. Yes, that was my first instinct, but honestly, without having seen the video (I can't/don't want to/it's gone/whatever), and giving the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing that man is is a puddle of guilt-ridden grief right now. God forbid I or you or any one of us make the mistake of implementing a discipline method we think will really deter behavior only to lose our child forever because of our decision. My guess is that man is already just barely hanging on, if that. I don't want to add.

I'd like to make a generic list, though, outlining reasons why public internet shaming of kids is a really shitty idea (in case what has happened isn't proof enough). The internet, we forget, particularly social media, is still fairly new, and it's not just our kids we are teaching about how to navigate it safely and effectively and what the repercussions of viral can really be.

7) It shows your child at his worst. When did we become a society enamored with the darkest sides of our loved ones? Why would we want to save a moment that marks a low for the child we are supposedly raising? Isn't the point to get the best behaved, nicest, most polite child we can muster at any given time? Don't we want them to shine? Everyone gets a trophy, right? That's the new motto? So why on Earth are we starting to post up videos and photos of 5-14 year olds at their worst for anyone to gawk at? And not just at their worst, but lower than their worst because they're being punished for their wrongdoing, which is humiliating enough in private, if I recall correctly from my childhood.

6) It shows you at your worst. These videos, meant to showcase the bad behavior of the children being taped, inadvertantly show the bad behavior of the parents. Any parent who has to resort to mindful, purposeful humiliation of her child as a form of punishment is clearly no longer in control of her household and trying desperately, no-holds-barred, to get that control back. Is that the face you want to forward on your social media? Hi, friends, aquaintances, former bosses and strangers! Look at how I'm no longer able to manage my kid!

5) It airs your dirty laundry. That's a dated phrase my own mom used to use, but in this case, it's true enough. How many people on the internet need to know the intimate particulars of your squabbles with your kids? If you don't care about your child's privacy at all, what about your own? What about your household's? Are you still going to feel happy about this decision two weeks from now when whatever your kid did has blown over a bit? What about two months from now? Or two years? Or twenty? You are forever labeling your home life as tumultuous at best, and inviting others not only to laugh at your kid (cruel), but to laugh at your life. Good job, parent.

4) It's bullying. Yes, your kid did something very wrong. That's why you are disciplining them. And, yes, you think that filming this and sharing it is part of the discipline, but it's not. Remember back to when they were little. Using your big force to push around the little kid was bad. Enforcing natural consequences was good. It remains the same. Filming and sharing is using your power against that of the child. It's 'putting them in their place' in a mean-spirited way. Showing them who is the boss, who has control of their image, their life, their very being. It's bullying.

3) It lasts forever. If you change your mind about it, too bad. You can delete it all you want, it will still be there. Only one person out of all that saw it had to right-click save, and you're doomed. And if it goes big enough, there will be the articles about it that remain after the original source is gone. And even if it never gets that big, it still captures a moment in time that families outside of that stressful second would have forgotten about. But on the internet, it can be relived years from now. It will follow your child throughout his life.

2) Whatever the kid did wrong is not that big a deal. If you find yourself reaching for the camera, it's a good bet your emotions are running high enough that you are no longer seeing life in its correct perspective. I don't care what the kid did. Drinking, lying, theft, whatever the worst thing you can think of is. It seems like the end of the world at the time, like you must take strong steps to correct the behavior, but how will you feel about it five years from now? Chances are, without a video, you'll be laughing with Great Aunt Hilda about it next Thanksgiving. Because a mistake is a mistake, and caring families can get over that shit. A video poisons that family dynamic. Memory cannot make it fonder or lessen the impact. It's just there as it was in that twisted moment, forever.

1) It could have lasting consequences. At its most brutal, you could end up responsible for your child's death. Or you could put a splinter in your relationship with her that will never heal, the chasm only widening with time. You could forever change the way your child thinks about herself. You could have her believing that your love is a lie. You could introduce trust and boundary issues that plague her into adulthood.


This girl needed help. She needed support. She was obviously making poor choices, and her father was obviously at the end of his rope. But when that tough love happened, instead of straightening out, it extinguished her last line of hope in life, her last vestiges of belief in love or in herself.

Please don't humiliate your child. There are so many other ways to get them to do the right thing. Social media shaming is the worst form of discipline to come down the pike since the belt buckle.

Backseat parenting at its worst

This video has been going around and it's very popular, having been viewed nearly 10 million times at this point.

It is the private moment of a boy who looks to be about nine years old, totally freaking the fuck out.

His seatbelt is off, he's screaming and kicking, repeating "I don't want to go". Meanwhile, his mother is driving on, as calmly as they can. It sounds, in the video, as if she says at one point that they are going to therapy.

The video itself is a mess, an affront to individual privacy of a family, or more a child (since the passenger in the vehicle recorded it, and then the mother laughs about it being uploaded...which it then was).

On one level, I understand the taking of the video. My kids can freak out like that (although not often, thank God). But I've had them throw themselves off doctor's cots and split their knees open in a clinic setting while screaming their heads off in a tantrum. I've had to cancel Halloween. I certainly am no stranger to getting my back kicked in when my children are at their worst and we're driving somewhere. They are always strapped in, though. I will stop the damn car and yell at them until they buckle those belts back up. But can I judge someone else for not doing that? Maybe she just couldn't anymore. I don't know her life. My kids once OPENED the door as we were driving, and when I locked them again, they unlocked them to attempt to do it again before they used the brains in their heads and freaking stopped that nonsense.

The point is, I consider my kids to be neurotypical if incredibly spirited. I might be wrong. Time will tell, but as far as being able to function on a daily basis, they do just fine. But they can throw a tantrum like the one in this video at the drop of a hat.

Would I want 10 million internet strangers telling me to spank, whup, or crack my kids' asses? Nope. Would I want them talking about what a horrible parent I was and what a merciless brat I'd raised? Nope. Would I want to be the catalyst for 10 million huge jerks to wax poetic about how they were raised...on the end of a wooden spoon? Definitely not.

This mother was not setting herself for a crash course in internet troll parenting, and yet, with the video uploaded and shared, what else could have possibly happened? That is a family at its lowest moment. And so, the child aside, I would beg everyone just sit the fuck down. Not your monkey. Not your circus.

Now let's get to the main point of this post, though, and that is that this child's privacy has been violated for life. What was a 10-minute lapse of judgement on his part (assuming he is neurotypical), or a flare up of a condition over which he has no control, is now an unending stream of video which will follow him when he's 12, 16, 25, 50. That video is forever. And so are the comments ridiculing him, mocking him, and criticizing him. Is that an appropriate punishment for his behavior?

No.

Is that an appropriate punishment for ANY behavior?

No.

So a couple take-home messages here:

To the parents of that child: Never, ever, ever upload videos like that of your children. You never know what is going to go viral. So many times only your closest friends and confidantes take a look, but then there are times like this, when the internet catches on and spreads it around as if it were not your living, breathing child on the screen. As if it were not your parenting choices on display in public. As if you were two-dimensional, fictional creatures. But you are not, and he is not. Think twice.

To the internet commenters: Shut up. You don't know their life. Yes, that belt absolutely should have been strapped. Any other comment you have about beating children or what a brat the child is? Save it. You do not know what is going on there. You don't know what that child or those parents are actually dealing with. You've seen 90 seconds of someone's worst. If you really have to feel superior about that, you are a small, sad person.

To the child: I am so sorry. Most likely this will get buried in the Internet archives and no one will dig it up when you're applying to colleges. Anyway, calming down would be rad, but if you can't or you just didn't that one time, no biggie. All we can do is try again, right? Tomorrow is another day, no matter what the internet says.

Blogging about kids is hard

There are so many poignant, important blogs I could write right now about the struggles and triumphs of my children as they blossom into full-fledged big kids. I have words of comfort for other parents, I have tales of trials and tribulations, I have questions about how to handle these phases now that my kids are old enough to fully and loudly voice their opinions about my parenting.

But I can't.

Every time I try to write about something we're going through, I have to stop. It's gotten too private. Things that would have easily gotten a pass for me to write about when the girls were babies or toddlers, I'm no longer comfortable discussing. Not because we have anything to be ashamed of, but because my girls are more than just extensions of myself. And I feel like they have the right to their quirks, oddities and behaviors. That they have the right to work out their personalities in some semblance of privacy.

And since any reflection of my parenting will inevitably involve them, I've really stopped writing. I don't know if it's the right decision, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. And given the topics on which I've written before I came to this conclusion, it may already be too late.

At any rate, my children can read well now. Anything I type down can be easily digested by their eyes and minds. And blogging necessitates a removal of self from the situation which is fine to require of myself, but unfair to ask my six year olds to attempt. There is no 'greater good' here other than the healthy development of my kids and their psyches and safe spaces.

So, to all the essays, blogs, articles and ideas I have floating around, I apologize for letting you grow stale. I'm sorry I'm letting you dry up in the recesses of my mind rather than typing you down. I'm sorry that it turns out you're not so important after all.

My kids have always been my number one priority for as much and as often as I fail with them. What started out as a way to better myself as a parent to them has become, as they age, a forum that feels exploitative and crude.

I'm not saying all mommy bloggers must stop writing, far from it. I'm simply saying I'm not a good enough writer right now to transcend the privacy issues I'm seeing with every single blog idea I have today.

Maybe someday I'll do better.

Creepster Alert (or how to recognize a potential stalker on social media)

This is a creeper alert.

So many of us post pictures of ourselves and our families and children on Facebook, and did you know that even if you do it friends only, someone can share that picture with their network AND save it to their photo page by tagging themselves in it?

Did you further know that if someone tags themselves in your picture (ie: you aren't the tagger), you, as the owner of the picture, do not have the option to untag them?

Did you even further know that unfriending the person will not untag them? You have to full out block them in order for that tag to be removed.

The good news is that if a creepy creepster is tagging himself (or herself) in your photos to make you part of a creepy FB picture collection, you probably want to block them anyway. So, seriously, get to blocking.

That's me yesterday. Those are my kids. We are going out with my husband to a Mothers Day dinner.

I do not know Jerry Jackson.

I was not "with" him.

I have never met him, and the one interaction I had with him before this left me with a creeper-alert feeling.

I was right.

He's now blocked.

But if you look at his photo page, he makes a habit of tagging himself in women's photos a lot. So that he essentially has an album of women in dresses. Probably hardly any of them whom he actually knows. That's some pretty bold creepy right that. That's some gross.

Here's the story:

Probably about a year ago, I accepted a friend request from a guy I didn't know. I never do this, but I accepted this request because we had a mutual friend who is also a journalist whom I respect without question and because his profile read that he was a professor overseas, and those two things combined seemed legit. She probably would know a professor overseas and maybe he read my stuff and liked it and had story ideas for me, or whatever.

After the acceptance, I forgot about it because we had no reason to interact.

Then two months ago, he sent me a random PM and I noticed our mutual friend had vanished. I also noticed that he spoke like a chain email from a Nigerian prince, but I've been insensitive to English Second Language before, so aside from noticing, no judgement. Except, probably not a professor. And today when I alerted a group of women to this man's behavior, their investigation showed that, no, he is not a professor at the University of Oxford. Jury's still out on whether or not he used to work for or with One Direction though. Um...

I'm one of those people who feels bad about unfriending people. In fact, this person has become only the second person I've unfriended, and he is the first I've blocked. As such, I actually replied to his response that day:

And that was the end of it. He let the conversation drop, which was fine by me. I had meant to unfriend him after that, but something in my real life distracted me, the little pm box vanished in my ever exploding inbox, and we had no further interaction of any kind, so I forgot all about it.

Until this morning.

When he tagged my photo of me and my girls.

Now, most of the women's photos where he tags himself are young, made-up gorgeous-looking women in fancy, sexy evening wear. But of the 80 or so photos (two of which he tagged himself in just minutes after tagging mine), a few scattered photos were like mine. A nice enough looking mom with her children. Why?

Two of his friends (both nice enough looking moms with children in their profile pictures) liked my photo within minutes. So my theory is, he uses photos of his 'friends' with kids to counteract the damn creepiness of scoping young, single women in dresses looking glam. My photo in which he tagged himself perhaps lent legitimacy to his online persona. The other women don't know I don't know him. They probably fully believe I was "with him" at the time. Or, if they've had their own photos co-opted by him, perhaps it gave them a feeling of peace. 'Maybe it's a compliment,' they might be thinking. 'Maybe he just likes the photos and tags himself to show how much more he likes them than the average liker. At the very least, I'm not the only woman this has happened to, so maybe it's more normal than I think.'

Well, I'm not going to be a party to normalizing creepy behavior online, and I'm certainly not going to allow my children's photo to be stacked up in an online library of pictures of women this guy "was with".

Before the internet, someone collecting photos of women like this would have easily been the subject of a crime thriller movie. Why on Earth would the medium of Facebook suddenly make it okay?

Ladies, if someone you don't know requests you as a friend, and you accept that request, if they give you ANY reason to unfriend them, do it.

And if they act like Mr. Jerry Jackson, here, block them and report them, too. It's not just for you. It's for the other women. And there are almost always other women. Someone must speak for them because too often they second guess and forget and do not speak for themselves. And then they're part of a collection of creepy photos online.

Nope.

7 Things about Pictures of Naked Kids Online -- Contributor Post

I actually had someone report pictures of my girls in their underwear playing in a sprinkler, and in a bathtub (in bathing suit shorts!). They were taken down. And I loled. Okay, dude. W/e. ANYWAY, today Pollychromatic has shared with me an important post on pictures of children on the Internet...what do you think?

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I have a lot of friends who are photographers. I don’t mean the kind of people who take a bunch of pictures. I mean, honest to goodness, saved up bunches of money for the good equipment, spend lots of time on it, these are actually beautiful, photographers.

I also have a lot of friends who are parents. Some are both. Most parents end up dabbling in photography to one degree or another. It’s part of the territory.

You take pictures of your kids. You take them for you, and you take them in trust for your children when they are adults and want to see pictures of their childhood. You take them for family spread far and wide. You take them for friends. You take them because when you look at your kids, you overfill with pride, joy, and love. You want to give that to everyone. To share a bit of what you see when you look at your child. If you happen to fall into the first category also, your pictures also happen to generally be enjoyable for everyone.

Most people enjoy pictures of kids, though. There’s no real artistry needed. We were all kids once. If our childhoods weren’t ideal, then we generally are happy to see pictures of kids where that isn’t true. It’s a sort of reset on hope, you know? If our childhoods were good, then it’s a reminder of that.

Because we live in the FUTURE! we’re lucky enough that we can share the heck out of these pictures in a way that isn’t too onerous. There’s no more slideshows of the family vacation that you don’t care about. There’s an album online, and you can skip it or not. For the family and friends that are scattered far and wide, though, it means staying connected to each other and each other’s families in a way that only neighbors were able to do in the past.

Which is wonderful and awful all at once. I’ve already said some of the ways that it’s wonderful, and lots has been said about the different ways it’s awful, but one of the ways it’s awful really needs to be addressed.

See, I’ve had several friends now that have had their Facebook accounts flagged and their pictures flagged because somebody deemed that their pictures that they took of their lovely children were in some way inappropriate. By and large we are talking about pictures where you can’t see anything other than the fact that the child is probably naked. Maybe. Under the censored bits. Or the bits that aren’t actually in frame.

So the pictures and accounts are flagged, because hey, we don’t want pedophiles to see the pictures and target our children. Which, hey, is such a mixed bag of myth that I don’t even know where to start with it. But I’m going to.

Before I start though, I am going to say that yes. There are some very bad parents out there. Some parents who do, in actuality, want to pimp their children out. We’ve all read the news, and we know that it happens. It’s baffling, and horrific, and goes against every basic instinct of loving and protecting children, of basic human decency, that the vast majority of us operate with, but it does happen. I’m not talking about that today. I don’t know that I ever will. You go somewhere else for that, okay? That’s beyond the scope of my ability to talk about in a sane and rational way.

I’m going to give a list of reasons why you shouldn’t worry so hard about innocent pictures of innocent children.

1. This is not the child pornography that you’ve heard about online.

This makes me sad to say, but your innocent bath picture of your kid with a washcloth on, or blurred bits, or heck, even without it is not the child pornography that the pedophiles are looking for. This kind of wanders into the area of things I didn’t want to talk about because it makes my head break open and all the tears fall forever, but there are horrific photos of children online. Lots of them. Whole awful, pustulent corners of the internet dedicated to just that. The pedophiles want those pictures.

2. The vast majority of sexual molestation is done by people you know, who are actually in your everyday life.
It’s stepparents, and grandparents, and parents, and the parents’ boyfriends or girlfriends. It’s friends of the family that you have over for dinner regularly. It’s uncles and aunts and cousins. It’s your children’s friends’ parents. It’s counselors and priests and neighbors. It’s not strangers from the internet who happened upon your child’s pictures. That is so rare that it is beyond statistical ability to enumerate.

3. You can not make someone suddenly have a sexual interest in children.

This is something in them. This is not something you do. This is not something that your children do. This is a wrongness in that person. You can dress a child up in the sexiest of clothes, and give them the most dazzling make-up job, and there is not a single right-headed individual that is going to have a sexual thought about that child. Because it’s a child. Because you have to be wrong-headed to look at a child and find them sexual.

4. The people who look at children and find them sexually enticing do not need the children to be naked.
This is just another form of blaming the victim. It’s likely born of the same “I can keep me and mine safe” thoughts, too. People who abuse others sexually are not enticed into it. This is a wrongness in them. It’s not something that the victim can make happen. Pedophiles find children sexually arousing, clothed or not, because of the defilement. Because of the abuse of power. Because they can. Fully clothed, or genitals actually showing, it’s all the same because what the abuser is looking to do is hurt the child. Children could go through their entire childhoods fully clothed even for baths and there would still be sexual molestation, sad to say.

5. You keep your child as safe as you can from sexual molestation by teaching them that saying no and getting help is always okay. Always.

There’s been a lot of talk about this in the mommyblog world for a while. All the different ways that adults undermine children’s bodily integrity and right to say no. We tell them that they have to kiss grandma or give us a hug, or tickle them beyond when they say no. We tell them that they’re wrong when they say they feel a certain way about something or that their feelings do not matter (and yes, I know that their teeth need to be brushed even if they don’t feel like it, but that doesn’t mean their their feelings about it don’t matter). Whenever we tell them that they have to do what grown ups tell them to do, or that what they think is immaterial, we are undermining our children’s basic safety system.

6. The vast majority of sexual molestation is done by people you know, who are actually in your everyday life.

Can I just mention this again? Because yeah.

7. There used to be a lot of pictures of kids naked and we didn’t think anything of it.

A lot of us who are in our 30′s or older come from a time when just about everyone had pictures of themselves as children or babies naked in a bath, or on a rug, or any of a number of other regular everyday kid things that nobody thought was somehow enticing to pedophiles. Heck, in my day, it wasn’t all that unusual for a little kid to run around in the neighborhood naked. It was discouraged, sure, but nobody thought the pedophiles were waiting with baited breath on the doorstep for some naked kid to snatch up.

These weren’t the good old days. Don’t get me wrong. Nobody also thought the pedophiles were in their family. Or at their church. They thought it mostly didn’t happen, and if it did it was strangers snatching kids up. Which we mostly know better of nowadays. Right? Right.

Now, I can’t tell you if the incidence of childhood sexual abuse has truly gone up or down in the last 50 years. The facts are that it has historically been an under reported crime because it is a crime that is perpetrated on those who are the most voiceless in our communities.

I can tell you that the incidences of strangers kidnapping children to do harm to them has not gone up (and you’ll notice in there that the most statistically dangerous people in children’s lives are actually the parents, which is sad and horrible, but there it is). So there it is. Please stop worrying about pictures of kids online that are normal pictures.

Change your focus to teaching children that they have the right to say what happens to their bodies, and that if someone tries to do something to them sexually, they can safely get help. You can (and should) teach them that it isn’t their fault if something does happen, and that consent is always necessary. You can teach them to speak up if they see others being abused. You can get involved in helping to stop childhood sex trafficking. You can do any number of things that actually help reduce the problem. But you can stop worrying about pictures that you or your friends post of their kids that are perfectly innocent. If it really riles you up, teach them about privacy settings. Or talk to them directly about it (that’s part of that whole reducing the issue, right? Right). Hey, maybe they didn’t notice that a little bit more is showing in that picture than they thought.

And finally you can do what everybody else does with the thousand and one other pictures of pets, food, or kids that shows up in their feed.

Skip it.
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This piece originally published on Pollychromatic on 4/29/14.


 

Guest Post - How to Protect your Kids from Social Networking Sites

Today I have a guest blogger talking about social networking and what parents can do to keep their kids safe.


Social networking has taken over the world and has redefined the way that we interact with the people around the world. It has made it possible to keep in touch with a large number of people at the same time. Social networks have also proved to be a favorite past-time for children who use these websites to play games, answer fun quizzes, and interact with their friends and relatives. However, there is a dark side to social network websites. There are many hoaxes targeted to exploit the naïve mind of the young children. This has considerably increased the job of the parents in terms of supervision of their children. While it is easy to keep an eye on what the children are doing physically, it can prove to be extremely challenging to monitor the online activities of children without being overbearing.

You do not need to take harsh measures like restricting your children to use social networking websites altogether. You can follow the guidelines below to handle this concern in a positive and effective manner.

Discuss privacy with your children

The first and foremost thing that you have to do is to educate your children regarding online privacy. It is a fundamental issue and should be given same importance, like the topics of drugs and sex. You have to be frank with them and tell them about the problems that could arise if they share personal information with unreliable parties.

Try to be involved

There is a significant generation gap when it comes to technology. The younger generation seems to have an inborn affinity to latest technology. They are quick to adopt the latest trend and work hard to stay up to date. However, this can also lead them to adopt unhealthy habits like sharing private information online. The social networking websites have somehow instilled a penchant of narcissism in us. We like to share every detail about us – be it what we are eating, where we are going, what we are doing, which song we are listening to etc. This behavior can be dangerous if your child is not taking care about what information he/she is sharing and to whom this information is visible. You can guide your child by being genuinely interested in their online life. Once you appreciate what they are doing, they are more likely to be more open to you about their activities. However, if you try to control them by strictly monitoring their activities, you are more likely to do more harm than good, because your child would become more secretive in order to avoid trouble.

‘Friend’ your child

This is the best way to be ‘with’ your child on a social network website. Furthermore, it will also instill consciousness in them as they will be aware that all the information that they share will be visible to you. Social network sites may pose some challenges when it comes to protecting your child but if you can take the right steps, you can easily handle it.



Mike is a regular blogger with a strong interst in child development and education. Mike has 2 children, who love the internet, facebook and other social networking sites. Aside from blogging, Mike enjoys playing with his children with their furby toys.

Facebook in all its Infinite Wisdom, on Spanking

Facebook strikes again. Have you seen this in your feed?

"Have to laugh at people who are against smacking. My parents sometimes smacked me when I was naughty. . .I didn't hate them. . .I didn't have trust issues with them because of it. . .I didn't fear them. . .But I definitely respected them! I learned what my boundaries were, and knew what would happen if I broke them. . .I wasn't abused, I was disciplined. . .SINCE WE TOOK THIS SOFT APPROACH LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY & YOUNGSTERS *Re-post if you got your ass smacked and survived."

Thanks, Facebook, yet again, for your sage, all-encompassing knowledge on this topic. You sure showed us. 

JUST SO YOU ALL KNOW, USING CAPITAL LETTERS GETS YOUR POINT ACROSS IN AN INTELLIGENT AND PERSUASIVE WAY.

See how much attention you just paid to that sentence? Obviously it works. 

Since the original poster of this message clearly wanted us to pay the most attention to the caps, let's start with that. Since we took this soft approach, look what happened to our country and youngsters.

I'm sorry. What exactly has happened to our youngsters that is a direct result of parents not hitting them? I'm pretty sure the state of our youth is the same as it was when I was a kid, in terms of that youth itself. It's the society that has changed. And who is responsible for that society? The people who "were smacked and survived." Of course, this argument only works if I'm willing to admit that spanking has had a direct entire cultural effect on the nation. Which I don't think it has. Whether or not it's bad for the particular child in question is a raging debate, and I happen to think it can be very bad. There are other ways to discipline. But whether or not you spank your child, I don't think you're responsible for THE STATE OF OUR COUNTRY (see what I did there?).

They're two different issues. Can discipline techniques as children grow up affect their adulthood decisions? Yes. Can those decisions affect the state of the country? Yes, eventually. Is not spanking responsible for the economic trouble, the housing bubble bursting, the drugs on the street, the oppression of whole groups of people just trying to get by? I don't think it is. That's quite the stretch, Facebook writer. 

Now to address the rest of the message. I think it's just great that you respect and appreciate your parents and their disciplining methods. It's clearly left you open-minded and accepting of others, which in turn makes you a good person. Oh wait.

There is a huge difference between sticking up for the methods that you use or that your parents used, and lashing out offensively at those who do things differently. How do you know those parents who do not hit their children aren't properly disciplining them? They know what works for their family, just like your parents knew what worked for yours.

Did you think you were going to bully parents into hitting their kids? What is the point of this message? There is no point. You're certainly not changing the tide of the country or our youth's problems. You just wanted to prove how tough you were? How much pain you could take as a kid? How much better a person you are because you were spanked? Do you think being spanked or spanking makes you a better person than those who do not practice that form of discipline? Pointing and laughing while making huge generalizations definitely helps get your point across, I would say.  I look at a message like that and think, damn, spanking really does work! Look at the kind-hearted, mature adults it's reared. If only everyone I know could be like this person.

I guess my biggest message with this post isn't pro or anti spanking. It's more along the lines of this: Facebook can easily make you look pretty stupid. Try not to take the bait. Just because someone got their "ass smacked and survived" doesn't mean they agree with this trite and twisted message. 


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If you like this blog, please vote on Babble.com. Tales of an Unlikely Mother is number 18, just scroll down and click on the thumbs up! Thank you so, so much. 

The Mom Pledge - Guest Blog

Becoming Supermommy alerted me a while back to the Mom Pledge, an idea I really like and needed to know more about. She graciously agreed to write a post for me explaining the pledge and what it means to all of us.

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I’m not the creator of the Mom Pledge.  I’m just a mom, and a champion for it.  You see, there are bullies all over the place, we just don’t usually call them that.

I remember being a kid.  I was weird.  I was awkward.  I had huge hair, gigantic glasses, and a crooked smile.  I was a teacher’s pet, a know-it-all.  I never got in trouble, I always had my hand in the air.  My family were vegetarians, so I always had strange or exotic foods (by lunchroom standards) in my lunch sack, “Vruit” juice boxes and Baybel minis replaced Capri Suns and lunchables.  I was one of a half dozen Jewish kids in my whole school, and another two were my sisters.  In short, I was bullied mercilessly.

My parents would repeat, over and over, the same explanations for why I would come home from school heartbroken and miserable.  “Kids are mean,” they’d say.  “But one day they’ll grow up and stop being so mean.”  The implication was that bullying is a childhood phenomena, and that once you outgrow your childhood, you outgrow bullying.

Nowadays, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that I’m a grown-up.  I must be, after all I’m approaching 30 at a steady pace, I have children, I do a fairly good job behaving as a responsible member of society.  I don’t always feel like an adult, but for the sake of argument I’ll agree that I am.  And I’m still being bullied.

Not by other kids, but by other moms.

At first, this seemed absolutely absurd.  Adults?  Bullying each other?  Surely not!  But they do.

Each mother is fairly certain that what they’re doing for their child(ren) is the right thing to do.  Unfortunately, many mothers don’t leave it at that.  For many mothers, the choice by another mom to parent differently is an indictment.  And in their defensive angst, they attack.

Moms gang up and bully other moms for not homeschooling.

For vaccinating or not vaccinating.

For circumcising.

For choosing to hide the gender of their children.

For raising their children in a specific faith.

For NOT raising their children in a specific faith.

For what the feed or don’t feed their kids.

For how they dress their kids.

For what they name their kids.

For the way they gave birth.

For nursing too long or not nursing at all.

For watching some or no television.

For having a family structure they don’t agree with.

Every detail of parenting is personal, and therefore every parent takes the conversation about parenting personally.  And when you get personal, things can get ugly.

It’s said that you should never talk about religion or politics in polite company.  I would add parenting to that list.  It’s a hot button topic.

But the fact of the matter is that we DO talk about parenting.  The mommy blogosphere is HUGE- there are MILLIONS of moms across the world blogging about being a mom.  Blogging about their parenting choices.

And because the internet is perfect for connecting moms to other like minded moms, it’s easy to form a mob.  Easy to organize a few moms into a horde of enraged bullies who attack another mother until she shuts down her blog, changes her aliases, or abandons the blogosphere altogether.

And that is a terrible thing.

We don’t all have to agree.  I don’t know a single mom who hasn’t made a choice for their kids that I disagree with.  Not in the real world, and not online.  And that’s because we all have to make the choices that work best for OUR lives, for OUR families.  And the fact that we make particular choices does not give us the right to attack anyone else for disagreeing with us.

That’s why I took The Mom Pledge.  And that’s why I urge you to do the same.  Pledge not to allow your online space to be somewhere that people are attacked or attack others.  Pledge to facilitate conversations, not mobs.  Pledge to treat other moms, no matter what their parenting choices, with respect.

Because we’re all moms.  We all know how hard it is.  How much work children are.  How gratifying every milestone can be, how each step they take towards maturity makes you beam with pride and still breaks your heart.  How everything you do, you do to make sure that they have a good life.  A life at least as good as your own, but hopefully better.

That’s all any of us want for our kids.  Whether we vaccinate or not, circumcise or not, home school or not, no matter what we teach them about God or Science or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 

Our kids grow up, they go into the world and have to make friends with other people.  And they pick up lessons we don’t even know we’re giving them.  If we, as moms, attack each other, our kids will learn to attack each other.  And so on.  But if we treat each other, always, with respect and consideration, our kids will not grow into bullies.  They’ll see that grown-ups do not engage in that awful behavior, and as they have since their earliest months, they will want to make us proud by being LIKE us.

So let’s be the best examples we can be.  Let’s stand together, despite all our disagreements, for an world that is an improvement over the world in which we grew up.  Let’s take The Mom Pledge together, support each other in the exhausting and difficult endeavor of raising children, and let’s put a stop to mommy bullying.

For more information, visit The Mom Pledge.

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Lea, aka Becoming SuperMommy, is a writer, painter, chef and costumer, dabbling in the all consuming chaos that is motherhood.  She and her husband try to maintain their happiness and harmony through an unceasing sense of the absurd.  The twin toddlers seem to help with that.  In a family where both parents are cancer survivors, both returning to school in the down economy, and both practicing different religions, they manage to keep things interesting enough that Lea never ceases to have something to share with her readers.  While still becoming, well, SuperMommy.

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Kiki's Courage

When should parental concern overrule internet fame, money-making ability and childlike dreams of grandeur?  Where's the line between understandable public outrage and victim blaming?  Who is at fault for the life Kiki Kannibal is living and does fault matter here?

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely outlines in detail the life of 18-year-old Kirsten Ostrenga, starting at age 13, when the child created a MySpace page, dressed up in provocative scene-queen outfits and amassed a following of tens of thousands.  It's long, but I found it worth the read.

All over this article there are tales of harassment, death threats, home vandalism, even rape by a boyfriend Kiki met online.  I teared up reading some of the stories.  Throughout it all, Kiki's parents looked on, helplessly. They saw the hate mail: "I know where you live and I'm gonna kill your fucking cat."  They saw the death threats: "I'll fucking murder you little girl."  They allowed her boyfriend to stay in their home, despite his strange actions as his relationship with their daughter progressed because they "couldn't figure out how to kick him out."  They watched their daughter dwindle to 72 pounds, and through it all, they never stepped in, they never took her off the internet.

Why?

Cathy and Scott Ostrenga say they suggested leaving MySpace.

Kiki protested: "If you take me off the Internet, the bullies will win.""

But on the internet, there is never any winner. You cannot win against internet bullies. You're never going to convince them that they should either leave you alone or like you. By sticking it out through the hatred and the threats, you may feel you've won by not giving up. You may show the world, or the readers of Rolling Stone Magazine, but you haven't won. The bullies are still looking up your address; they're still fantasizing about your humiliation or death.  You'll never show them.  In fact, the closest you could probably come to winning this "game" is by stopping to play.  The internet sucks you in; it seems like the entire world, when, really, it's an alternate world. It will survive without you, and you will survive without it. Only by stepping back (for more than three weeks) will someone embroiled in true internet fame and drama be able to appropriate it a correct amount of importance. It is impossible to see while you are in it. I imagine doubly so for a teenager.

So, instead of leaving, Kiki went further, joined more sites including Stickham.com.  But with every site comes its sister snark site, and as Kiki was dancing around in her underwear in a silly girl game of fun for her fans, her haters were congregating, twisting her image and spending endless hours ripping her apart.

What did her parents think of the videos she made?  They thought they were cute.

""We've always had a philosophy of letting the kids express their creativity, as long as they're not harming themselves," explains Scott softly. "There's always been supervision behind it. But we've been more permissive from a certain perspective."

"Cathy advised her daughter to take a "block and delete" strategy against unwanted commenters, banishing them from her chat room when they posted vulgar statements like "I want to put my cock in your mouth.""

To their credit, the family moved. Scott took a large paycut and they lodged with the children's grandmother.  They had to change their lives, their financial situation and their location, and still Kiki blogged.

Eventually, the Ostrengas took action against the drama site filling its pages with photoshopped images of and snark posts devoted to their daughter.  The site's owner and administrator, who according to Rolling Stone, has an unhealthy obsession with Kiki, wrote them a scathing reply...blaming them for his actions.

"If she were my own child I would have taken that fucking computer and Sidekick away a long time ago," wrote the administrator, presumably Stone. "If you had your daughter's best interests at heart, you would put an end to the 'Kiki Kannibal' fame that is obviously so unhealthy at her age."

He's wrong in blaming them for his actions, but his point is one that resonates with me as I also would have "taken that fucking computer and Sidekick away a long time ago."  Where is the line?  I can't find it, but I know for me personally, it was crossed well before now.

The Stones article says, "The reality is, there are few repercussions for online harassment. The Communications Decency Act protects Internet publishers from being sued for content — allowing people to post virtually anything without fear of consequences. Finding some kind of balance between free speech and privacy online will almost certainly become one of the major legal battles of the century. For now, however, content providers like Stone are nearly untouchable."

With legal repercussion out of the equation, the "battle" remains between poster, snarker and harasser. But the "battle" could end with a blackened screen.Walk away.

"I messed up as a parent. I did so much wrong," Cathy Ostrenga confesses through tears.

And yet, still, Kiki blogs.

It doesn't matter whose fault it is. The fault clearly lies with the people who would harass, threaten and stalk a young girl. But the fact of the matter is, their actions have become her reality...a reality that she had the power to walk away from at any point. Now that Kiki is 18, it is up to her to make that decision or not. But when she was 13, when she was 15, when she was 17, it was up to her parents. As guardians, we must protect our children. It's not our fault when things go wrong. That has nothing to do with the fact that things sometimes do go wrong and it is our responsibility above all else, beyond the blame game, to protect our children.  If we don't, many times, no one will.

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Playing on Facebook Can Get You a Job

Playing on Facebook can get you a job - I'm not talking about Farmville, though I'm sure there must be something for which those skills can be used.  While Facebook is thought of by many as a way to pass the time, the social network has broad business applications if you use it right.  And it's only one of many networking, aggregating, blogging and mini-blogging sites out there, all of which can be used to pad your resume.

My young cousin is taking a college course entitled "Digital Literacies and Social Media."  After I stopped laughing (not at you, Margaret, and not at your class, but at how very old I am in my young years - when I was in school the height of technology was using an old Dreamweaver prototype to insert annoying music that played automatically on your own web page), I realized how mainstream social media is becoming in the business world.  It's been a part of our personal lives for years now, but corporations and businesses have a lot of red-tape to cut through before they can implement even the slightest change in ideas.  And the use of social media is no slight change.  It's revolutionizing advertising, marketing and public relations.  It's affecting growth, popularity and income in the business world.  And it's something you can learn while you're staying at home with your kids.  And it's something that makes you marketable, should you ever choose to go back to the working world.
Here is how your blog experience can help you in the workplace:

1) Writing skills - By blogging regularly, you keep your writing skills in tune with today's style.  You know what topics draw in readers.  You know which tones keep their attention.  You have, on your own accord, found an audience and grown it.

2) Networking - By creating a Facebook page and Twitter for your blog, you expand your readership.  You allow for maximum readership at any given time, proving you know not only how to write a compelling piece, but that you also know how to spread the word through grassroot avenues.  As more people join these pages, their friends and associates see links to your stuff, and they in turn may join, creating a spiral of popularity. 

3) Marketing - You may have included giveaways on your blog, or participated in blogshares, or done a guest blog.  All of these will increase your readership and are a form of marketing.  You are reaching out to a foreign audience with your 'product' and enticing them back to your homebase, in the hopes of recruiting new audience members - new buyers, in terms of the business world.  There are blog syndication services, and services allowing you to farm your blog out to local newspapers, aggregates and magazines, all increasing your readership and theirs in a symbiotic relationship.

4) Branding - If your blogging, you've had to come up with an idea, a tagline, and a way to draw readers or viewers in.  I'm a writer, so my blog is all about writing, but there are those who showcase photography, or crafting, and some simply use the blogging platform to forward their original ideas.  For instance, a friend of mine decided to start recycle old crayons.  She created a Facebook page, told a few people about it, and within hours had more than 200 fans.  Her idea was that strong.  As you continue in your projects, you are strengthening your brand, something that businesses are striving to do, themselves, with a lot more notoriety and manpower.  If you can build a brand from scratch, it makes you invaluable. It shows you've got the creativity and gumption to find ways to insert yourself into people's lives.  Branding is important.  Branding is the reason you know The Pioneer Woman's name.

5) Partnerships - if you review products or give them away, you are forging a partnership with the businesses that make those products.  You are forming relationships, connecting the personal lives of your audience to the professional service of that particular business.  You've become not just an end-point, but a link.  Those businesses may eventually offer you advertising, and you will offer them a new audience they'd otherwise be unable to reach.

As businesses struggle to catch up to the personal lives of their consumers, they are looking for people who have honed these skills.  This marks a change from the hireability of just a few years ago.  Where previously, you would have been hardpressed to explain to an employer that while you stayed at home with your children for those few years, you were working on your 'brand,' in today's world, that's exactly what they want to hear.  And it gives you an edge that those who have stayed in the business world do not have.

When I start applying for jobs, it's true, I'll have to tell them that I have not stacked or lined a news show in two years.  And, yes, I'm afraid they'll not take me back.  But I'll be able to show them well-rounded growth in an area that not many people have the opportunity to dip into, in an area that has become very desireable in the eyes of an employer.

I'll be able to tell them that in addition to changing diapers and heating bottles, I wrote pieces that were picked up by such and such publications nationwide.  I'll be able to tell them that without previous name or reputation, I built a following of hundreds of people.  I'll be able to tell them that when I write about breakfast cereals, thousands of people take a peek.  I'll be able to offer them the network I have painstakingly built for myself, and more importantly, I'll be able to offer them the skills I learned while building that network.

This is what they mean when they say mommy bloggers are taking over the world.

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Social Media and Moms - An Introduction

Social media has revolutionized what it means to be a mother.  Sure, the basics of mothering remain the same throughout the ages, but with all the information of the internet at our fingertips, new theories catch steam quickly, unsafe practices are brought to light in front of large audiences, and people can pick and choose which parenting methods work best for them in real time, as these methods are being used and tested by others.

One of the largest drawbacks to staying at home with your kids is the broad-stroked isolation you feel as your friends continue on their paths while you stop your own development to jump start your babies' development.  Though spending hours upon hours with your kids is fulfilling in a way nothing else can be, it is also lonely, as your main mode of conversation becomes: "Do you want this or that?  Do you have to use the potty?  Please, stop crying."

Gone are the days of idle chat with your peers, the coffee shops, the restaurants, the heart-to-hearts.  You can barely get an entire sentence out without addressing your kids in some manner, which is off-putting to conversational attempts to say the least.

Social media and Web sites bring the world to you.  If you want to talk about parenting, there are sites devoted to parents sharing pictures and stories of their little ones.  If you want to read the newspaper, you can catch up on current events with the click of a button.  You can interact with others and discuss the stories you're reading in the comments section.  You can keep in touch with friends via Facebook.  Most importantly, you can devote just minutes at a time to any of these activities and go right back to your kids without looking socially awkward.  A thread on Facebook, or in a forum, can develop slowly throughout the day, so that you can comment on something interesting to you, leave to play with your kids, and come back to comment again on the thread when you have time, without missing any of the conversation.  Drive-by internet conversations are practically tailor-made for the stay at home parent.  It caters precisely to the kind of chatter we can handle.  The kind that takes just two minutes at a time and can handle long lapses in between.

As the world catches up to the technology available to us, work from home opportunities abound - moms can invent, can create, and can produce viable products and ideas in their spare time, possibly making money, but, more importantly, keeping their foot in the business world's door, as more and more employers respect and desire the know-how necessary to keep online projects afloat, the marketing and networking skills acquired through creating a brand for yourself online.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, women were still struggling to prove themselves in the workplace.  Taking a year or two off to start a family stunted progress in that battle, and individuals often felt not only isolated in their choice, but ostracized as they tried to get back into the career they'd worked so hard to be a part of.  As much as staying at home with your children is given lip-service, it's rarely looked upon positively behind closed corner-office doors.  How can a woman who's left the working world for an extended period of time be as efficient or as appealing as a person who has been working and growing with the industry all along?

I must admit, when I made the decision to start staying home, these fears weighed heavily on me.  Would I be hirable after my hiatus?  Would the technology have completely changed?  Would all my backbreaking work throughout my childless years be forgotten or obsolete?  What could I possibly have to offer after such a long "vacation?"

I worried I may well be putting the nails in my only half-built coffin by leaving television journalism when I did.

I no longer worry, though, and tomorrow, I'll tell you why.  It has to do with the internet.  It has to do with social media.  It has to do with this blog and the desireable skills I have, quite accidentally, honed each morning while Sesame St. is on.


(If you are interested in this topic, you may also enjoy the Parenting Online Series: 1 and 2)


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Parenting Online - Part 2

While there are dozens of articles and resources you can google on the internet to find out more information on any parenting topic you're interested in - or be validated in any decision you've made - sometimes, you come across a specific situation where anecdotes and stories of others who have already gone through it will help you.  Reading walls of clinical texts can be boring and time consuming, so many parents prefer to go right to the source and ask their questions to other parents.

There are many interactive sites catering to this need, in the form of forums often called communities.  You can find a community for any specific label you apply to yourself, be it stay at home mom, working mom, young mom, older mom, potty-training mom, mom of toddlers, mom of twins and many more.  No matter who you are, there are several groups with dozens of members just like you out there to help.

Or to hurt.

As the name indicates, communities are exactly that.  They have rules and regulations.  They have hierarchies and popularity.  They have helpful people and people who are there to snark.  They have running jokes and taboo topics.  If you thought you left high school behind, let me introduce you to mommy communities on the internet.

If you are going to use them, here are some things I've learned that may give you a flame-free experience, although nothing on the internet is 100 percent snark proof.

1)  Lurk first.  Pick a community and watch it.  You'll get a feel for the types of questions people ask there, and how they ask them.  How you ask a question is almost as important as what you're asking because people often get tied up in semantics and forget to answer your question.  Or they read a bigger debate into your particular situation and go off on that debate as a whole.  Something like this can hijack your entire thread and prevent you from getting the specific stories you were looking for.

By lurking, you will also be able to assess the relationship different members have with each other.  Many people stay with communities for years and know a lot more about each other than you would assume at first glance.  Friendships start up, battle lines are drawn, and memories carry.  So that someone may ask an innocent question and be flamed for something they posted months ago, as other members remember that they previously disagreed.  It's not always this way, but many new members of parenting communities find themselves turned off or intimidated when it is.  Don't be.  They're all just parents like the rest of us, and even if 80 of them decide to tell you you're doing it wrong, that doesn't mean it's true.

2) Ask in the right place.  A debate community is not the place for an advice question, and a question community is not the place for a cute story. Consider your audience.  If you're formula feeding, for instance, a breastfeeding community will not help you. 

The answers, stories and judgement you'll receive from the internet depends on where you post your question.  For instance, I posted in a general question forum about the reaction of people to a toddler's public tantrum.  The answers there were exactly what I expected.  They told me I needed to be a better parent and discipline my child more effectively.  Had I asked in the parenting community I frequent,  people would have commiserated with me.  I would have been told similar stories and advised to keep on keeping on.  Parents understand that babies cry and toddlers tantrum, other people might not.

3) Don't be discouraged; there will always be people out there who think they are better than you.  No matter which community you post to, if you're asking a sensitive question, people are going to have mixed opinions, and some will not mince words in telling you about them.  Whether or not you respond to these comments is up to you, but, remember - even if someone is personally attacking you - don't take it to heart.  They don't know you, they don't know your story, and they'll never understand the choices you're making or the reasons behind those choices.  A personal attack is only as personal as you allow it to become.

4) Only take what's helpful to you.  Remember these people are not experts, they're just other parents who have read other things who feel differently.  They may have had similar experiences that may be helpful to you.  They may have had similar experiences that help you in no way whatsoever.  If you don't cosleep and they tell you the only thing that worked for them is cosleeping, then that's great for them.  Their comment may be useful to someone else reading your post.  That doesn't mean you have to take it into consideration if you've already decided against it.  On the other hand, if you were looking for the benefits of cosleeping to help you make that decision, their story may very well help you a lot.

5) Don't post a follow up.  Many of these sites will have a profile page for you.  If people are curious as to how your situation played out, they will look there.  A follow up is usually forgiven if new problems shoot up, and you think more advice could help you.  The key here is that communities are about the topics at hand; they are not about you.

Parenting communities are the internet's answer to the old adage "it takes a village to raise a child."  Not everyone in that village is going to approve of the choices you make, or even like you, but in the end, they aren't the ones raising your child.  You are.

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Overcoming Inertia

Get up.  I'm serious, get up right now.  Or, maybe after you finish reading this blog, but certainly after you check your email - wait, what's the New York Times' top story today?  And didn't you want to check that diaper post on that forum?  Plus, there's facebook to update.

The internet is fantastic; it puts the world at your fingertips.  The internet is awful; you never have to move again.  An object at rest stays at rest.  We must strive to overcome this inertia.

As I type this, my babies are playing in the living room.  I could be playing with them.  I could be making breakfast.  I am at my computer.  Through experience, though, I know the pitfalls, and I will not stay here to check my email, or read the paper, or check a forum.  If I spend too long at my computer, I turn to sludge.  I can feel it - my life force seeping out of me and into this chair I'm sitting on.

We must get up.  We must do things.  I, for one, know I feel better if I do.  But knowing I feel better, and having the strength to actually move from this desk are two different things.

You would think toddlers make this easier.  They are always on the move, it seems.  Even a movie on television cannot stop them for long.  Unfortunately, I've found, they don't make moving easier: in fact, they make it harder.

If your kids are in a bad mood, you don't want to take them out.  What if it gets worse?  What if they embarrass you in public?  A change of scenery may help, but if they're cranky, they won't calm down long enough for you to even explain to them that you're going somewhere.  May as well just leave them be to get over this spell of animosity.

If your kids are in a good mood, you don't want to take them out.  The change of scenery might set them off.  Right here, right now, there is such a good balance.  They're happy and chipper; why would you take a chance and end this rare bout of contentedness?

It just seems easier to stay.  And it might be, in the short term.  But if you could only overcome this inertia and try to get them out of the house, if only for a walk to the trash cans, you'd be amazed at the difference in the day.  It's actually less effort to handle toddlers if you give them a few different experiences to mull over in their quiet time.  Toddlers cooped up inside, playing by themselves, eventually (and sometimes immediately) turn sour.  Then, the energy you could have been spending on an outing, you now are forced to spend appeasing them, stopping tantrums.  Everybody loses.

Of course, getting up is not as easy as I've made it sound.  Sometimes, it just feels impossible, especially if you are ill, or pregnant, or alone, or sad.  But it can be done.  On the bad days, if you can even fake overcoming your apathy for a few minutes, it will be easier to fake the next day, and the third.  By the fourth day, it will be part of your routine.

I try to schedule at least one outing with the twins a day.  And it is hard.  We don't always make my goal.  Some days, I need to just stay home and sludge through the day until I can toss the babies and myself into bed.  But I've noticed that we all feel better if we do at least one thing, have at least one adventure together.  Even though it feels like far too much work for far too little gain each morning as I sip my coffee and they watch Dora.

You don't have to be a superstar.  If you don't get the kids out and about, you didn't fail.  There's always tomorrow, after all.  Each day a new chance, and each day more love from your children, as difficult as they may be.  Start slowly.  Read them a book in the living room.  Tomorrow, maybe, take them out to play in the back yard.  If you're feeling up to it, try a short walk.  If not, you didn't fail.  Read them another book.  It won't take long.  Just a few minutes of interaction, and you may find yourself feeling better.  Just a few minutes of interaction, and your kids may be good to play on their own for another hour or so. 

It's not easy, and if you spend your days at the computer, you are far from alone.  It doesn't make you a bad parent.  It makes you a tired parent.  It makes you a normal parent.

Still, maybe you could try it, today.  Maybe right now, you could get up.

Parenting Online - Part 1

As a first-time parent, I did a lot of research online.  I looked at Kelly Mom, at Dr. Sears, at the World Health Organization.  I joined parenting groups and forums, baby groups and pages.  We have the internet's boundless knowledge, facts and experience at our fingertips, we may as well use it, right?

In my years of hardlined internet research, I learned one core fact I think every parent should take into consideration: you can find an expert to back up any belief you have.

It's true.  No matter how you choose to raise your child, you can find someone on the internet to tell you that you are doing it right.  For every one person you find to tell you that, there will be 20 more to tell you that you are doing it wrong.
 
My solution?

You need to do what feels right for you and for your child.  You cannot go by the book in parenting because there simply is no book.  Or, rather, there are 80 billion books.  As new parents, we often don't have the confidence to rely on ourselves, on our gut feeling, but with all this conflicting information, it's really all we have.

Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

1) You are unsure if you should babywear.  Babywearing.com has an effusive writeup on the benefits of babywearing, many parents in your chosen internet forum advocate it, but, then again, there was that recall a while back.

People have been wearing babies for centuries.  If you choose to do so, you are following in their footsteps, and they've created millions of people, so I'm sure you'll be fine.  Alternately, people have been putting their babies down for centuries, and those babies turned out okay, too.

I never babywore.  I had twins.  Problem solved.  I didn't even have to look into this one.  (Although, I'm sure there are many advocates who would tell me I should have worn them both.  Perhaps saddlebag style?)

2) Breastfeeding or formula feeding.  Most news stories, experts and websites you'll see agree that breast is best, but your mother in law, your aunt, and the hospital in which you gave birth are pushing formula. 

Again, babies have been fed both ways for many, many years.  Those babies made it, and so will yours.

I breastfed for three months.  My babies never latched and needed to take my milk from a bottle.  I fought tooth and nail to continue, but the babies were less than 10 pounds at that three month mark, my breasts were making less milk, and I had to go back to work.  I switched to formula.  I'm here to tell you, I am still a good person, and my babies are thriving two year olds.  It's okay, and it's nobody's business how you feed your child.  Do what's best for you.

3) Cosleeping.  You can find multiple articles for and against cosleeping.  Some physicians say it's dangerous and leads to SIDS or other problems.  Others say that theory is rubbish, that cosleeping is good for baby and parents, that it strengthens bonds and leads to a better night's sleep for all involved.  You need to do what's right for you.

We never coslept.  My kids made it.

4)  Crying it out.  Babywise says do it.  Everyone else says don't.  Again, I stick to my adage of doing what's right for you.  In this particular instance, though, I must let my bias show, as I cannot imagine how letting a small baby cry for any long amount of time is good for anyone involved.  But I'm no expert.  That's what Google is there for.

And these are just a few.  There are so many questions that need to be answered.  And once you make a decision, there are several important follow ups.  So that if you decide that a pacifier is right for your family, you then have to research what type of pacifier, and when you're supposed to wean baby from that pacifier, and when you can and can't use that pacifier, and how often, and for what amount of time.

With all of this ready-made knowledge, we're essentially taking the intuition out of parenting.  I'm not advocating shunning the internet.  The information is there, we best use it.  I'm simply saying, don't forget, in all the noise of the typeface coming through your computer screen, to listen to yourself, and, more importantly, to listen to your child.