Tit for Tat – A Lesson about Sharing on the Internet

I have long thought that parents tend to over-share. I realize I may be one of them. My son(s) may read my blog one day and realize I wanted girls. [Note to kids in the future: I love you dearly, but at one point I did want a daughter. Please don’t hold that against me. I promise that I wouldn’t trade you for the world.]

Beyond gender preference, I may also dabble too much with the woes of feeding and tantrums. It’s my life, but maybe you don’t want to hear about it. Maybe Graham won’t want to hear about it from his girlfriend when she googles his name 16 years from now. We haven’t crossed the potty training bridge yet, so I can’t speak about over-sharing in that department, but I may eventually cross a line or two. I will do my best to mind my P’s and Q’s. I don’t want my teenage children to research themselves online and discover that I’ve shared their horrors of pee and poo, too.

I have thought about writing a blog on this topic of over-sharing many times in the past; I have chosen not too because I didn’t want to offend. I still don’t. But my husband forwarded me this article earlier today and it got me thinking… how will my son be effected by what I write on my blog? And it should get you thinking too. Because, I’m sure I’m not the only offender. Yes, I have a loud voice. I write about my experiences of motherhood and plaster it all across the internet for others to read, enjoy, and judge. And although you may not realize it, you do it too.

You might not have a blog, but I bet you are on Facebook. And I know some of you have written about your children’s constipation, diaper blow-outs, and lack of urination in your Facebook status. You probably got a lot of comments on it too. Because we can all commiserate. I can speak from personal experience. Some of my most popular blog posts (both self-written and guest blogs) have been about the pee and poo department.

So my take-away from the article referenced above and my own thought about over-sharing… if it’s not something I would write about myself, I won’t write it about my child(ren). For example, we had a guest blogger that recently posted a very popular story about a “poo” situation with her child. You know what? I think that’s OK. Because she had also recently posted about a personal “pee” situation. Tit for tat. I like it, and it’s a rule I think I’m going to adapt for my own blogging/Facebook posts.