Live journal advice sought

In My Humble Opinion
1

A friend just suggested starting a Live Journal specifically to have some contact with my estranged child, who keeps one.

Trying to cut the melodrama to a minimum here, she’s 18 (I’m 51 and divorced from her mom for 12 years now) and we had as close a relationship as you can have while living 150 miles apart, until three years ago when she decided, literally overnight, that I was a bad human being, so bad she couldn’t bring herself to discuss her feelings with so contemptible a scumbag. My ex-wife has supported her in her refusal to talk to me, see a therapist with me, exchange e-mails with me, etc. and my daughter has now left the country, and gone to Europe, in small part so as to avoid any contact with me whatsoever.

My younger daughter, who is 14 and still spends weekends with me, mentioned that her sister keeps a Live Journal, which I looked at last week and found that my 18 year old is mildly homesick, has a cold, has a copy of her favorite novel (which I’m actually teaching to my college class this term) on her nightstand, and I felt sad not to be able to express some sympathy for her.

Anyway, my point is that a friend just asked me, “Why don’t YOU start a Live Journal? Her younger sister will probably mention it to her, or even link it to her own LJ, and then your older one may read it and discover on her own what’s on your mind.”

This sounded like a good idea to me, but I’m not sure how strange it is for a middle-aged guy to keep a Live Journal (it seems that mainly younger women keep LJs but that may be my skewed perspective), if having an ulterior motive queers LiveJournaling in any way, why people who are NOT trying to establish contact with family members want to keep them in the first place, etc. I know there’ve been threads dedicated to it on the SDMB in the past, but I’d like to hear from those LJers specifically about the situation I’m describing. Yea or Nay and what protocols should I follow, if any?

2

If she knows you have a livejournal, she might suspect that you are reading hers and then start locking her journal. This means, you won’t be able to read her entries anymore unless she adds you to her friends list. When I was in High School, some of my friends started do this to their journals after they found out their parents were reading it.

It’s worth a shot, but she also might cut you out even more. I’d just read it instead.

3

First, there’s nothing strange about a middle aged man keeping a Live Journal (well, I’m biased there as I have one myself).

Second, this can work for you but the best way I can think of making it work for you is not to read your daughter’s journal without her knowledge but in fact to start your journal and then send her an e-mail alerting her to your having a journal and that you’ve added her to your friend list.

Say that you want to get back in touch but you didn’t want to sneak in and read her journal without her knowing. That way she can lock/filter any entries she doesn’t want you to be aware of, and that might indeed be most/all of it. Ask herif she’s comfortable with your commenting in her journal, you might be pleasently surprised.

The important part isn’t HER journal.

The important part is YOUR journal. This is a place you can write all the things you want to say to her and she cannot delete them, burn them or otherwise remove them from existance. They will be there when she decide’s to catch up on what’s going on in your mind and she can comment on them all she wants. She’ll be able to delete her comments if she chooses but you can save them off somewhere before that happens.

I would also suggest making sure your 14 year old daughter knows the URL for your live journal.

Friend your 14 year old as well and you’ll be able to write filtered posts that only they can read or only one or the other can read.

But don’t come off as “I just decided to start keeping an online journal”, be above board and honest. Respect her boundaries and decide if there are boundaries regarding this you’ll want her to respect in turn.

4

I think **dublos **has offered very good advice. There is nothing wrong with you starting your own livejournal, there absolutely is no age limit, both my husband and I have one. My sister in NJ has one, and we do use it as a way to keep up on day to day stuff, even though we probably talk more on the phone anyway.

My soon to be 18 year old son has one, but, we have not added each other as friends, simply to allow each other our separate worlds. (One feature on LJ is the ability to view friends of friends, etc. - by not having my son listed as a friend, and he not having me listed as one, his identity is protected from my circle of friends, and vice versa, we do not comment on each other’s journals.)
I am aware that any entries I leave unlocked are online for not only him to read, but anyone with internet access that chooses to, and he is aware of that as well. We filter/lock as we see fit. I do read his from time to time, and I know he reads mine sometimes. And that’s fine.

I say start your own journal, get some thoughts down. Let her know you have one. I wouldn’t add her as a friend at this point. Let her make that call.

You may find it therapeutic to say what you want to say to your daughter, even if you are not 100% sure she’s reading it.

5

I think it’s a great idea, for both your daughters. You can use it to talk about daily life, like the stuff that you forget to or don’t have time to say when she isn’t around. And maybe the older girl will read it, too. I have a sister that I’ve never met, and I hope some day she can read them. Maybe your daughter will chose to read what you have to say someday, but not today. Then she can, in order, from the begininng, and see how you’ve felt from the day that you started it.

Oh, and I’m 19 and I don’t find it all that weird when people over say 30 have them, only those that make a practice of commenting often on much younger people’s ljs, especially ones they don’t know IRL.

6

This thread is better suited for In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move it for you.

Cajun Man
for the SDMB

7

Please please please DON’T read her LJ without letting her know! I had a LJ my freshman year of college (I’m a senior now). I had been updating it for about a month when my brother clued me in that he saw it on my parents’ internet history and that I should know they were reading it. I was pretty angry and felt keenly that a sort of trust had been broken.

If you’re on shakey emotional ground to begin with I wouldn’t push it by even seeming to secretly intrude on her private space. In fact, as someone whose parents pulled that shit on me, I’m pretty irritated at ava’s advice. Ava, are you a parent? Would you read your kid’s journal if you found it in their underwear drawer??

I agree that it’s more important for you to let her know where she can have access to YOUR thoughts, in a secure format, and who knows? She may be open to it. But reading it on the DL? Pfah. I know you want access to her, but that’s a little underhanded, IMHO.

8

Unless you actually lock or filter your entries, your livejournal is not a diary in the conventional sense of the word as it’s public to anyone with an internet connection. Do you leave your journal in a public place for anyone to read if the feeling might strike them?

Different situations.

Granted, her journal might be public out of naïveté but that’s not his problem. I personally think he should contact her if he wants to read it but should he feel compelled or required to? No. At least not in my opinion.

9

It’s not in her underwear drawer. It’s on the Internet. And unlocked/unfiltered posts are on the Internet for the entire world to see. I was mildly annoyed when I found out my mom knew of my journal. But I figured if there was anything she absolutely could not see, the onus was on me to make it private. People who choose to completely ignore all security factors and just leave it up don’t have the right to privacy.

I can’t even imagine anybody believing that their public LJ is in anyway private, unless friendlocked or otherwise filtered. If she doesn’t want the world to read it, including her father, then she should either find a new way to journal or start making her posts secure. If she does neither, it’s not his problem.

10

No, see, I disagree. The privacy aspect is why you have a pseudonym. He couldn’t have done a google search on her name and found the livejournal, it was “leaked” by someone who knew about it. Just because she lets her sister or her friends in on her username doesn’t mean she wants her family members or parents to read it.

(this is, of course, assuming she doesn’t put her name on her LJ… which some people do)

11

If you think a psuedonym is enough to protect your privacy–especially in a livejournal where the very nature of the posts tend to have identifying information–then you probably deserve to have your “privacy invaded.”

Not too long ago, a well known person in the Buffy and Harry Potter fandoms had the secret service come to her house and investigate her based on comments she made in her personal LJ. They weren’t locked comments. They weren’t filtered comments. They were just out there, for the world to see. Just because people forget, or don’t realize, or don’t care, that their “private” thoughts are one google search away doesn’t mean they have the inalienable right to privacy and protection.