I talk about my kids on my blog, but I've only put two pictures up of them, neither of which really identify them. And when I do talk about them, like yesterday's post, it's more of a walking through reasoning kind of thing. The kind of thing that you were talking about where he could learn why I did some of the things I did.

Good post, and not that loose of an interpretation. It's all relative, right? :)

A thoughtful post, Andrea. Even though I'm no longer blogging, I will be printing off the posts to share when the children are much older - probably when they have kids of their own and I've become a dolally cat lady who remembers their childhoods as nothing but bliss...

I was hoping you'd elaborate on why we won't get Frances Fridays anymore, and here it is... Very, very thoughtful post.

I'm going to change the way I write about my kids, too. My worry is not so much that they'll be mad about what I wrote, since my blog gets like 3 visitors a day; but that in crafting blog posts about them, I am cementing my view of who they are -- and therefore their own views of who they are. Does that make sense? If I write 50 times that my daughter likes snakes, I am turning her into A Person Who Likes Snakes -- which precludes her from being anything else, which makes her a snake-lover instead of an animal-lover, which makes her sound fearless in a way she isn't -- etc. etc. etc.

That was very thought provoking, and I've struggled with some of those same concerns myself. I do what I can to protect their privacy, but that's no gaurantee that they won't feel violated some day in the future when they find that I've shared all the foibles of parenting them with an audience that is largely unknown to me.

I am conscious of where the line is drawn in the sand though. There have been several posts that almost were before I decided that they were too personal, and that I had no right to share something of such a sensitive nature.

Food for thought. Definitely.

I try at all times to make pictures of my child as weird and non-identifiable as possible, for that reason. Of course, then I was told she would need therapy for the weird stuff so some days you just can't win!

Great post - I love how everyone has such different takes on a topic.

By the way, when my daughter wanted a stepdad, she offered to go shopping with me!

Thanks for explaining why I am so careful about protecting my writing. I shall look up Madeleine L'engle to find out more about what her kids had to say. I still really enjoy her books.

My daughter will be twenty years old very soon. There were no blogs when she was tiny, cute and unable to read.

I wrote a short piece (300 words max) about the time she knocked a 3" potted plant on the floor and I discovered her eating the dirt, and it was published in a single mother's newsletter with a circulation of around 100. I don't believe I have a copy, and it was published around 18 years ago. She was about twenty months old.

I have pencil and paper journals, many of them, and they date back around, say, 20 years. Not planning to publish them, either.

The public entries on my livejournal blog are either fiction or contain no personal information at all.

There would be public entries on my blog about all my friends, acquaintances and family if I could resolve the privacy issues. My friends are very interesting, as is my daughter. And I am very careful.

Very interesting and thought-provoking. I think about this a lot. I make about the same effort to protect my family's privacy on my blog as I do in everyday life, but the question of how our children may be affected by what we write about them and about parenting is on my mind a lot.

My son (10) is old enough to be aware that I write about him on my blog. One time, after I had written about a discipline incident, he asked me to never blog about him again, but another time when he had done something positive he began asking me to blog about him more often. Yet if I only blog about the good stuff it presents a skewed and unrealistic view of parenthood and my experience as a mother. I do find myself becoming more cautious with the years, and there are a LOT of things I see other people write on their blogs that I would never share on mine (partly because I don't conceal my identity, so I don't have that cloak of anonymity to rely on). But I also feel that, while my children deserve their privacy, I also have a right, an an individual, as a published writer, and as a blogger, to tell MY story. And part of my story is about raising my kids. So I think a lot about where to draw those lines.

I have tried on several occasions to find information online about the statements Madeleine L'Engle's children made about her books and have never been able to find them -- anyone have any references? I heard their comments referred to in discussion forums but never read them firsthand.

Oh! Finally found it.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/12/040412fa_fact_zarin?currentPage=1

Trudy, that's the one.

At the risk of alienating people--generally the consensus seems to be not to blog something you wouldn't say to someone's face. If our children's immaturity prevents us from extending that courtesy to them--because they lack the ability to understand the question and articulate a reply--then maybe the right thing to do is wait until they are old enough to understand the question.

I say this having fundamentally violated that precept myself for many years; but I still think it's a question worth answering. AT least for ourselves.

jeanie--ack! I'm glad we didn't have to go there.

Jennifer--absolutely, that makes sense, and it's something that I worry about too--that having presented Frances as the Girl Who Never Gets Angry is not going to be good for her, or for our relationship. It's entirely positive, I never complain about her at all, she doesn't give me enough to complain about. But that's a hell of an expectation to carry around.

Some of these concerns I've been aware of even before I started blogging: the way we perceive our children can be very powerful - it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy or a basis for rebellion. In my husband's family, for instance, he was labelled the "smart one" and as a result his sister almost bent over backwards not to compete with that. Was that his parents' perception, or hers, or a combination thereof?

I think we should make a distinction, though, between "doesn't like" and "is damaged by." I don't think mommy-blogging is justifiable only if our children, when they're old enough to know about it, always wholeheartedly like it. Part of living in the world means that you have to get used to the fact that people perceive you and talk about you in ways that you don't always wholly like. Somewhere between the extremes of deliberately hurtful blogging (like the kind you describe on NakedJen) and total silence (both on the internet and in real life) there is a boundary line - but it's hard to say where that line should be drawn.

I've noticed that over the last few months, I've blogged about Miss M a lot less than I used to. I think it's part of an evolution for me from the time when age and stage was something that I was trying to figure out 'til now when I have a lot more confidence in understanding my role with respect to her. This doesn't mean I plan to stop telling our stories in the blog; it's just something that I've noticed.

When it comes to gauging how she will react to the blog one day, who knows? As you say, none of us do. I do think it as likely, though, that she will be mortified by what I have said about me as she will be by what I have said about her. I've no doubt that well into her twenties, she will see me as an extension of herself.

Yeah, this is a tricky one. I don't use any real names on my blog, but I have posted some photos with the intent that the photo posting will stop around age 1. (Or at least be infrequent and of the sort that the face is not visible, etc.) I don't have many readers, but you never know who will stumble onto your page...
As for why I post about motherhood/baby I guess for me it's in large part because it's new, because it occupies most of my brain space right now, and because I'm too tired to come up with much else that seems to be interesting enough to share/devote energy into typing, haha! And even then, I don't post much.

Ouch, I've only half thought about what my child will think about what I've written about me.

It's funny though... a couple of weeks ago I felt guilty for NOT blogging about my son very much, that maybe I was being too selfish blogging about ME all the time. Then suddenly I had lots to say about what he's been up to. I would have been pleased if my mom had kept any kind of a record of me growing up and her feelings about it. But I was the third child, so my baby book is empty apart from my name and birthday.

You're right though... this is an experiment in which we hope for the best.

Oh lord, I don't even want to think about what Frances is going to make of everything I've said about me.

But at least I'm fairly comfortable about my right to say it.

That's true, Bea; much like kids don't like vaccines and broccoli, either.

I think it probably depends on a lot of things--the blogger in question, the size of their audience, the temperament of their kids, the nature and closeness of the relationship, etc. And I think that off-hand assertions that a) it must be good/ok for the kids because it's so helpful for the moms, or b) because it will be normal for our kids' generation that it won't be damaging, are very problematic. Smog and global climate change are "normal" too nowadays, that doesn't mean they're not damaging, and there are all kinds of things that moms might really like to do but aren't good for their kids.

And I find it very strange that we seem, as a group, to be so unwilling to subject other relationships to this kind of public scrutiny, apparently believing that there are times when that sort of complete honesty is harmful and best not explored. Just our kids. Who just happen to be the one group who can't complain.

Hmmm. Very thought-provoking as usual Andrea!
I am one of those bloggers who posts a lot of photos of her kids. I do it because the blog is very much my own space. I use it to dump the contents of my brain on a regular basis. They are a major part of my story. They figure prominently in everything I do.

I don't blog about things I wouldn't say to their face and as a result of that I don't think they'd be embarrassed about the things I wrote. If they ever ask me to stop posting their photos (or whatever) I would.

I don't write about the skeletons in our closets. I certainly don't feel compelled to share everything. Does this create a distorted view of our lives? Probably? Do I care? No. It's my space, and I'll do what I please with it!:)

I see the blog as a scrapbook, not a personal diary... you know what I mean?