to feel sorry for the dc of parents who post daily pictures and 'anecdotes' about them on Facebook

[VioletBrogues]

I know I would have been mortified to discover that a significant part of my childhood had been shared with hundreds of 'friends'.

The odd picture and newsy stuff every so often is okay, but I have friends who post pictures almost daily of potty training, sick children, tantrums, conversations their children have, funny little mistakes they make and well every tiny detail really.

Its your choice if you choose to share your life in this way. But the lack of respect of the privacy of a child who is too young to choose makes me feel very uncomfortable.

God. I've got a photo of DDs 3 year old bare arse on my FB. She thinks it's funny

Oh well, each to their own.

Totally agree. Read one today that involved sorting out a bum wind problem for a 6 year old. They has seen a specialist ffs!

I totally understand you op, and I agree.

I love baby pictures on fb, and cute anecdotes or updates. I don't see a problem with that, and I think when those children go up, if they can look back that far, it's a lovely memory book.

But I think the line is anything your teenage dc wouldn't want their prom date knowing - potty training, poo stories, tantrums, accidents, etc.

Also imagine if one day the papers could go trawling and find the details of the president's toilet training on the internet. Do we really want that? I can't imagine oversharing mothers ever having their children grow up to any sort of high profile position.

*grow up

I sometimes wonder what mumsnet children would think about the stuff their parents post/have posted about them.

Its not about how I feel seeing them i.e. telling me to block them, or about how you feel i.e. you find it funny. Its about how that child might feel in years to come when they realise that something they said or did in a private family moment has been shared by their parents on a public forum.

I agree with portfino, I recently lost my bf, her oldest dd loves the fact she can scroll bk through her mums timeline and see what she wrote.

OP, there's something called privacy settings on FB You can choose who sees your photos and comments. Some people don't use them, or think they are doing but have made a mistake, but most people do to some extent. It simply does not follow that posting a pic of a child automatically means that hundreds of people, including strangers, will see that picture, or a comment.

When I was little everyone's parents showed loads of pictures and slides, and gossiped and bragged and nattered about what their various DC were up to. With FB, people can ignore or accidentally miss pictures and updates, whereas if Uncle Jimmy was making you watch 500 slides about the family holiday to Bognor, with running commentary, you had no choice to have to hear and see it all (whilst praying for death). I actually think people probably saw more pics and heard more details about kids' lives Back In The Day than they probably do now.

Like Portofino, I only have FB family and friends I know. Some of them I did meet online, but I now know them beyond that scope. Both Dh and I have family and friends all over the UK, and abroad, and FB is a great way for us all to see what's going on with each other's lives, and see how the various DC are doing. FB actively builds familial bonds for many people. DS loves seeing pictures of his little cousins and second cousins, or the Dc of close friends. It's far easier, and more spontaneous to show him pics of FB than dig out some photo albums and sit him down, to remind him of his family.

Some of my cousins have posted old scanned pics of our late grandparents which I've never seen before, and pics of me and my siblings and parents that we've not seen before, and vice versa. That's really great.

If the only thing my dc are annoyed with me about is that I posted photos of them on Facebook I think I will have succeeded in being a pretty good mother.

But it isn't a public forum is it?

Oxfordbags I too believe that there are some positive elements to FB and provided the privacy settings are appropriate, some pictures and stories of dc is, in my view, fine. I'm talking about the over-sharing, non-filtering parental posting.

Maybe you are lucky to have most family and friends near by. I post a picture/ adecdote about fortnightly. All my good family and friends live hundreds or thousands of miles away. It helps me feel they are part of my childrens lives in between visits. I don't have 100 s of 'friends' though (although my family and close friends makes for quite a lot) and my privacy settings are high.

I do agree though that we should be selective, I would never dream of posting about my children's health/embarrassments etc

I joined facebook when dc1 was born, and the reason I joined was to share details of my dcs' childhoods with friends and family who wouldn't see them growing up day to day. I wouldn't say anything that might be embarrassing for them, but I do post a lot of pics and little anecdotes about them. What I don't like is when people constantly post about how naughty their children are - one "friend" (quickly de-friended) used to call her ds "devil child" and post pics of him having tantrums because she thought it was funny.

I love the pics of your dc MrsD. They are so cute and look so mischievous and happy. Mine always seems to put on a miserable expression when the camera is pointed.

I hope that my DC will be able to look at my Facebook in years to come and know that they were the most important, most loved, most adored people in my life. I hope Facebook is around for years to come and they will be able to share it with their children. If that makes you sad OP that's fine everyone is entitled to their opinion.

We all have different feelings about privacy. I don't even have the cat on Facebook. I've grown to dislike it and am starting to remove pictures. I'm just very an*l about it so the op is nbu afaic. Fb is a public site.

Sometimes I share what my children are doing in a full technicolor, live action 4D way. I let them out in public.

Privacy settings and healthy relationships on Facebook should sort any problems. Oh and I have never felt sad about parents who obviously love their children even if they we tedious

I tend to agree with you, and so don't post minutiae from my kids' lives in FB.

But you're going to get loads of people on here who do exactly that, and they clearly don't see the tedium problem.

Back in ye olden days, there were two types of people, too.

Those who flashed the family album to all and sundry, and those who smiled politely through it...

I wouldn't feel sorry for them; though I wouldn't find constant updates and anecdotes particularly interesting.

If you put a photo on facebook who owns it? I put the occasional up of dcs (it is easier than explaining how to open attachments or blocking up inboxes) but nothing too embarrassing or private. Keeps the rellies happy and it is nice to see peoples dcs growing and changing especially when friends and family live far away.

However I have a few of friends with legal training and NONE of them put pics of their dcs on facebook. Basically their take is the photo is owned by facebook when you put it up there, you lose all rights to it. They all agree legally it is considered a public, not private, forum.

Just read the Daily Wail or The Sun to consider how well privacy settings work, they are in peoples fb accounts in no time to drag up pictures and titbits about their lives; I can't believe all these people didn't know how to use privacy settings....