When the kids decide they don't want to be on the blog...

A friend of mine today explained on her Facebook page that her family would no longer feature on her blog. She'll continue to talk with authority and be a fabulous advocate in her field, but won't share personal stories. This was at the surprise direct request of her 9 year old.

When your children are little it may not occur to you that you are sharing anything they wouldn't like shared - you may not even know. I think you get away with this scott-free for a shorter period than most people might think.

Before children start school they usually have little concept of embarrassment. By age 5-8 they begin to care what people might think, and around the same time start to become aware of the wider world and how the internet works.

Luckily at age 5 your child will feel a 4 year old is much younger than them and they'll continue to see anyone younger than around 3/4 their age as a 'little kid'. By this logic you are going to be safe with your embarrassing child stories until age 4 with pretty much all children  - and beyond that for as long as they are the kind of person who can laugh at themselves, they just don't care, or you can deflect them long enough until they count it as 'something I did when I was little'.  The third option is probably not wise unless you can also deflect anyone else who may read it and bump into you sometime... 

Our older children have all reached a point they didn't really want to feature in my internet stories, some of them before The Brick Castle was even a twinkle in my eye. They're happy to be included in the #TBCSmiles posts and the occasional event or review post when it suits them, but they don't particularly want to be talked about online and they vet any photographs.

I honestly can't fault them. Like the 9 year old above, our children were brought up to question. Not to take anything 'just because'. Being visible on to the public when you don't want to be 'just because' your Mum has a blog isn't a reason.

Children of any age have an opinion, whether they voice it or not. I try and ask my children and young people if they are happy with a review, a photo, a video. Some of the things they don't like are completely innocuous to me, but they hate them. Rather than being annoyed at having to re-edit, I try to bear in mind that by removing the offending material, I've probably prevented my children being laughed at for something I don't even understand.

It's likely that one day my two small ginger boys will decide that they don't want to participate in the blog. My youngest already refuses sometimes and I have to respect that, however inconvenient. It's actually proven to be fairly easy to drop some of the kids from photos or events without actually pretending they didn't exist. I regularly mention 'some of the children' or 'one of our older ones', but then I have the benefit of several children - it's trickier with 1.

It isn't all bad news though. Even teenagers will usually allow any photo that is taken from far enough away (as long as it's at the right angle and what they were wearing is deemed suitable)...and it always helps if someone else in the photo takes the role of looking daft...