One of the most important things parents can do to keep their children cyber-safe is maintain a relationship defined by open communication, which requires a culture of transparency and respect for personal boundaries. And yet a lack of parenting social media etiquette discourages open communication, and can encourage your child to create secret, alternative media presence using alter egos and different apps. Below are a top ten list of parenting social media miss-steps which the Daily Mail recently published.

Cyber parenting is a paradox. On the one hand, the technology of smart wireless devices and apps has disrupted home life and family relationships. The power of one-to-many communications seduces us away from face-to-face interaction. And it is easy for children to believe that parents have less authority because WWW connectivity affords access to unlimited “knowledge” and people. No doubt technology is definitely a game changer for parenting and family life. On the other hand, the fundamentals of cyber parenting have less to do with technology and more to do with hearts and minds. So let us consider that there are three realms of security in our modern world.

In this “it is all about me” world of texting and social media, children can know way too much for their own good. More importantly, they are easily conditioned to keep the parent out of the equation when they are searching for answers and they risk becoming lost in the faulty-thinking of peer communities that frankly do not respect the individual.

The over functioning parent emerges when parenthood is perceived as an “achievement” and we blur the lines between our own life outcomes and those of our children.

TheFish103.9FM CyberParenting topics, Tuesdays.

(This is a slightly modified excerpt from Banana Moments: Family Business Quarterly, Fall 2008)

Blind spots are those aspects of our children’s lives that we cannot see or experience.

Since we are not with our children 24 hours a day, there will be much that our children do and experience of which we are unaware. While this was generally the case with our own parents, today there is much …

The new Time cover features a photo of a mother nursing her four year old son (he’s standing on a chair to reach her breast).  A cyber-powered controversy ensued and today the mother on the cover speaks out to defend herself.

Motherhood is as much an extremely personal experience, as it is a nurturing/socialization role shared by many. When we start to judge and measure  our motherhood decisions (stay at home, breast feeding, discipline/leadership, …