Starting a year or so ago, I only post photos of my kids if they approve. There was an incident at the school about photos and bullying (not my kids) that caused me to be more cautious. And all of my stuff has always been private because I don't have a business. Ha.
I think the alleged friends are acting like jerks, but that's age appropriate and expected. And it takes awhile to be strong enough to drop people from your life who are unkind. Nothing about you blocking them is weird or strange. Block, make a separate account for your business, make your personal account private, done.
I am annoyed at being the bad guy in my daughter's eyes for stuff sometimes, but I remember how at that age I thought my parents were living their lives for the express purpose of embarrassing me. Once my neighbor (also in high school) started a rumor that my mom had busted up a party he threw by chasing people with a broom. I knew it wasn't true because my entire family had been out of town that weekend. And I was annoyed at the kid. But I was ALSO annoyed at my mom for being the kind of person who could inspire a rumor like that. 🤷🏻♀️
Post by sunshineandpinot on Apr 1, 2022 7:39:19 GMT -5
These kids are acting like total jerks. I would block and probably encourage my child to distance themself from these a$$holes. I actually don't think this is age appropriate. This is total bullying 100%.
Sorry this happened. Hopefully this is a warning to other parents to lock down their own social media accounts the same way they would for their teen’s accounts. I feel like internet management is one of the most difficult challenges for modern parents. I would 💯 make my account private and block those kids. You can wait a while if you want and I bet they won’t notice. Tell your daughter you didn’t realize how public your page was and you cleaned up your followers list. You can also delete old posts.
I have a public IG but I don’t post any recognizable pics of my kids (like occasionally there might be the back of someone’s head or far away pic in a landscape scene. I also have a separate business account so I could make my personal page private at any point and mainly because I don’t want work people following my private account at all. It’s easy to manage both accounts. Same login and you click one button to go from one to the other.
So I do have a separate business page, I just link my business IG to my personal FB, because I can't deal with that many accounts (and generally hate posting publicity stuff on social media anyways #lazybusinessowner).
My personal IG was locked down until I tagged a local art school and their teacher to thank them for a great online class my oldest one took during Covid lockdown. H pointed out they can't see it and that my "helpful publicity" was unhelpful to them because no one would be able to see it with a private account. So I unlocked it and just forgot to close it after a week or whatever. 100% my bad, but I made it private the day this occurred, and will be deleting them shortly (going to give a little timing distance and not mention it to my daughter for a while when I do). And of course will be getting her permission to post her pic from now on.
The comments happened via a group text with 4 kids total (so my kid, the 2 jerks, and one other one). The other one never responded (yes, I look at her phone from time to time, yes she knows this), so I used the kind friend as an example - would B ever do something like this? Her reply was NO, of course not, so I said just think about what it means to be a good friend, and what sort of behavior that entails.
There's no way she'll be anywhere near the give-no-fucks territory with her friends for a long time - she's a people pleaser and developmentally, teen social groups/acceptance are the *most* important thing in her life right now. I don't know that it falls entirely into bullying territory, but we're firmly in the "these aren't good friends" zone. So while she'll NEVER acknowledge to my face that I have a point (that if the tables were turned, would she be following and making fun of a friend's mom's posts), at least she's hearing those words and will have them in the back of her mind regarding their behaviors in the future.
Post by foundmylazybum on Apr 1, 2022 9:09:18 GMT -5
I think there is a difference between "give no fucks" and acknowledging truths:
1: it's not weird to wear pajamas, take pictures with your family or enjoy birthdays. How odd and somewhat sad for them that they find those things strange.
2: it's also really strange they are following mothers for hot content.
Personally, I'd block them and tell her to tell them that your audience isn't youth.
Post by pinkdutchtulips on Apr 1, 2022 13:08:31 GMT -5
Middle school girls are vicious … my 12yo has gone into my IG acct to clean it up bc she’s grown very self conscious of her photos being on there even though my acct is set to private and I don’t follow any of her friends but us moms follow each other. Therein lies the access these firs have.
I simply don’t post any photos of Miss R on IG or FB for this reason. We’ve already had a few instances where they’ve pulled photos and added derogatory things to them making fun of her 😢
The only social media I am on is IG. I’ve done a huge clean up of pictures and removed many of my kids and most direct face images. My account has always been private but still I have followers from many years ago that are no longer in my life. I have removed all of them. I use stories more often to share with close friends and rarely post. I think it’s absolutely fair for a child (or any person) to ask that any images of them be removed from IG and for that to be honored. You can save the photos for yourself. If my parents posted for the world many of the pictures they have of me in hard copy on a social media site I would have been mortified then and probably even now! Something a parent might find cute and endearing isn’t viewed the same way for a kid. And also yes when she was six maybe she didn’t care, but she cares now and she practices that on her own account. If you want a public account for your business you should have two accounts.