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!

I'm Not Alone in my Confusion

It would appear from reading this article in Boston Globe Magazine, I am not the only one feeling a bit confused with teens and technology. I like the approach of limited and open monitoring - Devra and I tout the philosophy "legalize, regulate, and everything in moderation" quite a bit when talking about parenting. Why shouldn't it also hold true with the use of technology? Kids need to be given the ability to learn and grow while being kept safe and knowing they are cared about. Of course, there will always be those kids who will attempt to outsmart their parents in every adventure in life but, like I tell my kids, "Been there, done that and probably did it better than you so don't even try to get away with it!"

Dumbledore's Gay. Now what?

ABC News.com posed the question, "Dumbledore's Gay: Does Anyone Care?" I suppose the follow up question for parents would be "Dumbledore's Gay: Now what?"

Here's what I'm doing. I am saving this article to read and discuss with my older son. I point out to my son examples of gender stereotypes. We also talk about religious stereotypes, ethnic stereotypes and even economic ones. With the outing of Dumbledore, I realized we've not yet addressed stereotypes of homosexuality and it occurs to me, we should.

And so we shall.

Whenever I share my own world view, my son shares his with me too. Sometimes he's not sure about what he thinks, and we talk about that too. I've also admitted to him when I've changed my mind. My highschool biology teacher was fond of telling students, in his heavy southern drawl, "You can change your mind if you have one." So I let my son know, as we grow older or collect different life experiences, our world view may change and/or adjust. Totally expected. Part o'life. Do I let him know my hopes for him? Sure. Do I let him know our expectations? You bet.

The key is to keep the conversation open, honest, age appropriate and infuse humor whenever possible. And when any one's had enough talk on a topic? Keep things open ended by offering "We can talk about it more later" and be agreeable that either person can bring it up again in the future.

I can't tell you how many times I've had parents tell me they dreaded having to talk about -sex, drugs, rock and roll- you name it, with their kid, only to realize once the conversation actually got started, it was far easier than they ever imagined.

But before you begin a conversation, do consider "Is this a conversation we need to have now? Later? Never? Soon?" and "Is this a one shot convo, or will I need to revisit this more as my offspring get older?" Often parents get worked up about "missing" a teachable moment. For most of us, we've got years of parenting ahead of us, and many opportunities to talk with our kids! Talking about our values, ideas and principles isn't always easy, but it may help you to relax a bit about it when you consider these conversations as ongoing and not just one time events during the course of your parenthood.

When you think about that way, you'll be able to answer any "Now what?" with confidence because you'll have a better idea about the next step you want to take.