Recently, Mr. MOTH suggested that I remove all pictures of the kids from the blog. I don't necessarily want to do it, but they are our kids, not my kids, so I most likely will. This will probably take me, oh I dunno, two years, because I have no idea how to go about doing that. Can I delete pictures from an old post without having to re-publish it?
What I really hate is that we live in a world where it's possible that some stranger might actually print pictures of our children out. For malicous intent. I am very careful about not using their names or our location, but I agree with Mr. MOTH that I don't want some dirty old man in Holland hanging Oldest Boy's back-to-school picture up on his wall and then, well, doing what dirty old men do...
A lot of this stems from the fact that we took a workshop called Protecting God's Children which is required if we want to volunteer in Oldest Boy's school. Frankly, even if you're not Catholic but you are a parent, you should take this workshop. The only problem I have with it is that it makes you suspicous of everyone (that, and the fact that we had to take it with a roomful of mostly elderly people who cringe when they hear the word "sex", let alone details about how someone purposely groomed a young child with the intent of sexually abusing them). I feel a lot more informed than I did before I took it and I know a little more about how to explain all of this to the kids. You really can't start too young when it comes to explaining that their body is just that. Theirs.
Part of me, though, wants to believe that it would not happen to us. I mean, there's a total of what, six people who read my blog? Most are family who don't live close or who we don't see often and I wanted to keep them updated on the kids, photos included. I'm torn. Obviously, if it's important to my husband, then it's important to me. He did say to at least consider it. He hasn't forced the issue yet, but I can tell he would like me to do it. Until I figure out where we go from here, I may not post for awhile. Any thoughts/comments would be greatly appreciated.
And now, our quote of the week:
Youngest Boy: Mommy, can I bring up the fence part that ya know, goes to the farm, that’s ya know, in the laundry room, that makes music that’s ya know, behind the laundry door? Can I?
Me: You want to bring the fence upstairs?
Youngest Boy: What fence?
With Four Children, The Days Are Long but The Years Are Short!
2 comments:
Will be interesting to see how others respond to this.
I've thought a lot about it since I started blogging. I've contemplated pulling it all together, or password protecting it, or not posting pictures (but really, the pictures are the point for me). I always come back to the fact that someone could find a picture of my kid anywhere and I can't control what they do with it. If someone wanted to find us, my blog wouldn't be the easiest way to do it. The internet is already scary enough without blogs. Of the millions of kid blogs out there, why would they pick mine? I try not to tell people when we are going to be gone or where Renee goes to daycare or even use our names (this happens sometimes by commenters but I try not to do it myself). And then I go to sleep at night and try to believe in the best in people.
Good luck with your decisions. I think everyone blogs can relate to your questions.
Oh, this one is SO hard. When I started blogging, my husband and I made ONE agreement about my blog-- no pictures of the kids. I've been pretty good about that, and if there is a picture of them I do post, it's not of their faces. I know that's pretty boring.
As I'm surfing through google images sometimes looking for pictures, I've realized that if I type in a search, I'm finding pictures of other people's kids from their blogs. That means that people could find pictures of my kids the same way... having never even been to my blog. So I also took my blog off the webcrawlers. I hope it works. For me, it's a tiny bit of peace. No blog is worth risking my kid's health or happiness.
When I first started blogging, I had a reader who was a former Chicago police officer. She told stories of raiding pedophile's computers and realizing he'd pulled pictures of his victims off the internet. ACK!!! That was enough to convince me.
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