To preface this:
I know that I am a lower-on-the-totem-pole blogger. I am certain that I have written about things that other people would put in their own TMI cagegory. I also have no children. I am very aware that my viewpoints have their limitations. So please take what I am about to say with a grain of salt.
Okay, with that out of the way I'm going to climb way up onto my high horse and give some UNSOLICITED OPINIONS! Here they are:
It bothers me when people write things about their kids that would have embarrassed me at that age. Particularly tweens and teens. And PARTICULARLY when the subjects include first periods, body hair growth, or emotional anguish. Even stories that seem innocuous can make me cringe because, you know what? EVERYTHING was embarrassing at that age. Everything. I would have died if I was 13 and had found out my mom had written a blog and a bunch of strangers and/or friends had read about some door-slammy fight I had with my sister. DIED.
And if any of the kids at my school had read stuff about me? It would have been an invasion of privacy propagated by my OWN MOTHER. The version of myself I carefully chose to show to the world outside my home would have been undermined by an internet personification.
I think that if your kid is old enough to understand what you are doing then you need to ask his or her permission to write about him or her on your blog. And I think that EVEN IF your kid says it is okay you STILL need to really search deeply and think hard about it and examine what you are doing because YOU are the responsible adult, not them. It is your job, not theirs, to know what is safe for you to post about your family and what could be potentially harmful, however innocent it may seem. Because the emotional wounds of the young teenage years are not easily healed. I think we all know THAT, right?
