Heading out this evening to the big company Christmas part and thought I’d get some blogging in.
One conversation today came from Justin Kownacki’s post about a parent that bars social media from their house in the wake of the recent young suicides due to a myspace rejection.
Wow. Some kid commits suicide (nothing new) via a “boy’s” rejection via Myspace.com. And the “boy turns out to be the child’s parents?
Some thoughts I threw up on the comments:
“Well, it does scare the shit out of me that while I was maybe 15 and exploring slowly loading nudity on my good ol’ 28.8, my children will be able to explore such awesomeness as 2 girls 1 cup at an even earlier age. Scary, yes. Unavoidable? Maybe. It will make the birds and the bees conversation that much more interesting.
ANYWAYS, agreed about the creative problem solving. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people that aren’t that creative. I’ve known some growing up that weren’t “allowed” on the internet…until they hung out at a friend’s house. But in this day and age, and I know “old school” parents can’t see this, kids need to be exposed to the trials and errors of the internet and figure out even earlier what’s good, bad, and what they can do about it.”
Indeed. It is the job of the parent to prepare their child for all that bad stuff out there. If you shield them from everything, your child will likely gravitate towards any forbidden fruit. How many kinds I’ve known growing up that had the strictest of parents go on the craziest of drinking and party binges once they break away. It’s the nature.
Open the internet to your kids. Or any other new fangled thing your kids find that you never imagined having as kids. It’s inevitable that some crazy new thing will come up we don’t understand. As parents it’s our job to learn the pits and perils of these new things. Like staying on your edge in the technology biz means constantly learning, as does parenting. Parenting is knowledge and passing it on appropriately.