I was sitting in the hallway waiting for my kids to finally fall asleep. All three of them wanted me to sit in their bedrooms, but obviously this wasn’t possible.
I don’t know if you realize this, but a person cannot be three places at once. Try telling them this.
So I compromised and plopped down onto the hardwood floor – able to be seen by both rooms.
I picked up my phone and went to type a Facebook status about how frustrated I was. It was going to be funny. It wasn’t going to be ugly or anything. It was going to hopefully get another tired mom or dad to say, “YUP. Been there.”
But as I started to type, I had this realization. Someday my kids are going to have access to this information. They’re going to be able to see everything that I said about my days as a mom and as a wife.
They’re going to see every word I posted – exactly how I felt about them – everything that I had shared.
Our kids will be the first generation to have access to their parent’s Facebook accounts of their lives – able to read back to the moments they were born.
I think of how this has the potential to impact them.
They Will See How We Felt About Being Their Parents
I imagine them scrolling through my timeline saying things like, “Wow. I didn’t know she felt that way about me.” Perhaps they will realize all of the wonderful things we felt, but they will read everything negative as well.
They can go back and see the joy of their birth, celebrations and graduations, but they can also see the “I am putting everyone to bed early because I just can’t take their voices anymore” statuses as well.
It is important to be honest and give ourselves grace to feel these feelings, but what if we knew our kids would read them?
They Will See How We Speak To Others (Including Our Spouses)
Our kids know who we really are. They know how we interact at home. They know how we speak about their dad and their grandparents. They know what we are saying about friends and family.
When they go back through our timelines, will they see the same person they lived with? Or will they see someone who was very different at home than they were online?
Will they hear mom and dad fighting like crazy and look back reading status updates about incredible date nights, realizing how much their parents wanted to make everyone else believe they were in love.
OR worse? Will they read all of the dirty laundry vented onto the internet about their mother or father by their mother or father?
Will They See A Life Documented As It Was Really Lived?
Will they see photos of clean living rooms and happy park days and remember that life was really a little messier and chaotic?
Will they see posts about their wonderful son or daughter and remember how you were too busy to tell them to their faces?
Or will they see a life online that tells their real stories?
Is there a call to action here? I guess, but it will look differently for you than it does for me. We each share what we feel comfortable sharing. We each portray the aspects of our lives that matter to us.
My only question is, if you knew that your great great grandchildren were reading what you had to say, what would you make sure they read?
The future is listening. Friends, what are we going to say?
