self-reflection

I saw that Mary Tsao had blogged about this at the Blogher blog (is that redundant?), and decided to do it myself. It originated with Zoot of Miss Zoot.

1. Do your kids know about your blog? If they’re too young to know, do you plan to keep it open to them as they get older?

The Bee sort of knows about my blog, although she’s never read it. Occasionally, she’ll ask to look at the pictures of herself, and she knows it’s sort of like my journal. One of the main reasons that I blog pseudonymously, is that my kids have somewhat distinctive names, and I don’t want this follow them around forever.

2a. If so – do you worry they may get embarrassed later? What would you do if they asked you to stop writing about them? What would you do if they wanted you to take it down all together?

I do worry about it. I haven’t yet used the password-protect feature on WordPress, but I can see how it’ll come in handy in a few years. I wouldn’t take my whole blog down, though. At the same time, I can imagine the Bee having a myspace page that bitches about me (or whatever will serve the purpose of myspace pages in six or seven years), and I wouldn’t demand that she take it down (although I won’t let her use her real name).

2b. If not, what are you doing to make sure they never find it? What if they do find it?

3. Do you think our kids will appreciate the archive of their childhood? Do you wish your parents had done the same?

It’s hard to decide whether they’ll appreciate it or not. I hope so, but who can say. I’ve always sort of thought they’d read my journals when I’m no longer around.

I’m not sure about my own parents. I’d like to read about the early years, I suppose, but reading about my parents’ perspective on certain events when they were deciding to get divorced, and their divorce’s subsequent effect on me and my brothers? I’m conflicted.

4. Do you go back and re-read your past parenting milestones? Do you realize you forgot a lot?

Writing about those kinds of things helps me to remember them better. What I wonder about is how many things I’ve forgot before I started blogging, because I definitely did not write as frequently when I was confined to a paper journal.

5. What about your children’s friends/teachers/moms-of-friends? What if they found your blog? Do you tell your child not to tell anyone about it or are they free to talk about it? Do you worry their teachers or other parents will think it’s weird?

I haven’t given much thought to the idea of my kids spilling the beans about my blog, but I am now! The Bee and I are definitely going to have to have this conversation. Maybe I’ll have to go backwards and password-protect some posts now…