On Being Facebook Smart

Last December when our son turned thirteen I asked him if he would like to open his very own Facebook account. He told me he wasn't interested. Life went on. A few months later we visited friends who lived in a land far far away Kansas. When we returned from the trip my son told me he would like to take me up on my offer and he wanted to start using Facebook. During our sojourn to the Wild Wild Midwest he had reconnected with his friends and now wished to hang out with them on Facebook. I was cool with it. After all Facebook is way less expensive than airplane tickets to Wichita.

As we sat in front of the computer going through the steps to set up his account, I explained the rules of engagement as they relate to the responsibility of having a Facebook account. We'd already had a discussion about online safety when he first ventured online. When he got a cell phone which included a camera, we had a talk about cell phone photography versus cell phone pornography, much like what SoCal Mom discussed with her daughter.

My rules were simple:

1. You must friend me. Not because I am lonely, if you've noticed I have over 500 of my own friends, you need to friend me if you want to be on Facebook.

2. I must know your password. Granted I will also have to write it down and I promise not to show it to your little brother. but you still need to give it to me. If you change it, you must give me the new one. And again, I will not share that information with your brother.

3. For my part, I promise not to abuse my power. I will not sign into your account without your knowledge. I will not change anything on your wall or profile without discussing it with you first. However, there could be a situation where I need to act quickly, and I reserve the right to do that, again, I will not abuse my power.

4. Believe me, I know your friends will use language I prefer you not use. As long as you know what I expect from you, we're good to go. After all, I had friends in middle school and highschool who wound up behind bars, but did I? No. Make good choices. offline and online.

With teens I tend to lean toward the "less is more" when it comes to words, yet at the same time I make sure I'm packing plenty of information in what I do say. But even so, I knew there would come a time when I might have to step in and provide more guidance. After all, as parents it is difficult, albeit almost impossible, to anticipate every situation and how our child will respond. Thinking Mother brings up an excellent point in her post, when she addresses whether or not children understand the ramification of their actions online. Kids will make mistakes. My son did. It wasn't a very serious one, but it provided a backdrop for an important life lesson.

My son plays soccer and he had been approached by another team's coach. The coach had made the suggestion that my son should try out for that coach's team. My son was very flattered. He was excited to have been asked but at the same time had no plan to take that coach up on his offer. My son is very happy on his current team. But that night my son updated his status to say "I was asked to try out for another travel soccer team."

Within seconds I saw the update and called my son into my office (I work from home, he didn't have to hop the metro). "Hey, do you realize you've got your coach's son as a Facebook friend? What do you think he's going to think when he reads your update?" My son looked at me for a moment, his face flushed and said, "That I'm going to leave the team. Uh oh. I need to fix that!" So I showed him how to delete his status and we had a brief conversation about whether or not he should send a message to the coach's son. In a matter of seconds the decision was removed from him because I received an email from the coach asking "Is your son leaving our team?" My son sent an email to his coach and explained how the misunderstanding had happened, all because of a quickly written Facebook update based upon a situation only my son experienced.

Lesson learned. No need to have knee jerk response and ban him from the Interwebs until he moves out of the house. Instead I let him clean up his own mess, while offering support and consultation as needed.

No lie, it's dififcult for many of us not to swoop in, hit the delete button, the off switch or the mute feature. Need inspiration to keep the brakes on? Check out what AMoore has to offer. Look, parenting is tough in these high tech times, but if you're going to suck in your breath, let me give you a pointer; If you've never used Lamaze, it will come in handy during the teen years. Breathe with me. Heeeee heeeee whoooooo heeeee heeeee whoooooo.

The Family Connections Group is BlogHer’s community journalism project. I am a Contributing Editor for Family Connections/Digital Parenting

Parentopia Prop: Helena Oliviero Atlanta-Journal Constitution

As part of my job as a Contributing Editor at BlogHer.com I write about Digital Parenting. While many parents have ventured into the land of social media and making connections online, the idea of having kids doing the same makes a lot of folks nervous. It doesn't help when we've got a majority of mainstream media focusing on fear mongering and shaming their readership.

Seriously, it is insulting and patently ridiculous. We don't need this in our lives. Parenting presents enough challenges, we need information from our media, not finger wagging and navel gazing.

So when I was interviewed by Helena Oliviero from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution for her piece Parents Balance Freedom, Safety On Facebook I wasn't sure how my quotes would wind up or how the piece would come together. Which isn't at all unusual whenever anyone agrees to be interviewed. Unless you know the reporter personally, it's almost always a crap shoot.

Not to say reporters are the main problem, I don't believe they are, after all their are editors, producers and quite a few others who have their eyes on a pitch or piece before it is approved, put to bed and hits the stands or airwaves. I'm not dumping on journalists, I know many hardworking journos and for the most part they are the ones who want to do their job well, but at the same time, papers are losing money and those holding onto the purse strings are panicking. It's a trickle down effect. And when stories go bad, it is often the journalist who finds themselves on the hot seat and not positioned to thrown an editor or producer under the bus. With the current revolving doors at many of the newspapers and magazines, keeping one's job right now is outweighing quite a bit in my opinion. And understandably so. But last week I had a glimmer of hope that things may be coming back around...

When the AJC article came out last week, I yelped. I did. 'twas a yelp of joy. Finally a piece written in a major newspaper about a touchy topic that did not position parents as inept and offered pertinent and practical information to parents in a positive reporting style!

I'm holding up this piece as a model for others to read and emulate. This is what journalism is meant to do folks, find facts, report em and inform the public. Regardless of whether my quote had made it into this piece, I would still be singing it's praises.

And for this, Helena Oliviero is completely deserving of a Parentopia Prop!

It's Been Forever

OK, it happens each time I go to these things. I meet lots of incredible bloggers and I tell myself I will post more often! BlogHer was, what, like 6 weeks ago now. I know I should post more. Believe me, I have ideas on a daily basis - at least. I just can't seem to sit still long enough to get them typed. I get to the computer and check my mail (1st mistake), after sorting through the garbage and the good stuff, I usually pop on over to Facebook (2nd HUGE mistake). About an hour or 2 or 3 later, I am ready to post... The problem is by then, I either need to drop off or pick up a kid somewhere or, more likely, I have completely forgotten what I wanted to post (if I even remember I was going to post at all).

On the bright side, the time I spend on Facebook has reconnected me with so many people from my past. It's like a big old reunion right here in my house with no schedules to arrange and no airline tickets to purchase. I love it. I've found high school friends, BBYO friends, camp friends, friends of friends. I even discovered my own cousin was engaged because I saw her talking about it on Facebook. How crazy is that?

Oh yeah... So, it's been forever since I posted and lots has been happening. BlogHer with Mom Road Trip, a new season with LCS, back to school events, the DNC right here, close to home and some new discoveries about communicating on line. Like Devra said, it's a bit overwhelming to even figure out where to start!

I won't start at the beginning (too long ago to remember), or at the end (even though that would be easy). I want to start by sharing the discoveries I have made along the way. Regardless of where I am, who I am with, or what I am doing, the same question is asked of me over and over again, "What do you blog about?" It probably shouldn't catch me off guard but it does. It catches me just as off guard as, "What do you do?" and "Wow, you wrote a book, did you always want to be a writer?"

These all sound like reasonable questions to ask someone at a blogger conference, blogger meet up or any other blogger gathering. The problem is I never considered myself a "blogger." Yes, I have a blog. Yes, I write on the blog. But, as I have already said, I don't write very often - at least not as often as I feel I should. I always thought bloggers were people who posted daily (at the very least)! You know what I have learned over the past couple of months? That simply is not true. Sure, there are those who post daily, heck, it seems like hourly, but there are also those of us who post less often. The reasons for this are as varied as the people I have met. Up until this point in time, my response has been something along the lines of, "Well, umm, you see, I have a blog but it's only because I wrote a parenting book and then my co-author and I started a speaking business supported by a web site and our web master told us to start a blog." If you have ever heard that lame response from me please replace it with the following:

Devra and I blog at parentopia.com. As parenting professionals, our blog definitely talks about parenting issues but we also blog about anything that we believe may be of interest to parents or others involved with the care of children. It may be new born coping strategies, school topics, political, social, fun, serious, kid full or kid free. Occasionally, we even blog about things we find blog worthy at the moment even if they have nothing at all to do with parents or kids! Just come look, it's too hard to explain.

As for the answers to the other 2 questions I mentioned, they haven't changed much...

1. What I do depends on the day of the week, the time of the day and the season.

2. No, I never aspired to be a writer. My BA is in Adolescent Behavior and Sexuality and my post graduate work is in health care system reimbursement and early childhood. Writing is just something I do and I am a bitch of an editor (just ask my kids).

I suppose this post would fall into the "nothing to do with parents or kids" category so we'll file it under, "a personal revelation I thought I would share" and call it good. I fully intend to post soon (a relative term) on other recent events I mentioned and even share some things I am degreed in and have put to use as the mom of 2 adolescents. Now you're all interested aren't you. So y'all come back soon now, ya' hear!