mama everyone else is on face book!!!

When they talked about the joys of parenting they did forget to mention that the hours were long, the breaks negligible and the perks usually late in coming. As I race through each day it seems like a whirlwind of appointments that no one apart from me has any intention of keeping. So I rant and I rave, talk to myself to calm down, pin a smile in place when I’m dieing to scream and all in all walk a tightrope to avoid utter chaos.

In between running my girls to school and classes, birthday parties and such comes the onerous task of actual parenting….teaching them values and principles. Of what is acceptable and what is not. It’s hard to not let my world-weary cynicism and sometimes my over-the-top idealism seep into these conversations but I do try.

So every now and then certain issues creep up which will just not go away. The issue of a face book account being one such. My two daughters all of nine years and eleven want to have an account on face book. Well this isn’t something new….They have been wanting this for almost two years now and I am fast running out of arguments in the face of the never ending refrain…. ‘But mama everyone else is on face book’!!! Truth be told most of their friends and even some younger to them have face book accounts and they are unable to fathom how something that is ok for everybody else is not ok for them. I do not profess to be all righteous and claim that I haven’t given it a thought.  I have to admit that I have toyed with the idea myself, though briefly! Sometimes it’s just so much easier to say oh what does it matter…have it your way! Saves us a lot of anguish and the children a lot of whining and cribbing! I have perused the privacy policy but it is clear as to the legal age for joining. This of course makes it imperative for underage children to be untruthful about their age in order to make an account.

If I do allow them to do so how will I instill in them the sense of right and wrong?  We have become lax as to bending rules, cutting corners in our hurry to keep up with the rest of the world. All of us have done it as part of our growing up and even today when we feel life is just that much easier without staring uncomfortable truths in the face. Maybe it’s a small thing but I have not been able to bring myself to allow them…… just yet. I am of course being constantly badgered and to be honest my patience wears thin each day! I am hanging in there……but just!!!!

Finally I do not know whether it will even be worth all the effort. Will I really have achieved something by all the discussions I have with my girls regarding what’s acceptable and what’s not? Or will it ill-equip them to deal with a world which survives on a (to use a very Indian term)…. ‘chalta hai’ attitude???

But yes I can just hope that somewhere in the future they will understand why it was important for me to stick to certain rules (for however long I could!!!)and I hope they will have courage to do the same