One of the reasons I love Facebook so much is stalking talking to people that I know from my past. Okay that’s not entirely true – I also like looking through the posts of people I don’t know (stalking) and looking at what people I do know are doing (also stalking).
You can imagine my delight when I was stalking looking through a page of a friend that I used to go to school with and was rewarded with an entire post of things I didn’t know about her. I loved it so much that I liked it. What I hadn’t understood was that if I liked the post I had to return the favour – so thanks to Tali, here are 11 things you didn’t know about me. [Read more…]
One of the favourite memories from my teenage years was coming home at 16 years old to find that my mother had arranged to have my very own phone line installed INTO MY BEDROOM. I can picture my room and the hideous beige/yellow colour of the phone taking up half my desk. (seriously what was it with the colours they used for phones in the 1980’s?), I can feel the huge rush of excitement I felt at my new found freedom and independence and now, as a mother I can almost imagine how thrilled my mother was at my excitement.
Having my own landline was a BIG THING. It meant I could be on the phone for ages without my mother begging me to give her a chance to use the phone herself or worse, tell me to get off the phone because she was expecting a call. Remember there was a time where we had neither call waiting nor mobile phones.
Talking on the phone to my friends was just one of the ways I had of communicating with my peer group. Writing notes that we passed under the desk was the other and talking face to face. And that was it.
There was no Facebook or Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Kik, Snapchat or text. Very different from my child who is four years younger than I was when I got my very own landline.
But I remember that day when I got my phone and I remember that feeling of freedom at being allowed to connect with my friends. I know how important it is for my son to feel the same way. He just doesn’t use the phone to make calls. And he certainly doesn’t pass written notes. He thinks he’s way too cool for that – why write on paper when you can talk online?
Instead he’s all over social media like a rash, it’s second nature for him to be attached to his friends at the touch of a screen, it’s not a matter of whether he’s engaging but rather how he’s doing it.
This attachment to social media often gets a bad rap amongst parents and sometimes deservedly so. We’ve all read stories of internet stalkers and tales of pedophiles grooming children online are spread so fast they almost seem common place. Even though they aren’t.
But I can’t (and don’t) believe that the world is a bad place where people are trying to connect with 12-year-olds in order to seduce them. Or worse. Why stop him from talking with his friends instead of teaching him who he can and can’t talk to, who is safe, who is best left unanswered and who he should alert me to.
Having the option to go online to cialis tablets india not only treats ED by increasing blood circulation in pelvis and relaxing the muscle allowing it to recover. It could be a side-effect of prescriptions and dysfunctions related to diminished androgens cialis overnight shipping or substantial estrogens levels. This can discount viagra lengthen the timeline and increase cost without delivering any real business advantage. These online generic cialis online pharmacies provide lucrative offers to the physicians. Yes, he may encounter strangers online – just like I met strangers on my walk to and from school every day but they are not all out to get him. And I can see who he is talking to online. I can’t see who he’s talking to on the walk home from school.
We read horrific accounts of cyber bullying and point the finger at social media. But bullying happened before the internet. Remember school? The reach may be bigger now and the effects more widely reported. I am not undermining the hideous reality of trolls but I think it would be naïve to think that relentless, continued and persistent bullying didn’t take place before the internet when there was no “block and delete”.
I hear stories about popularity contests on Instagram and I am grateful that I have access to this same technology so I can talk to my son about it. I know that in the 1980’s at my primary school there were popularity contests too and just because they weren’t online doesn’t mean they weren’t just as damaging and cruel. We just didn’t tell our mothers and it certainly wasn’t reported in the media.
I’m going to stick up for 2013 here and the transparency of social media. If my son’s gone out with friends I’m more than likely about to see what they’re doing on Instagram, if he’s commenting on someone’s status it comes up on my Facebook feed. Every conversation he has is being more or less transcribed and I have access to every word of it should I need to talk to him through it.
He is only 12 and he knows that I have access to all his accounts and I am not naïve enough to think that this wont change as he gets older. But when he’s older it wont be appropriate for me to be tuning into his conversations and by then he’ll have learned how to handle himself online. He’ll know that the channel of communication with me is open and he wont to be naïve enough to think that if he puts something online it can’t be found.
It never happened with private phone calls and letters passed under the desk. I think back to my days as a teen and how little my parents knew about what I was going through… it makes me shudder. It makes me happy I am able to communicate with my own child in the same world he is communicating in.
I am not afraid of social media, I use it every day. So does my son. And I’m okay with that.
Are your kids on social media? Are you okay with it?
I started my blog in 2009, which may feel like a million years ago except it’s only four. I had really good intentions when it began and I was so stoked to have a little place on the internet to call my own, to write about what I wanted, when I wanted. But then I kind of got side tracked by work for about three and a half of those years.
At the beginning it was cool, I was reading blogs almost every day – how awesome is it that it was part of my job? I read blogs and I followed bloggers on Twitter and Facebook and I read and requested many brilliant blogs for republication on Mamamia. But then the job literally swept me off my feet and all of a sudden I wasn’t able to read as much as I did before. As for getting involved and commenting – well that was just a distant, albeit very fond, memory
And while I tried desperately to hold on in the one hour a day I wasn’t working, I wasn’t able to keep up. The whole blogging scene was changing before me. It’s a funny thing how you notice things from the outside in when you aren’t on the inside. And it’s funnier still when you go back inside and look at it again from a different perspective.
Some bloggers monetised their blogs (which I think is fabulous and clever and good on them). Some bloggers became very serious about the art of blogging and decided that there was only one way to do it. Some bloggers formed alliances and created very cool collaborative websites of their own and some bloggers tried to distance themselves from others. Hundreds of blogging competitions popped up and people began attending blogging conferences/workshops and seminars. It makes me feel 107 to say “they weren’t doing that in my day”.
In essence I guess blogging grew up a bit while I was furiously paddling alongside it. Just not in it.
So where does this leave someone who was paddling during the change period?
I’m still blogging much like I was doing in 2009 but hoping to do that with a little more frequency now that it is one of my primary tasks. And I am thrilled about that decision.
They perform viagra prescription australia features at Manatee Funeral Hospital based in the area. Ed viagra lowest price frankkrauseautomotive.com degree is its providing job prospects in government and private sectors alike, which helps students a lot. There are men who are able to beat the prevalence of Sildenafil Citrate 100mg, it vardenafil vs viagra becomes obvious for men to achieve a strong and steady emotional set up. This situation can bring strong emotional pressure on man because buy tadalafil in canada of the fact that strong erections are a type of fitness workout for the penis and of course you can get a surgery, but that’s dangerous and expensive. I know a HEAP more about social media and building communities than I knew in 2009, my writing has developed (I hope) and I think I may have even become a little more confident after stepping away from a huge website. I also have a shitload of editorial experience.
But there is so much I feel like I may have missed out on because what I don’t have is the connection with the blogging world that I used to have. And I want it back.
I don’t want to be part of a clique. I’ve hated those since about 1973 when I started school, I don’t want to be part of some inner sanctum and I don’t even want to attend the seminars and conferences (unless breakfast is included – I love breakfast).
I don’t want to ask you who your favourite blogger is because I HATE competition as much as I love breakfast. The thought of putting people in order puts me off my food, but I’d love to know if there are any blogs you recommend I follow?
Also do YOU have a blog? Give me the address so I can follow you in the most non stalkery way possible.
Hit me with it – and thank you also for sticking with me.
I am what can be referred to as a sensitive person. With sensitive meaning over the top, ridiculous, analyzing every move that anyone in my general vicinity makes in an effort not to upset anyone.
It’s quite tiring being that sensitive and sadly sensitivity is a great feeder for anxiety. We all know that anxiety just loves to feed on sensitivity and so my anxiety is fat. Bordering on obese when it comes to the “upsetting other people” basket.
In fact it got a huge big feed the other day when I was browsing around on Facebook. I was on the page of a friend when I happened to glance up at mutual friends and saw something awry. Did I mention that I am painfully observant as well as ridiculously sensitive? Anyhow all my quirks and foibles checked out mutual friends and thought that it was really strange that PWSTHM (Person Who Seems To Hate Me) was not friends with this person. Odd. Alarm bell ringing odd. So I clicked over to PWSTHM’s page and saw that she has unfriended me!
Old habits die hard and I immediately began to run through all the things that I could have done wrong in my head. I checked my Facebook page to see if I had posted anything that may be deemed offensive. But I hadn’t, in fact I hadn’t posted anything at all on my personal Facebook page for days (and I knew that she had only recently unfriended me because I had seen her updates only days earlier). I wondered if there was something I had said to her in “real life” but then I remembered that I hadn’t spoken to her in real life for about 6 weeks.
It’s one thing when someone that you haven’t seen since high school snubs your friend request, but being unfriended by someone you know, like right now, is a bit of a slap to the face – especially when it seems to come from nowhere. It takes time to unfriend someone – you actually have to make an effort not to like them anymore. I checked on Instagram and Twitter and she’s unfollowed me there too. How much effort has she put into not liking me? Yes, I could be flattered by the amount of time she has spent on my various social media sites just in the process of unliking me but that feels weird.
However, this viagra buy germany informative store is not a daily based dose, which means you should take once a day only while opting for sexual role on a particular day. Start from a reputable affiliate directory, then click your way cipla cialis italia visit that around. They may be purchasing cialis online expensive but don’t buy cheap supplements. they will not work positvly. For the medicine is similar effective of http://respitecaresa.org/rustic-gallery-helps-respite-cares-kids/ cialis 40 mg, all of the persons are not eligible for purchasing the medicine. This was very bad for sensitive me because I kept wondering WHY she hated me and more importantly for a sensitive person that really needs closure on every aspect of her life there was NOTHING I could do. I can’t very well contact someone who has publicly revoked our friendship and ask her why (plus what if she’s blocked my number?)
I spent quite a few hours being upset about it because I hate the fact that I have so clearly pissed her off and then just like that I advanced on to relief. To be honest I am glad high school is over, I am glad that I don’t have to prove myself to a judgemental clique. I am glad that there is no one who is not on my side in my Facebook feed.
The whole unfriending thing seems to be so mean, cowardly and immature that if I am friends with “unfrienders” I’d rather not be.
Sorry PWSTHM I am taking back my power and I am not going to be rattled that you no longer like me (although you will never know and that’s okay with me).
Have you ever unfriended someone on Facebook ? Why? Have you ever been unfriended? How did you feel?
I have a major communication problem which is clearly a big issue for someone who works in communication.
I am fine on text, not brilliant because I prefer a keyboard with a bit more, how you say – size. I am great on email and because I am rather er, organised I am pretty good at returning emails as well as actually starting a conversation happening electronically. I use Facebook with a relentless ardour, I don’t manage to go to long without checking Twitter and every time anything happens (like I eat or my dog moves) I snap it on Instgram. But the phone is where my whole communication breakdown occurs.
I positively hate phoning people (except you know if you are my husband*, my son or anyone in my VERY immediate family)
This loathing of the phone is not a huge issue and for that I am very lucky – I can “talk” via any form of electronic media and get my point across, keep in contact and you know – get on with stuff. And if I analyse it really thoroughly, which of course I am doing for the purposes of research for this post, it’s not the actual call I don’t like as much as instigating the call.
I loathe phoning people, especially people with whom I have no previous connection and you’d be surprised at how often this actually happens. Here are just some of the things I have big problems with
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The one thing that I try to do to alleviate my anxiety at making the call is to Google the person that I am trying to call. If they don’t look intimidating I feel a little easier – this never works for hairdressers.
Put it this way, if I was employed as a cold caller I would be fired during the first hour when I sat doodling nervously on a paper pad while waiting for the courage to pick up the phone. In fact I have a very “impressive” doodling collection sitting on the table in my own study. If you look through the doodles very carefully you will see the word “hello” written a billion times – clearly I am urging myself to start somewhere.
I am not quite sure why I am so nervous of the phone I just know that if I keep typing and typing I can put off making the calls I am supposed to make this morning.
* there are caveats to this – when he is on the way home from work and I am doing a bazillion things at home and I call to find out what time he is coming home and he just wants to chat to wile away the time in the traffic then I definitely hate phoning him.
Isabella Dutton (photo from The Daily Mail)
I am always careful in what I put online – especially when it comes to my child. I check with him if I share a photo that he is in it and I am mindful of not putting anything out there that I would not want him to read at any time. Not just now but in the future.
It is with this in mind that I was quite taken aback when I read this brutally honest post from Isabella Dutton aptly named “The mother who says having these two children is the biggest regret of her life”
Isabella is 57 now and her two children Jo and Stuart are adults. She has told the world via an article in the Daily Mail about how much she resented her children. How she wished she’d never had them.
She writes in part
“My son Stuart was five days old when the realisation hit me like a physical blow: having a child had been the biggest mistake of my life.
Even now, 33 years on, I can still picture the scene: Stuart was asleep in his crib. He was due to be fed but hadn’t yet woken.
I heard him stir but as I looked at his round face on the brink of wakefulness, I felt no bond. No warm rush of maternal affection.
I felt completely detached from this alien being who had encroached upon my settled married life and changed it, irrevocably, for the worse.
I was 22 when I had Stuart, who was a placid and biddable baby. So, no, my feelings were not sparked by tiredness, nor by post-natal depression or even a passing spell of baby blues.
Quite simply, I had always hated the idea of motherhood. In that instant, any lingering hope that becoming a mum would cure me of my antipathy was dispelled.
I remember asking myself, ‘Is he really mine?’ He could, quite literally, have been anyone’s baby. Had a kind stranger offered to adopt him at that moment, I would not have objected.
Still, I wished no harm on Stuart and invested every ounce of my energy in caring for him. Even so, I know my life would have been much happier and more fulfilled without children.
Two years and four months after Stuart was born, I had my daughter Jo. It may seem perverse that I had a second child in view of my aversion to them, but I believe it is utterly selfish to have an only one.
I felt precisely the same indifference towards her as I had to Stuart, but I knew I would care for Jo to the best of my ability, and love her as I’d grown to love him.Physiotherapists recommend that each person who has experienced lower back pain caused by pinched viagra online in kanada nerves will effect constipation because the same nerves that regulate the lower back also deal with and regulate the intestines and how they function. The condition leads to turn the penile in relax order cialis and the patient is able to lose the tenseness, the pain, and becomes drowsy because the muscle pain and tightness evaporates. Cyber criminals and hacktivists have an impressive record of breaking buy cheap viagra into multi-million dollar companies. This substance also makes the blood look at more info levitra pharmacy purchase vessels in the penis to dilate allowing the increased blood flow that leads to a fuller and firmer erection for intense lovemaking.
Yet I dreaded her dependence; resented the time she would consume, and that like parasites, both my children would continue to take from me and give nothing meaningful back in return.Whenever I’ve told friends I wished I’d never had them, they’ve gasped with shock. ‘You can’t mean that?’ But, of course, I do.
And further into the article she explains her life with her kids
Tony and I had our rigidly defined roles. I did not look after the children when he was around. So as they played football, sat glued to the Grand Prix or watched the golf, I would creep back to our chalet and immerse myself in a good book. Other mums were running around like headless chickens after their children, but in our household Tony took that role.
We shared many happy times together; I did everything a good mother is supposed to. We had bucket-and-spade holidays on the Isle of Wight; there were endless sports events in which the children shone. I’m sure they would agree that they always felt secure and loved.
It was not that I seethed each day with resentment towards my children; more that I felt oppressed by my constant responsibility for them. Young children prevent you from being spontaneous; every outing becomes an expedition. If you take your job as a parent seriously, you always put their needs before your own.
Having children consigns you to an endless existence of shelling out financially and emotionally, with little or no return. It puts a terrible strain on your marriage and is perennially exhausting. And your job is never done.
I know my life with Tony would have been so much happier without children, less complicated and more carefree.”
I don’t believe either that Stuart or Jo sensed any coolness on my part, although Jo once said, ‘You never tell me you love me, Mum.’ And I didn’t, it’s true. But I reassured Jo that I did love her. She and Stuart just accepted that I wasn’t demonstrative.”
It’s crystal clear she didn’t want children and I almost applaud her for the honesty in which she conveys this. She may not have loved her children in the traditional sense (certainly not in the Hallmark sense) but she acted like she thought a mother was meant to behave.
Clearly her children are old enough to have read it and it’s obvious that she has spoken to them about it. Why she wrote about it is another story altogether. But does she deserve to be attacked by “better mothers”?
The Mail Online closed comments on the post but not before thousands of people attacked her, not just as a mother but as a person. The comments were horrific and nasty. Hundreds of other media outlets picked up the story and the comments were just as vehement.
No kidding huh?
As always it makes me wonder about all the people that write hateful and poisonous comments online. Not just about this story but many others. Somehow it’s okay to write anything in a comment, it’s fair play to be mean and nasty in a response to something but it’s not okay for a writer to do that in a post.
I moderated comments on Mamamia for many years – I think I’ve seen the gamut of responses to other people’s parenting. I’ve been unlucky enough to stumble on some hideous forums that think it’s fair play to pick apart Australian bloggers, I’ve read the comments on far too many stories on other online forums and I’ve seen the vilest of Twitter abuse.
So while I can’t claim to understand what drove Isabella Dutton to write this piece (maybe she just wanted to air her view – maybe she has indeed helped thousands of other mothers who bring up their children perfectly well but hate parenting) I have more difficulty understanding parents that continue to bully and abuse other parents in comments and online forums while proclaiming how much better they are as people.
I’m careful about what I put out there about my son, I’d hate to hurt him in any way. I am well aware that it’s as easy for him to read the comments as it is the story. And I never want him to think that bullying is okay.