Ace had been bugging me for over two weeks to let him set up a MySpace account. Part of me was very resistant to the idea at first and I found ways to elude giving him an answer. The news is full of cyber-bullying, predators reaching across the internet to find my child and exploit him, the exposure to inappropriate content and the possibility that my child will use this social networking tool to explore topics I would forever keep him protected from. But the rational parent that finally surfaced from all the fearful hype realized the following. My kids are normal kids, with a solid foundation and a well-grounded awareness of right and wrong. Please don’t interpret that statement to mean they will never do what they are explicitly told not to, or stretch boundaries and annoy the hell out of me routinely, because Hey! They’re kids and isn’t that a part of growing up? To push against those limits and test their own autonomy? I certainly think so.
Ace himself had been a target of some cyber bullying last year by a troubled classmate that had put some nasty things about him on his MySpace Page. Ace’s friends found it and clued him in. Ace confronted the boy about it and also told us so we knew what was going down in school with this boy. He wanted to be covered in case he got in trouble in school when he confronted the boy. We let Ace deal with the boy, because he needs to speak up for himself and show he’s capable of holding his own among his peers, but we discussed the issue with the boys parents, who had absolutely no idea what their son did online. When they were handed the irrefutable evidence, they got very defensive and complained that someone else must have done it. And sputtered that their son was the one being bullied. We even brought Ace with us when we talked with them and we asked them to have their son come out and discuss it together. The mother went into the house and came back saying her son didn’t want to come out. Maybe I’m more old-fashioned than I truly believed myself to be, but if someone came to my door telling me my son was involved in a bullying incident and had documentation to back that claim up, I wouldn’t ask him to come out to discuss it or accept his refusal. I’d drag his sorry ass out by the ear to explain his part in it. There are two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere in the middle and with kids it is no different. In this case, however, Ace had been discussing this particular boy’s antagonism for months before it finally culminated. It never fails to amaze me how some parents will not insist their children to take responsibility for their actions or face their own irresponsibility in allowing their children to behave in unacceptable ways.
What I also realize, as I thought his request through, is that if I partner with him in setting a MySpace account up, show him how to use the site, let him know I have faith in his judgment and trust him to make the right decision, explain area’s and topics I find objectionable and remind him that there is little he can do that I won’t discover, there is no reason to restrict him from this out of paranoia. He lives in a world dominated by cyber tools, Internet connectivity and sophisticated electronic equipment. How can I keep him isolated from this when he knows his own mother keeps a blog going and has a Facebook profile? That hypocrisy would build a wedge in the trust front all on its own. He needs to navigate all of this technology confidently and with knowledge, as it will be imperative in his education and whatever life’s work he chooses. So I gave him the go ahead and helped him set up the user ID and beginnings of his page.
The open communication we engage in and shared trust was rewarded when he asked me to help him search for his friends on MySpace several days later. We successfully found many and it was fun to sit with him and view his friend’s pages. It allowed me a window into some of the people he calls friends that I don’t get to see that often and build an awareness of who they are, which is an important part of parenting, I think. Knowing the people my kid surrounds himself with. So far, I’ve been pretty pleased with his choices and insight into his friends. He offered to show me some other friend’s pages he had found and thought were cool. Today he called to say “Guess what, Mom? I just figured out how to set up a playlist.” And then proceeded to play some of it through the cell phone. This partnership is important as he moves into his teen years and develops more independence, spends more time with friends outside of the home for longer periods of time. I always want him to know there is little he can’t say to his Dad or me, regardless of what the topic is.
Maybe if he were a kid wont to close himself in his room and spend hours on the computer, I would have more concern. I really can’t speculate on that, as he’s an active boy who likes sports and being outside. We do encourage this as we put time limits on the computer and video game use. What he does enjoy on the computer are applications that he is eager to share his time with his parents, such as Google Earth and Google SketchUp. He’ll spend as many hours as we let him, designing things on SketchUp and poking into what others have made available. Then he keeps calling to us to come look at what he’s done, or what he’s found in 3D on Google Earth. When it comes to this type of activity, I am more than willing to stretch computer time a bit more.
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