Moms must hover, even on Facebook

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/01/2010 (5928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

222I can’t tell you how many times my normally charitable 14-year-old daughter has made that remark to her friends, as if I am a Super Spy Mom monitoring her with an ankle bracelet.

Immediately I invoke the Under My Roof clause of Parental Revised Code: “As long as you are under my roof, and I am paying for the Internet provider that supplies this ‘free’ service, if you want to be on Facebook you will friend me.”

This is one of the many paradoxes of the Facebook generation: In order to be a parent-not-a-friend to your children, you must force them to become your friend.

“Why don’t you trust me?” Veronica demands.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I reply, “but there are a lot of people out there I don’t trust. And that’s what I need to monitor.”

My kids, for instance, see nothing wrong with telling the world at large — or the combined populations of Kettering Middle School and Fairmont High School — when we’re leaving on vacation. “Why don’t you just post, ‘The house is empty, come rob us?”‘ I demand.

As with every parenting challenge, Facebook is a balancing act: You want to give your kids a measure of independence while at the same time making it understood that teenagers have no inherent right to privacy that conflicts with our need to guide and protect them.

Still, I try to be sensitive. If I’m concerned about something my kid posts, I talk to them privately. I don’t friend their friends unless they ask first.

Amy Wallace, a nurse and mother of three and self-described member of a “Facebook family,” believes it can be a great tool if not misused: “There have been times when I have told one of my children that something they have posted was not appropriate and there was no arguing, they simply deleted it. My daughter actually posted about her minor car accident and my father-in-law who was vacationing in California read about the accident before we even thought to notify them.”

Wallace advises her kids to really think about it before posting a status update or a comment. “Write it on a piece of paper,” she advises. “Ten minutes later ask yourself if that’s something you really want the world to know, including your grandparents and teachers.”

That would eliminate a lot of the self-pity that teenagers once confided to their diary, only to smile at their self-indulgence years later with no one else the wiser. Status updates such as “I wish something good would happen in my life for once” are followed in short order by “Best day ever.”

Noted Wallace, “Kids post things like that for attention and everyone rushes to ask them, ‘What’s the matter?’ I just want to tell them, ‘It’s teenage hormones!”‘

Yes, Facebook can exacerbate teenage narcissism, but it can also teach by example that not everyone is interested in your every move — or, in a bizarre development this week, what colour of bra you’re wearing (an apparent attempt at breast-cancer awareness).

Those of us who are spying on our kids might come away more encouraged than not. Maybe it’s the sheer power of that word “friend,” but what strikes me about Facebook is the generally kind-hearted nature of the conversation, so different from what passes for online discourse these days.

Kids are openly affectionate with each other in ways that would have been unheard of in my youth. After her first Kettering Children’s Theatre meeting this week Veronica posted, “I luv my KCT friends,” which sparked a chorus of “We luv you too.”

See what I mean? No wonder I need to spy on her.

— Cox Newspapers