We went out to dinner last weekend at Olive Garden. Although my kids would rather go elsewhere, my hubby and I love it there. He especially loves Olive Garden because they have pepperoncini in their salads.
Now, it’s not that he likes peppers, in fact, he hates them. What he DOES like [love!] to do is taunt our almost-12-year-old daughter with pepperoncini-eating dares, such as:
“Eat four of these peppers soaked in Tabasco Sauce and I’ll take you to GameStop“.
All I do is give her the “look”. The “look” says “You would be flipping CRAZY to listen to your father at this moment - but if you do it, negotiate a hell of a lot more out of him than a simple trip to GameStop!!”.
Thankfully, she didn’t do it (but only because my hubby wasn’t willing to give her $100). What she DID do next, though, really caught me off guard.
She prefaced a question she wanted to ask with, “Please don’t blog this mom, but…”
And then she proceeded to ask me an embarrassing question.
Lest you think I am going to spill the beans on her, I’m not. But the question was rather anti-climatic - one of those things that would only bother a 12-year old anyway.
It was one of those time/brain-twisting moments when I realized I couldn’t even conceive of having this kind of conversation with my own mother when I was 12! I didn’t really know how to react because I had NO references in my own experience to respond to a kid who didn’t want her embarrassing moments blogged about for the world to see!
It got me wondering about what our kids will be capable of when they are sitting in the middle of a restaurant with their own 12 year olds in the future.
If little Alexandra McDaniel (via) is setting the pace for our children, us parents had better get our game on!
And I’m curious - all you parents out there - what do your kids think of your blogs? Do they even care? Do any of them maintain their own blogs? And how has blogging impacted family life? Please share!!
Very few people in “real life” know about my blog. My husband knows, but, does not read. Busy Girl knows it exists, but, doesn’t really know much about it and has been told that it is not for kids.
When I write about my children, it is in terms of how I experience and perceive them. I would not write something about them for the sake of embarassment and I wouldn’t write something that I would consider private.
The point of the costume post was that I found myself at the point where I had to deal with this topic and how it is getting out of hand in general.
Hey Busy Mom,
To repeat what I said in my email to you, the intention of your post was obvious to me, and your readers as well – that our kids present us with things we never had to deal with when we were kids – which is the real intention of why I linked to you in my post.
And I loved your response as well - LOL - yes, at least if we’re going to exploit our kids, I’d hope we would angle to get more than a popular blog post out of the deal (KIDDING!!!)
My kids and my husband know about my blogs. My kids are actually more interested in them than he is. My 10 year old son is supposed to help me write for one of my blogs (Video Game Tips for Tweens) but usually just scratches a few notes on paper and hands them to me. My 8 year keeps asking if she can have her own blog and I may let her in another few years. Now, I doubt any of them actually read a thing I write.
We have had quite a few funny technology stories around here over the years - probably because this family is so tech-saturated it isn’t even funny (and some of it is).
My wife was actually my second subscriber, after me, and reads (or at least skims) it every day. My kids are young enough to not really get it, except that my cartoons are on the Web, and that I try to talk other parents into quitting their jobs (their interpretation, but fairly accurate
)
My 6 year old became more aware after I wrote a post about how much I learned from her class at career day. Some of the other parents read it and so the kids talked about it some. Other than that, they’re a little indifferent.
My 4 year old is very curious about what I do, so I have a small site about her that she can work on with me. Nothing too personal about her, just stuff like links to her favorite websites. We might put her Christmas wish list there as an easy place for grandparents to look up what she wants.
My daughter is convinced that part of being a Mommy is to work on the computer. She talks about “when I grow up to be a Mommy and work on the computer”.
My husband reads my site a little bit, as does my mother. My mother’s boyfriend subscribes to my newsletter, as I found out when I was having trouble with it sending incorrectly and he asked me what was up.