A couple of weeks ago, somebody brought to my attention a website called Dogshaming. People submit pictures of their dogs wearing signs around their neck that are meant to be confessions of bad deeds. As the owner of two dogs who do some pretty stupid things, I thought it was hysterical in a twisted sort of way.
Shaming a dog is funny.
Shaming a child is not.
Yesterday I tripped across this apalling article on Huffington Post. Basically, this dad thought shaming his toddler for having an accident in the tub was hysterical. He went to the trouble of making a sign and having her autograph it, he then hung it around her neck and had her pose smiling with it and then, well then he posted it on the internet.
And this is where my head explodes.
Because it’s not just this guy. Humiliating children on the internet is epidemic. And the worst part is it’s the parents that are doing it. Whether it’s declaring favourites, shooting up laptops, admitting you don’t love one, or the double whammy, making them stand in public with a sign around their neck AND posting it on the internet, it appears that embarrassing your kids is the new trend.
And it’s disgusting.
Blogging in particular has brought about a new breed of bullies. Parents that use their children as pawns for page views.
I understand that quest for page views.
If a blog is monetized then page views matter. I’ve written those posts that get tremendous hits and I’ve watched my traffic sky rocket. The flip side of that of course, is that when the herd moves on to the next big thing, your traffic dies and you start to stress about bringing them back. After all, you’re only as hot as your Google Analytics, right?
Being a parent means your children give you scads of material to work with. Heaven knows my kids give me loads of good blog fodder. And then I quickly forget about it and post another recipe or a song that gets me hopping. Because in the end amusing you is not worth embarrassing them.
The internet requires restraint. It means you have to think every single time you put a word on it or every time you post a picture. You have to ask yourself if this will hurt someone you love. Because I guarantee you, those people behind the keyboards don’t love you. They’ll be long gone years down the road, as you’re left picking up the pieces of a broken heart.
When I blog about my children, I ask myself will this embarrass them in any way? I don’t ask my child. At 10 and 8 they don’t have a frickin’ clue what’s going to embarrass them at 16. That’s up to me to use my better judgment. If I’m not sure I ask my spouse, who does not blog, but consumes the goods. If he says no way, then it doesn’t happen. Also, and this is important, so come very, very close so that you understand me — what goes around, comes around. Blogging isn’t going anywhere. Many of our children will have wonderfully popular blogs of their own in the future.
Me thinks there will be a lot of sorry parents in the future. Comeuppance can be a beautiful thing.
Dining At Disney
Well said. I agree with you, and yet you still made me think. For most, I think blogging is just an outlet, like a journal. But we all need to remember, no matter what our page view stats tell us, a blog is a public journal. If the quest for traffic becomes too important to a blog, then I think it kind of starts to serve a different purpose.
You may just have been venting, but it is a good reminder to us all.
It’s cruel and it will come back to them one way or another.
My children do provide fodder and though I use it at times, most gets stored in the mom mental vault. When I do write about them it is either gushing (I can’t help it) or with humour where the one being poked at is usually me. In no way do I want my kids to look back and be mortified by what I’ve put out there.
A few simple rules: no belittling, no demeaning, no embarrassing. We’re parents. We are there to protect and nurture them.
I couldn’t agree more! How does a lack of judgement on the parents part set the stage for our children’s self respect and respectable use of the internet in the future. There needs to be a BOOOO! button for people who do this kind of thing.
I think it’s gotten out of control. Page views are becoming the almighty god and kids are being thrown under the bus to make it happen. People writing about having a favourite child, shaming your kids….And while I agree that there are going to be a lot of sorry parents in the future, it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about the kids and how they’ll feel.
Bravo! This is why you are awesome!!!
WELL SAID! YES! I get so sad and right out angry when I read things on Twitter, or read blog posts, that are embarrassing for children, or cruel to them. There are so many things I do not share about my children online. That is what my personal journals are for. Even pictures of my children sleeping, as adorable as I find them, I cannot share online. That’s private, you know? And to be mean and cruel.. it’s one thing to say, like, “For the LOVE! Go to sleep, children!” but anything more than that… like F*CKING KIDS HAVE ANNOYED ME TO DEATH TODAY or something mean like that. I’m like, shame on you. Seriously? And to post embarrassing things for a ‘funny’ blog post that you want to get a lot of hits? SO wrong. I will also think about if my kids are going to be okay with reading what is online when they’re older. Their opinions are the ones that matter to me. And they’re privacy is up to me to protect.
*their, not they’re. Grrr.
I’m conflicted. Would it have been funnier if the dad had written something funnier, something more about parenting/his having to clean the tub? The dogs are usually awfully funny.
There are things I’ve written about my girls on my blog that I figure might be embarrassing later on, about early menstrual cycles for instance, but nothing shameful. If either of them asks me to remove something, I would do so. At the same time, blogging is supposed to be about memories, remembering things (though I guess one could keep an online diary that isn’t published and meet the same goal). As for the teens, I don’t have one yet, but I know that some people get to a point where they are at their end with thoughts on how to get a child to curb particular behavior. The father with the beating of the computer? Overboard (to me) (also, I am so not breaking something I bought; I’m just going to take it from you). The signs on kids on the street? Again, I’m conflicted. It is shameful, yes. At the same time, it’s teaching. Yes, it’s probably teaching them just as many awful things (such as my parents are embarrassing me and now may be treated differently/teased, etc.) as showing them what is allowable, but I can’t help but think this same thing can be completed at home. Each child is different, right? So each is not going to respond to the same type of discipline as the next (children in the same household can prove that). I just would rather discipline my kids in my own home, seek out professional help if it comes to that. At the same time, I can’t find it within myself to say these parents are doing it wrong. They’re doing what they think is right and isn’t that what parenting is all about? Kids make mistakes, parents make mistakes, but it’s hard to figure out what will work. If it works we’re all yay! That’s a great tactic. If it backfires and a kid harms him/herself or does worse risky behavior, of course we’re saying it wasn’t a good idea to begin with.
Again, I’m conflicted.
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s so easy to do things for ‘hits’ or ‘attention’. Remember, they’re kids but they’re people. If you wouln’t want someone to do it to you, don’t do it to your kids.
It’s more than shameful to use children in this way. It’s evidence of a view that they are less-than-human and not worthy of the empathy, compassion, and respect we claim to want to teach them. Though I am not religious, I think the sentiments in the following poem convey a message we all should remember about these people who are entrusted into our care in the most vulnerable time of their lives.
On Children
Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Thanks for indulging my lengthy response, Candace.
D.
Well said! I couldn’t agree with you more!!
Any time I want to write about one of my children, I always ask them (they are older) if it’s okay, and then I read them the rough draft. I have gotten thumbs ups, and told to delete it, and asked to be sure to keep them anonymous. Better to keep them happy have have anyone read something that hurts them.
Yes, Yes, and YES! I wrote a piece for Babble.com recently where I said essentially the same thing. It was in response to a dad saying (over and over and over again) that he had a favorite child. My feeling was and is that hey, tell your spouse, pastor, therapist, whisper it into your beer bottle, I dont give a shit but for God’s sake not the Internet where your kid could stumble upon it while researching a paper one day. In the multiple comments this guys addressed, one of the things he said was that his blog was his therapy and he talked these things out via the ‘net. Really? Wow, so he gets his therapy at the expense of his kid who might need it down the line after reading that about dear ol’ dad? Oy.. made no sense. Anyway, Yes, thank you for this!
That poor little girl! My heart is aching for her. I ask myself the same question and I would never post anything to upset my children and their feelings this is just horrible. They are people with feelings just like us! Great post!
This makes me so sad. As parents, aren’t we supposed to set the example?
I agree completely that we are to protect them and we should not ask an 8 year old if it is ok. We should not throw them under the bus for traction!
I do also believe though that my writing candidly and sharing with my readers and my children (who are teens) the ups and downs of life and the humour and all the amazing things they have taught me by being who they are- earnest, honest, naive at times and shockingly wise at others is the great stuff of life. I think our mutual sharing has made discussion easier and dealing with difficulty more available to all of us. I think it has been a great help to us all actually
I am very careful, and I ask them about all of it but at the end of the day I am probably not perfect.
Great post! Thank you! It needed to be said
We throw each other under the bus as adults all the time – for that I’m disgusted as well. So when are we going to spend more time on teaching patience and long-suffering and giving advice instead of judgment all the time on those that do what we do not agree with. It never ceases to amaze me how one person’s actions seem to upset another person to the point of writing about it themselves. Interesting that judgment is there in either the parent and or the blogger. Maybe we should be kinder to the children, maybe we should all be winners, maybe we could or maybe we could also teach tolerance, acceptance and I welcome advice only from those who have children that have passed through the stages of 20s, until then I’m pretty sure people are steering blind!
Hey there! I’ve been reading your blog for a long time now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to mention keep up the good job!
Just tripped across this and YES. I hear you. Last week my eight-year-old son told me his friend *Joe* reads my blog. (Now, that opens up a whole other can of worms. Like WTF! Where are Joe’s GD parents? Because my blog is the least of their worries. I don’t even write out curse words.) But it did make me glad I hadn’t written anything too specific or embarrassing about my son since he was about five (and if Joe is going to tease him about things he did when he was five then Joe needs to take a look in a mirror), and that anything I did write, I wrote about “the offending child, who shall remain nameless” (and I have four kids close in age so they can all just blame their siblings.) At any rate, never hurts to be reminded. It’s their lives. Thank you!
Thank you for stopping by to let me know. I appreciate your comment.