1.) You can still send messages to private users.
2.) She messaged me so all I’ve got to do is hit reply.
3.) Your ignorance of how Facebook works is making my job easy.
Yeah, but you’re “friending” other people’s children. That’s pretty weird. Who the hell knows wwhat your intentions are. I wouldn’t be comfortable with my 11 year old daughter having her classmate’s parents wanting to friend her. Even if she asked first, which she wouldn’t, it’s still inappropriate to accept the request. Doesn’t Facebook have a minimum age of 13 anyway? What is an 11 year old doing with a profile at all?
My response to the OP is that “Jack” sounds immature and rude. It’s ridiculous for an adult to care about being “defriended” on facebook by a 14 year old, and inapppriate to tgry to parent him. He’s also put his kids in an uncomfortable position of having to apologize for him.
Parents should pay some basic attention to what kind of people their kids are hanging out with, but it’s completely inappropriate to involve oneself and helicopter to the extent of actually following them on facebook and moniring their conversations (I personally cannot imagine myself giving shit one about my kids’ friends’ facebook pages or whether they want to be my “friend.” The answer is a resounding fuck no. I do not want to be their friend).
I suspect that “Jack” just didn’t like this kid to begin with and was looking for an excuse to jump his shit.
To Ca7399, has your husband ever made any other comments or given you any indication to think he might harbor some racist feelings or prejudices? Is it possible he might not like the idea of his daughter hanging out with a black guy?
Then I guess you’ve realized by now that you don’t talk to my daughter without going through her parents. Your ignorance of my family is making my job easy.
Besides, what difference does it make if she were actually 13. You don’t think you can stalk a real 13-year-old? Somehow that TOS protects 13 year olds better than it does 11 year olds?
Not necessarily. It doesn’t have to be a comment someone made, sometimes you’ll see fan groups, or just oh, I don’t know, “statements” or quotes that people click “like” on. Not that it wasn’t a dick move on Jack’s part (BIG TIME).
I’m just pointing that out that it could just be some quote that a friend linked too and clicked like and then John did the same – it would show up on John’s feed – Jack wouldn’t have had to search for it.
That’s true. 13 year olds are not safe either. How does that make it safe for an 11 year old?
It’s not hard for you to get into other children’s facebook pages, after all.
That’s what you think.
No difference at all.
Uh, guys? I think you’re being whooshed by Melon. Or at least, I hope so. (I think he’s trying to point out how easy it is for that kind of thing to happen. Or just being a dick. God, I hope so)
I’m pretty sure everybody understands that he’s being rhetorical. I don’t get the sense that BEG is taking him literally, just responding in kind.
So really, it was you two who wooshed Guin. 
That’s twice!
OK, you think it’s weird. Don’t do it. Nobody is forcing these kids to have social interaction with other kids and their parents. At this age, it’s good for kids to have involved parents. I don’t know why you think that’s helicoptering. I’m not trying to protect her from the big bad, scary world. I’m trying to encourage her to be a part of it in a safe and normal way.
I think you people have been brainwashed by the media that sensationalizes every random act of stranger violence towards children and fear-mongers about how dangerous the internet is for children that you should never let them on it without ridiculous filters and lockdown programs.
Look, we’ve had the safety conversations – be it safety on the bus, in the neighborhood, and on the internet – with our daughter. If you think that makes me blase, you’d be wrong. If you think that makes me feel somewhat safer, well it does. While we believe she is statistically unlikely to be targeted by an AClockworkMelon, we don’t abandon our duty to educate her and teach her responsible online behavior. We monitor her activity, both actively and passively, by staying involved in her online activities and checking periodically for unusual or suspicious activity for her safety and our peace of mind. We aren’t secretive, abusive, or militant about it. She knows what we’re doing and why. It’s pretty apparent that the parents who have friended us and our daughter are doing the same thing we are with respect to their kids.
As for her friends, they’re charming, most of the time. They’re kids the rest of the time. I’ve seen nothing from those kids that isn’t the same typical kid stuff you’d witness in a sixth grade classroom. They talk about Selena Gomez and whether Bieber is great or sucks; and draw graffiti on each others pictures. They upload stuff about their Beta Club honors or martial arts events and take silly quizzes. I know their parents and they know my daughter. And it feels great to be a part of this little community. We’re aren’t going to hide in the closet. Sorry.
Once again, she has a profile to keep in touch with her classmates and friends who have gone on to other schools.
ETA: I guess I could add that our primary reason for getting her a Facebook account was to make it very easy for her to stay in touch with family around the country and allow them to stay as intimately involved in what was going on in her life as possible when you’re thousands of miles away.
You sound like a great parent.
I do the best I can.
I don’t want to be in a community with children. I am a grown up. Kids need space away from their parents. They shouldn’t have parents looking over their shoulders while they try to develop identities and social skills. They need space to able to cuss and try smoking and climb on top of sheds and make friends with terrible people. They need seasoning. That’s how they become fully adult. Parents shoud be blissfully ignorant, in my opinion. It’s better not to look while they’re being seasoned. Just monitor their rooms for syringes and guns and wait for them to come out the other end.
You sound like a great parent, too.
Not at 11 years old, they don’t. There’s plenty of time for that once the hormones start coursing through their veins. God, youth truly is wasted on the young.
I have an 11 year old, and I don’t feel the need to pore through her classmates’ facebook pages. I couldn’t be less interested. I barely know their names. Even at 11, I think she needs to develop friendships and relationships without being supervised. My goal is for my kids to be independent. I try to give the the tools and information they need to handle their business on their own. I can coach them up, but when it’s all said and done, they have to be able to do things on their own and they have to have space away from their parents to make their own mistakes and find their own identities. They know we’ll always be here when they get back.
Looking back in retrospect, years later, I started to realize how much my parents knew about that I thought they were clueless about, but they were willing to look the other way and let me get myself get roughed up a little bit. The most valuable lessons are the hard lessons.
Thing is, I know parents who took that philosophy who wound up with pregnant 14 year olds.
There is no guarantee that experience will teach what you want it to teach. People can have the exact same experiences and learn completely different things. Plus, you never know when one of those experiences will be a really bad one.
Now, in typical Dio-speak, I assume you are overstating yourself, and, while you don’t really monitor her Facebook, you have an idea of what she does online. She has proven to you that you can trust her, so you are giving her a little freedom. That’s definitely a good thing.
But that doesn’t mean that someone who chooses differently from you is somehow morally deficient. There’s nothing inherently wrong with an adult having a relationship with a child, especially if you are aware of the context of that relationship.
My youth pastor gets added all the time by his kids, as do many teachers, pastors, etc. Do you really think these people are all morally deficient? Because, if you did, I don’t see how you’d let your children be around other adults at all.
I didn’t say morally deficient. I said creepy. I would definitely be creeped out by any non-related adult who wanted to friend my kids on facebook. Immaturity is another possibility, though. I just can’t comprehend a grown adult wanting to be BFF’s with children who aren’t their own. That’s just weird. What are they going talk about, iCarly? What’s the point.?
It’s unprofessional and inappropriate for teachers to try to pursue personal relationships with the kids they work with outside of school, by the way.
If I had a 14 year old son, I’d hope that someone would tell him that that sort of offensive, sexist rhetoric was inappropriate, but to do so in an appropriate and not preachy way. Someone has to take the lead in teaching our kids these things, and if the parents aren’t doing it, then the other adults around certainly should. And it’s not like these kids don’t know that the adults on their Facebook friend lists can’t see it when they “like” these offensive things. I recently had a long go-around with a young cousin over liking one of the many variations on the hoary “bitch make me a sandwich” things.
That said, the way Jack went about this? All wrong, and I can’t blame John for not wanting to be anywhere near him now.