<p>Oldfort, I liked your last post a lot. But this:</p>
<p>“Everyone has their own benchmark, for me, if I were find out my kid’s SO is a married man or has a criminal record then I would definitely say something” </p>
<p>amused me. Why?</p>
<p>Because I absolutely cannot imagine an OldfortD who wouldn’t have figured that out in a nanosecond all on her own! :)</p>
<p>LOL, garland. But love could be blind.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4…strangely enough, I have an “uncommon name”. I also have a VERY limited internet presence, so anything you find “about me” from my small town will more than likely be about someone else. Just sayin.</p>
<p>^^^True, but D2 had told me which high school he attended, and he was the only one there with that name in that graduating class. But your point is quite valid.</p>
<p>I have learned a great deal about people from their blogs, tumblr pages, formspring pages, and twitter feeds. In these situations, there was sufficient detail revealed to allow me to determine that I was reading the work of the correct person. This is first-person testimonial–material the individual has chosen to share him/herself.</p>
<p>I’ve been very surprised.</p>
<p>That is a very good point romani.</p>
<p>I am not so skilled socially IRL. Information helps me operate IRL. Im not so likely to stick my foot in it & with more info, I findI am more kind.
I have googled kids serious friends, because then I don’t feel compelled to play #20 Questions. (Serious means exclusive involvements of over a year.)</p>
<p>Im not going to share my secrets, but I have ways of verifying the one Im researching is the one I want. I can keep secrets, but if something involves me, I usually want to know about it. </p>
<p>One of my first memories was finding my wrapped presents for Christmas, in my parent’s closet. I only opened one of them, one that was obviously a record, because that was the only thing I really cared about. My parents had a habit of not really paying attention to what I said, & I didnt have high hopes. It wasn’t the one I wanted, although it was the same artist ( & normally, that wouldnt matter, but at the time I was very particular, I think I was 12).
But it allowed me to wrap it back up, and when I opened it again on Christmas, I was able to be surprised and not show my disappointment.</p>
<p>When my D was working in India( she turned 19 when she was there), I lost communication with her. ( The organization that she was with told me she was traveling with some people she had met) They tried to help, but as I dont speak Hindi or Tamil ( and had completely forgotten about my aunt who does), I had to use other resources to find her.</p>
<p>Which I did kinda. i tracked down someone who lived a few blocks from us, who was traveling after med school and before his residency, and had met Ds group for a while. ( he was keeping a travel blog so his family & friends knew how he was doing. My D didn’t even have a cell phone).
I mostly just wanted to be sure she was taking care of herself, and to have some idea of where she was. The young man was very helpful, he gave me the name of who she was with ( which her volunteer group already did, but it was reassuring that ahe was still with them).
I was able to get the cell # of someone she was traveling with and had her call me.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is helicoptering. Don’t care. My parents had too many troubles to be very hands on and I wanted to be closer to my kids.</p>
<p>"In the old days, you knew or knew of the family your kid was marrying into; "</p>
<p>Not really, no. My parents met my former in-laws at the wedding. Ex was from the opposite end of the country, we paid for our wedding ourselves, and there really was no need to meet them. How would my parents have known anything? </p>
<p>It’s funny that people think I’m not close to me kids because I don’t snoop about their friends. Nope, not true. We are close. <em>I</em> am the one they come to with exciting news, questions about changes in their life, to talk to about moves, or jobs, or just to chat. But they’re also adults-who value their private lives with SO’s or friends. I’m ok with that.</p>
<p>Sseamom, I didn’t mean to imply you’re not close with your kids. I’m sure you are. People tend to draw lines of privacy for different people in different places in their lives. Some people draw those lines closer than others. No big deal. </p>
<p>Your judgement might be that some people are “helicoptering” or are “TOO close”. When it might be a mutual arrangement with their kids - where the line is drawn for them.</p>
<p>Most people like to have some degree of privacy. It’s important to know where your loved ones lines are drawn and respect the lines. </p>
<p>It’s also important to realize that we live in a VERY public world nowdays. Everything you do outside of the privacy of your own home is pretty much known by anyone who wants to find out. I try to impress my kids with that fact - they need to know that BF’s parents or a future employer or anyone who wants to can find out how they spend their time, and who they spend it with, and countless other tidbits of information. </p>
<p>No biggie.</p>
<p>^^^^I think it’s worth saying that one can be quite close to their children with respect to emotional connections, mutual involvement in their lives, etc. yet still maintain certain boundaries with respect to each other’s romantic lives or even relationships with close friends (both of the child and the parent).</p>
<p>I think there are probably extremes all over the map from parents who allow NO boundaries between their children and themselves to those who are cold, remote, and unaffectionate. Neither extreme would ever admit that there was anything unhealthy there.</p>
<p>I would bet that the average CC type parent falls well within a middle ground of those extremes. Maybe that was the model we grew up and felt comfortable with, or we felt something missing from our own relationships and vowed to do differently with our own families.</p>
<p>Well, frankly, I think it’s a cleaner boundary to quietly google the new boyfriend’s name, than to “ask around” with RL acquaintances and put people on notice that you’re vitally interested in person XYZ. </p>
<p>I don’t see the big deal here.</p>
<p>"I got the same 4 hits over and over:he played baseball for his high school and was on some sort of recruiting track, he was quarterback of his relatively small high school’s football team, he made the honor roll, and he has a private Facebook page. Really not much to be found. If I was looking for a “scoop” I would have been disappointed. My reason for googling him was I was “trapped” at home while people were doing work on our house, so I had time to kill and I was just curious if there was a picture of him somewhere. Being nosy: gulp, guilty. "</p>
<p>Who said anyone is looking for or expecting some juicy scoop?</p>
<p>“On several of those occasions, my photo was put on their facebook (and then showed up on mine as a tagged photo with all the accompanying comments). I was livid, as I had expressly requested that they not do that, and my request was blatantly disregarded even as the photographer promised it was only for her private collection. The last time this friend tried to gather me for a group photo, I declined and told her why”</p>
<p>Wow. Livid seems a bit over the top. Just set your FB settings so that you either can’t be tagged at all, or you have to approve tags.</p>
<p>^ However, non-FaceBook photos of the wrong people show up all the time when you google people. If I google my D, lots of photos of other track athletes will come up, and only a few of them are her. Granted, you can take the time to scour the information and eventually determine which shots are of D. I know I’m smart enough to do that, and you guys are, but is everyone? If not, some SO’s mom is going to think my D has green hair.</p>
<p>Yes, that happens a lot with teammates / team members. But it doesn’t take too much to figure it out.</p>
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And those moms are going to lose their credibility. When they show your D’s picture to SO, he is just going to LOL. I am very good at this, so my girls never doubt me.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say anyone was. I was just commenting that there was so little to find, that had I been looking for something I would have been disappointed. Why read so much into that? 
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<p>I specifically ask someone to respect my wishes. They promise they will. They blatantly do otherwise. Yes, I was livid. I expect people to do what they say, not the exact opposite. Why are you ragging on two posts of mine in a row? Geez.</p>
<p>Not sure the difference not being tagged makes - isn’t any photo posted available to be seen by a person’s friends and depending on <em>their</em> settings, friends of friends or the whole world? Sometimes it’s having the photo posted at all that is the objectionable thing. </p>
<p>I’ve been quite upset on one or two occasions when people ignored my friendly but explicit request not to post a photo on FB. I had good reason, but didn’t think I had to justify or explain myself. I also know someone who WAS livid when someone posted photos of her young children on FB after she had specifically told this person that she is not comfortable with her kids’ photos being shared. And a whole family that is angry at one of the cousins, who posted a photo of Grandma in the hospital sans makeup, hospital gown and all! Personally don’t like my photo being shared by anyone but me without my permission and I won’t post even of immediate family without their OK. </p>
<p>Regarding the OP, I think the onus is on the person who posts or makes information available not to have anything on there that they would not want anyone on the planet to read.</p>
<p>This video is a much watch for this thread:
[Facebook</a>, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids - YouTube](<a href=“Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids - YouTube”>Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids - YouTube)</p>
<p>That video was hilarious</p>