Before you blog about your toddler’s toilet training triumphs, accompanied by pictures or video, think twice. I’m not saying don’t do it because I’m prissy and think it’s gross. There’s a legitimate, non-prissy reason not to do it, and it’s important.
In about a dozen years, the kid who is signing and dancing about a BM today is going to be in high school. Do you remember how mean kids can be in high school? Did you see Mean Girls?
Imagine your potty-dancing daughter of two and a half when she’s fifteen. She’s sweet, pretty, a little shy, easily embarrassed, and has a mad crush on the same boy her school’s Teen Queen of Mean likes. Do you have any idea what it’s going to be like for your beloved and fragile daughter when that teen virago in her class Googles her and finds your blog, in which you wrote at great and loving length about the contents of your daughter’s diapers and what escaped the diapers, and the initial frustrations and ultimate triumphs of toilet training. Maybe there’s even a picture or two of the naked little cherub standing next to a potty filled with her first outside-the-diaper bowel movement. The Teen Queen of Mean chuckles to herself, and hits the “Share this on Facebook” button.
The absolute prize for embarrassing your future teenage child is this. I’m linking, but I’m not naming the child or parent in question, because I don’t want it to turn up on search engines. You’ll understand why if you read the whole thing. The sad thing is, this father has actually turned his baby blog into a book that has been published. There’s a link to the book on Amazon.com if you explore the website, but I’m not posting the link.
Here’s a clip from Jon & Kate Plus 8 that shows one of their sextuplets’ adventures in toilet training. In the clip, Kate Gosselin says she knows some people are offended by the pictures, but insists that it’s part of the children’s history, and that they’re proud of themselves. Sure, now they are, but when they’re fifteen, they won’t be especially proud of doing what every other civilized member of the human race does as a matter of course. They’re far more likely to be embarrassed because their classmates can watch re-runs of them doing it on cable TV.
I don’t mean to criticize the parents bloggging away about their children’s bodily functions. I think they mean well, and it simply doesn’t occur to them that their cute, chubby little cherubs are future adults who will have varying degrees of personal reticence and modesty. Some of them will laugh at the potty dance videos and not care that they were made public. Others will be mortified.
We, as parents, have no way of knowing what kind of teenagers and what kind of adults our toddlers will grow up to be. But grow up they will, and we would do well to remember it.
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I agree. One of my children (age 14) regularly reads my blog, so that keeps me ever sensitive to what I post about them. Would I want someone posting personal, potentially embarrassing info about me? No. So why would it be okay to post that about my kids?
When in doubt about a post about my children, I ask their permission. They’re teenagers, so that makes sense. But parents of younger children would probably do well to fast-forward in their heads and imagine asking that child when he/she is a teenager. No teenager I know would be okay with a poop post.
My mom reads this blog, and she showed me this post because I’m 13 and she wanted my opinion. If my mom had done this to me, I would be SO mad at her, and SO embarrassed. Please, all you moms that blog, think about your kids instead of yourself.
I read Mrs. Russell’s blogs, routinely. This one is so very right on the money. Think about the news stories of a teen child who, as Mrs. Russell has posted, is right of the brink of reclusiveness. Has other problems to deal with and does not feel as “cool and in” as others in school. What happens to that teen if the “history” of his/her potty training is shared with schoolmates? We have all heard the horror stories of teen suicides. Not that this, alone, would be a reason for such a horrible and tragic occurrance, but one never knows. I am thankful children my age and all children prior to the world wide web never had to worry about what mom and dad have stored in memory that the world just might see.
[…] Jon and Kate Gosselin are celebrities of more recent vintage, and I’ve actually blogged about them before (here , here and here). […]
cute! thank you.
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Oh please. Get a life.
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[…] Life with teenagers (I have two at the moment) is very different from life with babies. One thing that’s different is that you can blog about babies and post pictures of them on social media without their permission. Even when mine were babies, though, I was cognizant of the fact that they wouldn’t always be, and what parents write about little ones might not sit so well with them later. […]