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Sorry if I upset you. I'm not sure if our opinions are different or not. I think I mostly agree with you to be honest and I don't see where my comment is massiv

Sorry if I upset you. I'm not sure if our opinions are different or not. I think I mostly agree with you to be honest and I don't see where my comment is massively opposed to yours. I don't believe I am setting a precedent with my girls that it's ok to be spied upon. If you know a better way, I would love to hear more about it. "Unfortunately, no one wants to know what I did. I'm just a woman, so I must be stupid or something.' I want to know!

DoreenMichele 7y ago
She is not allowed to use her phone to install apps that can communicate with people that she does not already know and this is something I periodically check on with the view that I will check less as she gets older. Why do you think you need to do this? Why does this need to be a hard constraint dictated and controlled by someone else? My kids were given some general guidelines from a very early age. I tongue-in-cheek would say "No naked pics and no instructions on how to build bombs." They are my kids, so they understood what I was trying to get at. They also had it explained to them that as a parent, I had latitude to intercede on their behalf, assuming they stayed within certain boundaries. They understood that crimes like murder or arson would change that fact and put decision making power out of my hands and into the hands of strangers. My power as a parent served them. It was not weilded in an authoritarian fashion. If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules. When my kids proved consistently incapable of following the rules, I wondered what was wrong with my rules and tried to improve my process. Is there some reason your child would desire to talk to untrustworthy people she doesn't already know? Is she bored? Is she lonely? People don't take risks of that sort merely out ignorance. They do so out of desperation. Otherwise, they are quick to go "Nope, I don't need to keep this shitty app for talking to this awful person that I don't even like. Ugh. Moving on."
- notzuck 7y ago
  "If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules." I'm not sure the above quote is true at all. Sometimes your kids want things that you won't give them. You can't keep 100% content kids 100% of the time. Everything you said sounds reasonable but I think kids can get themselves into bad situations even if they are happy and well adjusted. Sometimes hormones can kick in and make you talk to people that you would never normally talk to. It's easy to say that kids that are talking to strange adults online have serious issues in other parts of their lives and fixing those issues will fix everything but I think that's a really simplistic way of viewing the world. I was a very happy and content kid but still got mixed up with things I should not have just because my personality was adventurous and addictive at the time. I'm not assuming my kids will follow my behaviour but I've seen the overly sexualised content one of her friends posts and all of her friends just thinks shes cool for doing so now she has the popular girl feedback loop. I doubt her parents know. Maybe she's got some other issues and addressing those will fix everything or maybe she hasn't got issues but she's just addicted to it? Even if she has got other issues, the first sign might be the crap she does on her phone so it's good if her parents see that sooner rather than later. Maybe you're a great parent but you also had great kids which is only really partially under your control? Not every piece of undesirable behaviour can be easily traced back to an underlying issue that can be fixed. Sometimes it just is. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. Girls can get hooked on the idea of older boys sometimes, I don't think this means they are unhappy and even if a kid is unhappy in some part of their lives, that's normal and that's ok. Sometimes being unhappy is fine and you need to teach your kids how to deal with that but I'd like to know if she's 'self medicating' by sending naked pics to older boys because more subtle signs of an issue might be hard to detect. It's a busy world with two working parents and large demands placed upon us by her school so it can be easy to miss something.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I did a lot of therapy. I got with the woman in the mirror a whole lot. I suggest you start a journal, explore your own past experiences and try to figure out what went wrong and why and why you still blame yourself so much all these years later such that you need to project your fears onto your daughter and can't trust her to have better sense than you had. Kids doing "bad" things are frequently expressing baggage from the subconscious of their parents that the parents aren't even aware they are hanging on their children. My children were taught from the age of two "It's your body. You can touch it however you want. Just do it in the bathroom or your bedroom with the door shut." When my youngest hit puberty and became hard to deal with because he was hormonal, I explained that his problem was not called "my bitch mother." It was called testosterone. I explained that his system was flooded with hormones and this was why he felt so angry. Knowing that explanation caused him to stop looking for someone to blame his anger on. When he was too ranty, I would say "Ugh, you sound like some hormone soaked teenager." He would say "I am some hormone soaked teenager." He would try to tone down the ranty bullshit and I would try to have some patience and tolerance for the fact that it wasn't entirely under his control. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. What I'm trying to tell you is that you are currently the person doing the kind of grooming that gets girls into bad situations. I think girls tend to like older boys because boys tend to lag behind girls in social skills. Girls interested in older boys are often just looking for someone who is a good social and emotional match. I've had relationships with older men who thought they could control me because of the age difference and I've had relationships with older men who were clear they needed to respect me. Men who thought they could control me got quite the shock. I don't react well at all to efforts to control me. You are teaching her that a man that loves her and wants what is best for her will seek to control her as a normal and caring part of a healthy relationship instead of teaching her "Anyone trying to exert that kind of control is in the wrong and should be told to stuff it." We probably need to stop here because I have very strong views that sending naked pics to someone via internet is vastly safer than a lot of other activities and our laws and culture should promote such safe practices rather than vilifying them. We should punish people for sharing such pics with others without her permission, but she should be allowed to show anyone her body via photographs if that's what she wants as a safer alternative to showing them her body in person. I made my peace with my sexuality a long time ago. That isn't always deemed to be an asset by people when such topics come up.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  I have to say, your comments are always some of the most insightful ones I've ever read on this site. Thanks for writing them.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    If only people would pay me to write comments on HN, then my life would suddenly work. Sadly, that's not a viable career.
    - concordDance 7y ago
      Well the sample of your comments I have noticed on HN (you have a somewhat distinct self-pitying writing style and constantly mention your gender) are below average quality. But that could be due to a rather biased sample of less than 10 (as I will have only noticed your comments in that style, not other comments you might make).
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      It would be totally against the spirit of HN, but hypothetically, if you had a Patreon for HN comments, you'd have at least one patron here. I agree and second 'pcwalton here. I don't always agree with what you write, but I always appreciate seeing it here, you have one of the best insight to comment length ratio.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I actually do have a Patreon account. I have no plans whatsoever to describe it as being about posting on HN, but you wouldn't be the first. I already have a Patreon supporter who made it clear they were kicking in money because of my comments on HN, not because of any of my blog writing per se. I suppose I should say "Thank you." I'm actually quite uncomfortable with public praise. I have moderating experience and my observation is that trying to be well-mannered and say "Thank you" or otherwise acknowledge such praise tends to cause a rebound reaction where someone feels a need to counter it with some kind of personal attack (something that's already happened here in fact). It also seems to do bad things to the group dynamic. So I've long had a policy of studiously ignoring public praise as the least worst thing I can do. But that seems to make me standoffish, which causes other problems. Some things seem to have no actually good answer, especially in public spaces. Anything you post publicly will be interpreted differently by different people. When the group is large enough, that easily turns into a push-pull dynamic as the group tries to sort out which side "wins" the argument. I thoroughly hate that to the depths of my soul. My background is participating in online support groups. My belief is that if ten people reply to a question, you should have ten different answers that add information, not one that is "For X" and nine more that vehemently argue about being for or against X. X should have little or nothing to do with the other nine answers. So my writing style is based on shooting for statements that stand on their own and actively seek to avoid that nonsense. No one has to agree with me. I'm not trying to win an argument. I'm just trying to explain a point of view as clearly as possible and put out a piece of information as best I understand it. Overall, I'm mostly happy with my writing style, though I continue to try to find ways to improve it. "There's always room at the top." You can always find ways to make it better rather than resting on your laurels and stroking your ego.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

DoreenMichele 7y ago

She is not allowed to use her phone to install apps that can communicate with people that she does not already know and this is something I periodically check on with the view that I will check less as she gets older. Why do you think you need to do this? Why does this need to be a hard constraint dictated and controlled by someone else? My kids were given some general guidelines from a very early age. I tongue-in-cheek would say "No naked pics and no instructions on how to build bombs." They are my kids, so they understood what I was trying to get at. They also had it explained to them that as a parent, I had latitude to intercede on their behalf, assuming they stayed within certain boundaries. They understood that crimes like murder or arson would change that fact and put decision making power out of my hands and into the hands of strangers. My power as a parent served them. It was not weilded in an authoritarian fashion. If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules. When my kids proved consistently incapable of following the rules, I wondered what was wrong with my rules and tried to improve my process. Is there some reason your child would desire to talk to untrustworthy people she doesn't already know? Is she bored? Is she lonely? People don't take risks of that sort merely out ignorance. They do so out of desperation. Otherwise, they are quick to go "Nope, I don't need to keep this shitty app for talking to this awful person that I don't even like. Ugh. Moving on."

notzuck 7y ago
"If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules." I'm not sure the above quote is true at all. Sometimes your kids want things that you won't give them. You can't keep 100% content kids 100% of the time. Everything you said sounds reasonable but I think kids can get themselves into bad situations even if they are happy and well adjusted. Sometimes hormones can kick in and make you talk to people that you would never normally talk to. It's easy to say that kids that are talking to strange adults online have serious issues in other parts of their lives and fixing those issues will fix everything but I think that's a really simplistic way of viewing the world. I was a very happy and content kid but still got mixed up with things I should not have just because my personality was adventurous and addictive at the time. I'm not assuming my kids will follow my behaviour but I've seen the overly sexualised content one of her friends posts and all of her friends just thinks shes cool for doing so now she has the popular girl feedback loop. I doubt her parents know. Maybe she's got some other issues and addressing those will fix everything or maybe she hasn't got issues but she's just addicted to it? Even if she has got other issues, the first sign might be the crap she does on her phone so it's good if her parents see that sooner rather than later. Maybe you're a great parent but you also had great kids which is only really partially under your control? Not every piece of undesirable behaviour can be easily traced back to an underlying issue that can be fixed. Sometimes it just is. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. Girls can get hooked on the idea of older boys sometimes, I don't think this means they are unhappy and even if a kid is unhappy in some part of their lives, that's normal and that's ok. Sometimes being unhappy is fine and you need to teach your kids how to deal with that but I'd like to know if she's 'self medicating' by sending naked pics to older boys because more subtle signs of an issue might be hard to detect. It's a busy world with two working parents and large demands placed upon us by her school so it can be easy to miss something.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I did a lot of therapy. I got with the woman in the mirror a whole lot. I suggest you start a journal, explore your own past experiences and try to figure out what went wrong and why and why you still blame yourself so much all these years later such that you need to project your fears onto your daughter and can't trust her to have better sense than you had. Kids doing "bad" things are frequently expressing baggage from the subconscious of their parents that the parents aren't even aware they are hanging on their children. My children were taught from the age of two "It's your body. You can touch it however you want. Just do it in the bathroom or your bedroom with the door shut." When my youngest hit puberty and became hard to deal with because he was hormonal, I explained that his problem was not called "my bitch mother." It was called testosterone. I explained that his system was flooded with hormones and this was why he felt so angry. Knowing that explanation caused him to stop looking for someone to blame his anger on. When he was too ranty, I would say "Ugh, you sound like some hormone soaked teenager." He would say "I am some hormone soaked teenager." He would try to tone down the ranty bullshit and I would try to have some patience and tolerance for the fact that it wasn't entirely under his control. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. What I'm trying to tell you is that you are currently the person doing the kind of grooming that gets girls into bad situations. I think girls tend to like older boys because boys tend to lag behind girls in social skills. Girls interested in older boys are often just looking for someone who is a good social and emotional match. I've had relationships with older men who thought they could control me because of the age difference and I've had relationships with older men who were clear they needed to respect me. Men who thought they could control me got quite the shock. I don't react well at all to efforts to control me. You are teaching her that a man that loves her and wants what is best for her will seek to control her as a normal and caring part of a healthy relationship instead of teaching her "Anyone trying to exert that kind of control is in the wrong and should be told to stuff it." We probably need to stop here because I have very strong views that sending naked pics to someone via internet is vastly safer than a lot of other activities and our laws and culture should promote such safe practices rather than vilifying them. We should punish people for sharing such pics with others without her permission, but she should be allowed to show anyone her body via photographs if that's what she wants as a safer alternative to showing them her body in person. I made my peace with my sexuality a long time ago. That isn't always deemed to be an asset by people when such topics come up.
pcwalton 7y ago
I have to say, your comments are always some of the most insightful ones I've ever read on this site. Thanks for writing them.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  If only people would pay me to write comments on HN, then my life would suddenly work. Sadly, that's not a viable career.
  - concordDance 7y ago
    Well the sample of your comments I have noticed on HN (you have a somewhat distinct self-pitying writing style and constantly mention your gender) are below average quality. But that could be due to a rather biased sample of less than 10 (as I will have only noticed your comments in that style, not other comments you might make).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It would be totally against the spirit of HN, but hypothetically, if you had a Patreon for HN comments, you'd have at least one patron here. I agree and second 'pcwalton here. I don't always agree with what you write, but I always appreciate seeing it here, you have one of the best insight to comment length ratio.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I actually do have a Patreon account. I have no plans whatsoever to describe it as being about posting on HN, but you wouldn't be the first. I already have a Patreon supporter who made it clear they were kicking in money because of my comments on HN, not because of any of my blog writing per se. I suppose I should say "Thank you." I'm actually quite uncomfortable with public praise. I have moderating experience and my observation is that trying to be well-mannered and say "Thank you" or otherwise acknowledge such praise tends to cause a rebound reaction where someone feels a need to counter it with some kind of personal attack (something that's already happened here in fact). It also seems to do bad things to the group dynamic. So I've long had a policy of studiously ignoring public praise as the least worst thing I can do. But that seems to make me standoffish, which causes other problems. Some things seem to have no actually good answer, especially in public spaces. Anything you post publicly will be interpreted differently by different people. When the group is large enough, that easily turns into a push-pull dynamic as the group tries to sort out which side "wins" the argument. I thoroughly hate that to the depths of my soul. My background is participating in online support groups. My belief is that if ten people reply to a question, you should have ten different answers that add information, not one that is "For X" and nine more that vehemently argue about being for or against X. X should have little or nothing to do with the other nine answers. So my writing style is based on shooting for statements that stand on their own and actively seek to avoid that nonsense. No one has to agree with me. I'm not trying to win an argument. I'm just trying to explain a point of view as clearly as possible and put out a piece of information as best I understand it. Overall, I'm mostly happy with my writing style, though I continue to try to find ways to improve it. "There's always room at the top." You can always find ways to make it better rather than resting on your laurels and stroking your ego.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]