I have a confession to make. I almost never blog about my kids on Mom Spark. Have you noticed? Yes, I am a mom blogger who doesn’t blog about her kids. There, I’ve said it.
Truth is, I’ve never felt safe publicly displaying my kids. Sure, I’ve discussed issues like whether to have another child and managing work and parenting, but I rarely get personal. You will not find many photos of my kids here, either. These details are stashed away on my private blog, for my family and close friend’s eyes only.
Why?
Part of my hesitation is overall online safety. I like to trust that the internet is completely safe and harmless, but we all know that isn’t true. I am also extremely paranoid. If you worked in Corrections for six years, you’d be paranoid, too. I try to remember that there are good, trusting people online, but nonetheless, I still get that bad feeling in my gut.
The other part is privacy. I like keeping some things to myself. Yes, I am a blogger who likes to keep some elements of my life private. There, I’ve said that, too. In addition to my kids, I also keep my religion, political views, and bra size to myself. If an occasion ever arises where I feel compelled to share such information, I will, but for now, get used to the disappointment.
I have absolutely no qualms with bloggers, including my own contributors, who choose to share intimate details on their blogs, and, honestly, those who do probably have a more plugged in, captive audience. Let’s face it, we all like to peek into the lives of others, right? Is it safe, though? Does it invade our children’s privacy? Is it responsible? These are questions I often battle with.
I suppose the beauty of mom blogging is that we can each choose what we would like to share, or not share. There are no rules. We can blog about our child’s first day of school, a product review, or share our favorite recipe. It doesn’t matter. We are all still moms who blog, in spite our varied interests, skills, and talents.
I want to hear from you. Do you blog about your children? Do you post photos? If so, do you feel safe doing so?
In addition to leaving a comment, please fill out the survey below, so I can get a better idea of how you feel about this issue. I’m also giving away a year membership to KidsEmail.org, which is a safe email service for children. You can ENTER HERE.
About Mom Spark
I’m somewhere in the middle on that. That’s why i don’t post much about my daughter. I’ve only posted a few pictures in the years I’ve been blogging.
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I think if my kids were younger, I wouldn’t blog about them as much. But they are old enough to tell me they don’t want me to ‘share’ their stories, and when they don’t mind.
I don’t use their actual names, opting for only their initials. I don’t post photos of my younger child, a high school junior, to protect his privacy, but my older child (who is a jr. in college) has guest posted for me.
I only recently posted a photo of myself. I worry more about someone recognizing my kids from that, than from posting stories about them.
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I’m another mom who doesn’t blog about my kids much. When I do, I don’t use names and never post pictures, except I believe I once posted baby pictures. It just seemed like a bad idea to put a recent picture up. I’m not even sure why.
I read many blogs where pictures and names are posted regularly and I haven’t heard of any harm coming to them. I don’t know if it’s actually un-safe or not. Good question.
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I’m worried more about the apartment buildings behind our community park that we frequently weekly as it is next to our library.
It houses many interesting characters. Some that I have begun to recognize. The kids at the park wear shirts w/their names on them. Run around w/moms busy on their blackberrys.
Maybe I am just naive. I share only what I would tell a neighbor or friend. Nothing more. My kids names aren’t their real ones. I never mention our location. And my young kids know and like to read stories about them.
I feel safe. Safer than at the community park.
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I have thought about this a lot to.
I post pictures of myself, my family, my son and include all of our names. I think it’s safe- you have to take chances I guess. I am careful never to say where exactly I live, or where exactly we WILL be going on vacation or anything too personal like that. I love being able to share with others, but because this IS the internet, I try and not include TOO Many pictures. Overall I’m not really worried about it. There are A TON Of blogs out there who post pictures, first and last names, pictures of in and our of their houses, where they work, etc and they seem to be fine.
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I have blogged about my kids and even posted a few pictures. I don’t see the harm in it for my kids, but I keep a very close eye on them anyway.
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I’m on the fence with this one.
On my own personal blog I post pictures of my girl’s profiles. There are a couple of full shots of my youngest who is 7 months old however I will be phasing those out in a few months as she gets older. I don’t feel comfortable posting pictures of faces and never mention locations. There are quite a few personal details that I leave out however my personal blog is a place for me to write down my thoughts and basically journal about my life.
I have seen many blogs where they post pictures of their kids and family, use real names and locations and never have any problems. I think it really depends on the individual or family. Whatever feels right for you and your family. I think we should keep the future of our children in mind at the same time. The last thing I want is them to be resentful for displaying every detail of their lives for others to read!
I’m cautious to a point.
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Very tricky topic and thanks for bringing it up. I would like to think that it’s safe, as I so enjoy posts with photos or videos of bloggers’ kids. Sometimes a picture is just worth a thousand words. But I also see the other side of the argument. I’d be very curious where your readers net out. Please tweet the results!
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I have written posts about things happening in our lives which includes my kids but I have never posted anything about them that is personal such as their names, schools, etc.
I also have only posted a couple of pics that include my youngest one but I think she’s wearing a mask in one and the other she was helping me with a dinner I made, I think that’s all. I think about it all the time as well. Safety comes first for me.
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I used to blog about my kids and post photos, until one day a guy contacted me through Flickr and asked me to post naked photos of myself and “more photos of my daughters.” I took it to a friend of mine who works for the police and he said the wording didn’t justify police intervention.
Later this fellow contacted me a few more times and it was scary how much information he could gather about me.
I am now much more vague about our lives.
Great post. Thank you.
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Being a dad I have been thinking about this until my wife put her foot down. I don’t blog but I we do use all sorts of social media outlets. There are pictures of our kids out there if you really want to dig around for them. So if you were really bent on damaging me you could probably find everything you need to make our lives miserable.
But there are much easier ‘targets’ out there and we have decided to really limit the exposure of our family to certain friend groups in FB and Flickr. It isn’t perfect, but the point is we share information with those we want to share with.
Blogs are an open invitation and with search engine indexes, cached pages, archives, etc. You increase your risk.
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Ahh. You hit it right on the head. I have serious issues about this. I am trying to find a middle ground. I post pics of my kids but i do not post pics of them straight on. It is always a profile or partial of their face.
I love my kids and I know they are unique, but to the mass public, if I just show partial and profiles, I like to believe that my boys are “unknown.”
I talk about my kids openly, because in all honesty, all kids do the same sort of stuff. They are so young that they are not going to be embarrassed about it and the stuff they do and say make the best stories!
I personally started my site as a place to vent. No one in my family, besides my husband, knows about it. I hope to keep it that way. I want to be able to vent about my MIL and to complain about my family pressuring us to “make the rounds” and visit all the time.
I don’t want my family to read that stuff.
I don’t know.
This is a tough one. I want a blog that is read by many, but read by people who don’t know me in my personal life…
If this is possible, I have yet to find out. I am so far off the radar for most I get hardly an traffic, but my family doesn’t know about it so I guess, it is what it is…
To sum it all up, I voted: Not Sure.
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I just started blogging. Sometimes I blog about my kids. I have used first names, no pictures of them, no locations (except for places we have visited not in our town). I’ve been trying to figure it all out as I go. It can be a very dangerous thing.
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I try not to blog about my husband or son, if I don’t need to, they are not on the Internet and I don’t like posting their photo’s everywhere. I will never use my childs photo as my photo image, I think this is very unsafe. You never know who is watching you or your blog….
Marla
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I post about my family and kids regularly and I include pictures and their real names, afterall the reason I initially started blogging was to keep all of our family overseas and in other states up-to-date with what we were doing. However. There are things that I draw the line on. No matter how cute nudie pics are of babies, you won’t find those on my blog and I blur out other children or use photos where you can’t see their faces (unless they are kids of other bloggers who I know don’t mind or I have asked their permission to use their kids pic) which is why when we attend birthday parties etc, you’ll mainly only see pics of our kids as if they are the only ones attending ha ha. You also won’t find a lot of pics of my teenager. He’s at an age now where he will ask me to not post certain things and I completely respect that. I do post photos of him occasionally though, but only ones that I know he is fine with. I’m also careful to make sure I blur out things such as license plates and house numbers and street names whenever we are close to home. You also won’t see pics of the front of their school or the buildings of any classes etc that they attend regularly. Whenever I remember I also watermark photographs.
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I’m pretty open on my blog, and I do blog about my children. I use their real names, and I tell real stories about them. They’re old enough that they know that I write about them, and they kind of like it. There are times that they ask me not to write about a specific event, and of course I respect that. My rule is, I try very hard not to blog about something that would be hurtful to someone else, and I never blog anything that I wouldn’t say “in real life”. I do post pictures, but never ones of them in bathing suits or bathing, anything like that.
I think that it’s “safe” in that chances are, nothing will ever happen. In this day and age, nothing is ever really private. You can find almost anything about almost anyone very easily with very little information. I think its an unfortunate side effect to the “technology age” that we live in. Safeguards are still important (like not sharing their teacher’s names, or the name of their school, their daily routine: when and where they are all day), but I don’t think blogging about your children makes them any less safe.
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I am pretty open on my blog. I love sharing with people what’s going on and how I feel about it – although my blog usually ends up being more rambling op-ed pieces than anything else.
I’m with my kids so much I think it would be harder for someone to try something. Like another poster mentioned above – there are easier targets out there. Not to mention the fact that we live in the middle of no where so you’d have to work pretty hard to find us. And also there’s the fact that we fully exercise our second ammendment rights in our household so – yeah – enter at your own risk. Lol!
And – there’s always the fact that if they aren’t with ME, my kids are with my husband. Or at the ranch. Which is even more remote and well-armed than our house. hehehehe
I think the key here is there’s no right or wrong that holds true for everyone. If you live in a community with lots of people online you would probably want to be more careful. Out here there is one other person in my entire town on Twitter. One. And she hasn’t posted in two months. So – you know – it’s different than if I lived in a huge apartment building in New York.
Angela <
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I didn’t answer the poll because I don’t really feel like it’s completely black and white. For myself, I do blog about my kids, but I have limits. I don’t share EVERYTHING about them. I don’t post pictures of their faces, but I’ll post pictures from behind or pictures with their faces blacked out. And even then I make sure that I don’t post a picture of them in any kind of pose that can be photoshopped into something suggestive, because YES, it can be done – go to Youtube and check out all the photoshop tutorials for “making fat girls skinny” or “ugly girls pretty” or old to young or young to old or male to female and vice versa. It’s creepy. And creepier when you think that those are the tutorials safe enough to post on youtube. You’re not seeing the ones telling you how to make a clothed person look nekkid. I also use pseudonyms and haven’t disclosed my exact location to help protect from online predators. I’m pretty happy with the rules and boundaries we have set and I feel pretty safe with them.
So yes, I do feel that you can blog about them safely.
No I do not feel it is okay to give both their names AND their locations AND their pictures.
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Having family in law enforcement (specifically – a father who’s been a child abuse detective for 20 years now), I know full well that predators use children’s pictures for their own use. They even sell them to others claiming that they took them themselves.
Also being in a family of law enforcers I know that predators will find bits and pieces of you all over the internet – put information together and find you general area, and more easily gain access to you or your children.
Any personal information you put out there is subject to being used by predators in whatever way they see fit.
I don’t ever ever post pictures of my children online. I even have a business phone with a totally different area code. Though I can’t keep EVERYTHING private, I can take small steps to make it more difficult for others to find information.
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I rarely if ever blog about my kids. I don’t think I’ve mentioned their names once on GoGoMamaGo.com, although I have talked about my husband. I only have a handful of public pictures of my children on my Flickr feed and never publicly post pictures of other people’s children unless their face is not showing. I am mostly concerned about people using their images for whatever reason – predatory or purely innocent – without consent.
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I blog about my daughter. I even highlight fun pictures of her every Friday (Grace’s Style Tip Friday). I started the blog as a way to keep the grandparents, aunts, and uncles up to date on our lives. The grandparents look forward to my Friday posts. I never thought my blog would have grown to what it is now. I try to conceal where I live. But, I think that is almost impossible, between facebook, blog, twitter… .I guess if someone wanted to locate me and my family, they could. So, that does make me a little nervous. I do wonder sometimes, if I made a poor decision. It’s too late to go back now.. Anyway, I don’t know what is right or wrong.
It looks like your poll falls in line with me… “Not sure”.
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I changed the name of the town we live in to Upper Wonderful. I changed my kids’ names. I kept mine and my husband’s names. But not his last name. No one can find us. The blog is registered by a completely different user.
But I don’t just tell any story I want about my kids or spouse with no discretion.
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I thought about that too but I still blog about them anyway. I write about them now while I still can so that when I am gone they can look back with their memories through reading it. The only key that I always remember is not to put any important dates that would jeopardize their future. love your post!
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I do mostly how to posts so putting photos of the kids on my blog isn’t really appropriate and not an issue for me. Photos of my dog, however are all over my blog. He likes to walk into my project photos and my audience likes it, so I shamelessly pimp my dog on my blog.
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I work in law enforcement. I post about my son and my husband. I rarely use my son’s first name. I call him Angry Toddler on the blog. The only time that you will see his name is on the wall of his room, or when someone comments with his name.
I’ve never had an issue. I don’t put my last name out there.
The people to fear the most in your life, are the real people (friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, etc.). They are more harm than the Internet. I got up during a discussion at BlogHer and spoke about this.
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Yes, I do blog about my son and post his photos. Heck, I have a photo blog just of him where I post a photo everyday. Blogging about my son is a community thing not just a personal thing.
Each mom has to decide how much of her life she wants to expose online. What’s safe for one mom is dangerous for another. Even though I blog about my son and life it’s within certain guidelines. There are some things that are private, personal and needs to be kept offline for the safety of me and my son.
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I appreciate everyone’s honesty!
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I’m totally with you on this! I would never post a picture of my child unless it didn’t show his face.
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What a great topic {yet again!}
You’ll notice on “Thoughts Of A Mom” there isn’t any ‘identifying’ information & yet I talk about what goes on in my world {or head} throughout every post.
I found I needed a place to dump all these abstract observations {like Target putting a clearance sign 1n the dollar section!?! 2/17/09} but I’m also VERY careful to share just my perspective & what is my portion of the story to tell. {even if it is about our road trip or the text to hubby that warned him the teenager may be dead by the time he gets home}
Yeah, I talk about my kids, referring to them as DS #1 or #2, but I’m respectful & loving too.
I agree with other responses that it is a personal choice, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what 2 years from now might look like & what you wish you would have done differently. I figured I could always add more details later, but could never go back in time & ‘undo’ {as mentioned above} so I’ve started out much more anonymous for now.
A side note: while I enjoy a national presence in my career I chose to grow at a much more slower pace by completely separating the two reputations. Not to seem too mysterious, although, I always did think I would make an awesome spy!
)
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I think it’s definitely best to call them by nicknames you give only for the site purpose, not real life purposes. I don’t think it’s super safe to call them by there real names online.
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Oh my. I just blogged about this very topic on Feminine Wiles, because my nearly-15-year-old no longer wants to be referred to as “Snarky Son.” He wants to go by his own name. Understandable. Still, the mama bear in me has to protect him. So yes, I blog about my kids. All the time. But they’re old enough that I often ask whether they mind me writing about a particular topic. But I can’t use their names. Not yet. So maybe someone else has a better pseudonym for “Snarky Son”?
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i’m one of those people who don’t blog with names and don’t blog with pictures. why? because of safety. i have no idea who’s looking at these pictures. and it really doesn’t matter if i don’t use names. will it change? maybe. as of right now. that’s how it is. if it makes me not ‘authentic’. then don’t read my blog. haha. i am who i am. on my blog and in real life. but the things i blog about are for ME i blog about them for ME and to get my feelings out. not so my family or people i don’t know can find it and start problems and drama. it’s just not worth it to me.
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My kids have made it quite clear that they want their privacy. They don’t want to be the topic of conversation, they don’t want to be identified by their peers (or stalkers) and they don’t want to “be cute”.
Is blogging about your kids safe? I think it’s safer to not blog about my kids. Statistically, most violent crimes are committed by family members…and I am not going to give my kids any fuel for the fire.
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also—why wait until something bad happens to worry about if it’s safe or not? why not err on the side of caution?
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Its a tough one. Being photographers and business owners, it would be weird for us not to. Our photo blog started in 2005 and still going strong. Nothing weird has happened. I have had scarier and stranger things happen to me in real life before internet and kids. Our house and storefront studio are like Fort Knox when the kids are there. I have also been pretty guarded with Facebook (only accepting if we have tons of friends in common, etc)and the type of audience who “follows” us on Twitter. Its mostly controllable what you put out there. I thought about all these things before we started the business then blog.. but then if I worried about all of this, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Life is too short for me to worry about these things. If something is going to happen, its going to happen, whether its through Internet or not, you can’t control it. I can’t always blame the Internet for worries.
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Doing product reviews sometimes makes it hard. I HATE using my kids pics in reviews but have to a lot of the time. I guess I could do pics with their faces blurred out. The pic would then look a little odd but the extra bit of safety would then be there.
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Well, I’ve written about my kids here, and I write them on my own blog. I do use their real names, though I don’t disclose specifically where we live. But I know if someone really wanted to they could figure it out.
Since they’re young I don’t worry about embarrassing them. When they’re older I will respect their privacy, and not disclose things they don’t want me to.
I’m not really concerned about my boys coming to harm because someone read about them on my blog.
I am much more concerned about who they will be in contact with themselves online when they’re old enough to use Facebook, Twitter, email and everything else on the internet. We’ve already decided they won’t be allowed to have computers in their rooms, and any computer time will be closely monitored.
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I waffle on this and can see the various sides. There are still things I don’t share. I used to only share pix that didn’t really show my boys’ faces, but that’s not an issue to me any more. I don’t share their names, though. And I’m picky about what I do share. I also don’t share things on Twitter, FB, or my blog like when we’ll be gone or where we’re going. I only mention it after we’re back. For a long time I didn’t even let on to what city we live in. I agree that part of the beauty is that each of us can do what we feel comfortable with.
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I can see both sides, but I post my first name and the first name of my husband and my kids. I think that my blog is not that popular and it would be hard to find out where I live—-from my blog—-although, my business is my own theatre and ANYONE can find me from there! I have my phone number, and address of the theatre as well as my picture—but that is my business—I have to get people following me….
I guess I just don’t worry about it too much…no time.
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I started my blog to share pictures of my children and funny stories with my family who lives all over the country. I suppose if I ever did get worried I would take my blog private.
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Ia m with you I keep my kids out of my blog,I also avoid religion and politics. My blog is not a personal blog about my life ti’s about my lifestyle so I only include what’s relevant. Sometimes it is hard not to brag about my kids and show adorable pictures, but in the end I am glad I don’t. Although I love reading about others lives:)
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I do blog about my family. My husband hates that I blog about him, but he is part of my life. But, most importantly I blog about my children. i don’t know if it is safe or not. But, I do have faith in the Lord, and I feel that mine, as well as my kids, fait is in his hands. (ya…I talk about religion too). These things are who I am, and so I share.
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I blog about my kids. It’s a risk, like many things in life. But I do take precautions. I don’t share our last name, town or other information specifics like that.
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I say its up to the person blogging to do what they feel is best…I personally am on the fence about this. I don’t usually post pics of my children but since ‘restarting ‘ my blog I have…I have tossed and turned as to whether this was ok or not…for now I’m ok. There are things I won’t say like specific places, locations, vehicles etc or post pics of them in the background…I will also be much more careful as my kiddos get older on posting the occasional picture. Wow, the more I type the more I question my choice to post pics of them. For now I am undecided. I enjoy reading the blogs that do post pics and I enjoy reading the ones that don’t. I hope people enjoy reading mine w or w/o but overall my family’s safety is #1!
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I do blog about my kids. And I blog about myself quite openly, too. I guess as someone in marketing I realize that if someone really wanted to, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out who we are anyway.
So rather than have it be a big mystery that someone might choose to “want to solve” I would rather be more open about it.
That said, there are things I won’t do. I am not going to share where the go to school. And I avoid sharing things that might embarrass them (cute stories are one thing, mortifying details are another).
Like I said, it’s just not that hard to figure out who someone really is if they wanted to, so I choose to be more cautiously transparent.
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I very rarely share pictures that have my kids in them on my blog. I also never share their names. I recently decided to begin another blog about daily live with my autistic daughter. I will share some pictures, but again no names. She will be known on the blog by a nickname. If I do share pictures I try to make sure that they don’t give any idea as to where we may live. The background must be generic enough not to give any clues.
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I voted “not sure”. I think there’s a right way and a wrong way. I try very hard not to expose too much about my girls.. but I do occasionally use them as “models” on my website for review posts, and I do talk about my life as a mom on my personal blog…. I don’t use their real names, but I don’t know if that’s really enough. I think that because I’m living in such a small town now, I’ve gotten more comfortable. I still don’t blog about trips I’m “going” to take.. rather, I blog about them when I’m home and with my family…
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I am also protective of my children when it comes to blogging about them. I try to keep in mind, “If they read this when they are older, would they be embarrassed or hurt?” I am also picky about photos I post of them.
I had this same conversation on my blog back in Nov. Here’s the link so you can read more of my thoughts on this subject http://www.simplymodernmom.com/2009/10/sick-day-the-great-debate/
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This is a great article. I struggle with this too. I see so many bloggers post pictures of their kids and I wish I felt safe doing it but I just don’t.
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I just started blogging and at first had a hard time figuring out just how I wanted to go about it. I love discussing parenting issues but wasn’t too sure about getting personal. In a lot of the blogs I read I see lots of personal stories and just love reading them. So my decision to not be so personal was difficult. I struggled which way to go at first, but I think I finally figured it out. Come check me out at http://www.generationxmomblog.com. Love your blog by the way.
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