mothering in the new millenium

being a mom in 2011 is a complicated business. maybe it's always been complicated forever & always, but with technology comes this whole new world of stuff to figure out.

i've got a youtube account where i'll post things sometimes, mainly so that i can share our lives with the family members far away, and sometimes i let brooke post one of her own silly little videos of her playing with toys or one of her kitties. but i also posted some videos of when the stray outside cat gave birth last spring. brooke was in some of them & she was clearly very excited & nervous, sometimes crying as she gave the cat pep talks to help her through the birthing process. i just checked & since i posted it in may, it's had 5,497 views, which seems insane to me because i figured no one but my mom & maybe a couple friends would ever watch that.

that's all fine & dandy, but sometimes i get comments from dumbasses who feel the need to comment on my videos saying things like, "that brat needs to shut the f#*k up." or "why don't you just smack the kid already & get her the hell away from that cat?" the first time that happened, i think smoke blew out of my ears & i started breathing rapidly, adrenaline racing, and wanting to throw down with the rude trash who would dare to say such things about my baby. i figured out how to delete the comments & block the rudies so they can't comment on me & mine again, but it leaves me perplexed about how to deal with some of this stuff in the brave new online world.

brooke has been begging for her own youtube account for months, but we've been very hesitant to allow that since there are so many nuts & undesirables lurking around the interwebs. but then again, she's got her own blog & she & i both post pictures of us online. so we recently decided to let her have her own account, with certain stipulations, in order to keep it as safe as possible. i've got comment moderation on & she can't post anything without one of her parents viewing it first. i think she actually likes that part because i have to sit & watch all her goofy little videos of littlest pet shops and zhu zhu pets playing and acting out scenarios.

another thing is helping her deal with getting hacked. she's got a webkinz account where (don't judge me) i play games to earn her money (stopit, i see you mocking me with your eyes) so that she can buy anything webkinz land could possibly offer. i can't give her all of her heart's desires in real life, but darn i'm a fantastic provider online. if only i could get paid real money to play silly games rather just kinz cash. last week her account got hacked & someone played with her animals and spent all her money. it was distressing to her to feel like her own private space had been invaded, even though it was only online. maybe this will be a good lesson on not giving out passwords & always remembering to lock doors.

and we've also had a couple times lately when someone sent me a chat msg & she was the one at the computer. brooke likes to reply to them, but she's not much of a speller yet. one friend wrote back after brooke's second or third weird response & wrote, "are you drunk?!" brooke thought that was about the funniest thing she'd ever read & is now determined to impersonate me online, any opportunity she gets. she once even hacked my facebook account & told the world that i had SBD's (silent but deadly farts) which i didn't, i might add. not that day, anyway.

i'm open to any thoughts or suggestions you guys might have about online safety or parental policing. we're only just cracking the surface on all the ways that parenting has changed in the age of technology and it seems like it's all a big pile of trial and error. God help us!