as they grow
Kid Confidential

By Leslie Watsonl

As it is commonly defined, the right to privacy means that people should be free from intrusion into their private affairs or public disclosure of embarrassing private information. The rule doesn’t apply very neatly to parents, though, who are duty-bound to nose into their kids’ business as part of keeping them safe and steering them wisely. Any parent whose kid has access to the Internet, for instance, can probably argue convincingly that the occasional invasion of privacy is absolutely vital.

When it comes to divulging information about our kids’ personal lives, though, the morality is more ambiguous. Because our lives intersect so completely with theirs, it can be hard to figure out where our rightful business ends and our kids’ right to privacy begins.

When they first arrive in the world, we are encouraged to share all their news. In those early days, every dribble and coo seems worthy of its own multimedia production, to be shared with an adoring crowd. Later we join playgroups, where we seek solace and camaraderie with people who are also learning to wrangle their own toddling people-creatures. In those circles, it seems natural to tell the details of a child’s most wicked tantrums and silliest moments.

But as our kids grow, the standards change, so that sharing things that were once the stuff of casual conversation can start to feel like a breach of confidence. Emotional outbursts, friend troubles, idiosyncrasies, puppy love, a bad grade—the list of things we know about our kids that they’d rather we not tell others only grows longer as time goes along. For the most part common sense and a little sensitivity can guide parents through the minefield, but the cost of a misstep is high enough that it’s worth a little reflection now and again.

Anyone who writes about her kids in a parenting magazine has necessarily navigated this tricky landscape a few times. As my kids have gotten older I’ve become more inclined to withhold certain details or even avoid some topics altogether so as not to violate anyone’s trust. Once or twice Ned has read something I’ve written and lodged a protest over my characterization of how things went down. Although he doesn’t read everything I write, I sometimes imagine him at my shoulder as I type to help make sure that I stay within bounds.

Committing things to print brings the issue into sharper focus, but it is something that every parent must confront, whether they’re chatting during coffee break, swapping advice with another parent at the school bus stop, or posting to Facebook. Even if the information doesn’t circulate widely, the kinds of unintended consequences that can flow from “over sharing” aren’t hard to imagine: A remark about your kid’s latest transgression to another parent can wind its way through that other family’s dinnertime discussion and emerge a week later as a playground taunt. Or a blog entry about some cute-but-embarrassing childhood episode can live forever on the Internet, until its subject grows old enough to discover it and experiences a long-delayed shock of humiliation and betrayal.

It would be a little hypocritical to provide a detailed illustration from my kids’ lives, so, with apologies to my mom, I’ll turn to some ancient history to bring the point home. When I was in 7th grade, I went through a period of wardrobe anxiety that involved wearing the same gray hooded sweatshirt to school every day for about six months. It was my adolescent safety blanket, the armor I used to deflect the stress of daily life in junior high. One morning as I was getting ready for school I noticed a spot of ketchup on the sleeve. Torn between wanting the security of my sweatshirt and fearing the social cost of having the stain noticed, I resorted to an emergency spit-n-polish cleaning just as my mother walked into my room. She was so taken aback that she told people about it at work—something I know because she mentioned it to me later that night.

I know that my mom was probably just a little freaked out by my obsession with the sweatshirt and was looking for some advice from coworkers. Still, it wasn’t until adulthood that the sting of shame about having my secret strangeness shared with the office typing pool finally disappeared. In retrospect, perhaps I learned an important lesson about managing embarrassment, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what my mom wanted or intended.

The takeaway is hard to articulate, and I can hardly claim to provide a perfect model for respecting a child’s internal life. But I do try to keep attention on my own moral barometer, so that I can realize when I’m slipping too far into parental show-and-tell mode rather than serving as the kind of safeguard for my kids’ secrets that I’d want for my own.

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