slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
The other moms were furious about the pot, but I was furious someone's kid had been so careless about social media
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/06/my_son_a_bong_and_the_snapchat_shot_that_led_to_a_parenting_crisis/
I was in my office in Philadelphia when my phone signaled a text. It was from a mom in my neighborhood and she said, “I’m about to send you a photo that is upsetting, but I’d want to see it if I were you.”
I palmed my phone and stared at the screen until it arrived: a photo of my just-turned-16-year-old son, inhaling from a bong. A row of emoticons were across the top of the image, the tell-tale sign this photo had come from Snapchat.
I wanted to write back, “WTF?” I wanted to yell those words — no acronym, the full expression — in my empty office, listening to the words echo down the hall.
Instead, I stared at the phone and wondered WTF to say.
I should be clear before I go any further: I never told my son not to smoke pot. It simply seemed more realistic to tell him to not smoke pot from strangers, to not wake and bake, to not smoke at school. I had told him stories of people I knew for whom pot did become a gateway drug, of people I knew who smoked too much and let it become a lifestyle, and of people I knew who smoked and had successful careers and families. I emphasized that even though attitudes are changing, it is illegal.
But I was in a conundrum. I had another mother who knew I knew my son was smoking (Live! Real time!) and she was watching. She and I had long ago agreed to disagree about pot and alcohol. She has a zero-tolerance philosophy, and that’s fine. I understand her need to sniff her teenage son alongside their lab retriever every time he comes home, but I want the same respect for my philosophy of transparency. Christopher is the youngest of three kids who have talked to me about tiny and big choices, sometimes before, and sometimes after they make them. I try to walk the line between guiding and staying out of their way. I want to be the ramp agent, the guy with the orange flags on the tarmac guiding the plane, not the one flying it. But now my role as a parent, how I was going to handle this, had become public, too. I had another mother waiting for my next move. I felt exposed in my little windowless, cinderblock office. Our screens are also cameras, and it felt as though the Internet itself were watching and saying, “Oh yeah? Parent this.”
I actually wasn’t that concerned about the pot. It was summer. He was 16. I was more concerned about why this act was being posted on social media. This incident was, to me, one of the worst kinds of oversharing. I thought teenage acts of rebellion were meant to be clandestine and that getting away with it was part of the fun and excitement. But maybe broadcasting breaking the rules is the new normal.
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/06/my_son_a_bong_and_the_snapchat_shot_that_led_to_a_parenting_crisis/
I was in my office in Philadelphia when my phone signaled a text. It was from a mom in my neighborhood and she said, “I’m about to send you a photo that is upsetting, but I’d want to see it if I were you.”
I palmed my phone and stared at the screen until it arrived: a photo of my just-turned-16-year-old son, inhaling from a bong. A row of emoticons were across the top of the image, the tell-tale sign this photo had come from Snapchat.
I wanted to write back, “WTF?” I wanted to yell those words — no acronym, the full expression — in my empty office, listening to the words echo down the hall.
Instead, I stared at the phone and wondered WTF to say.
I should be clear before I go any further: I never told my son not to smoke pot. It simply seemed more realistic to tell him to not smoke pot from strangers, to not wake and bake, to not smoke at school. I had told him stories of people I knew for whom pot did become a gateway drug, of people I knew who smoked too much and let it become a lifestyle, and of people I knew who smoked and had successful careers and families. I emphasized that even though attitudes are changing, it is illegal.
But I was in a conundrum. I had another mother who knew I knew my son was smoking (Live! Real time!) and she was watching. She and I had long ago agreed to disagree about pot and alcohol. She has a zero-tolerance philosophy, and that’s fine. I understand her need to sniff her teenage son alongside their lab retriever every time he comes home, but I want the same respect for my philosophy of transparency. Christopher is the youngest of three kids who have talked to me about tiny and big choices, sometimes before, and sometimes after they make them. I try to walk the line between guiding and staying out of their way. I want to be the ramp agent, the guy with the orange flags on the tarmac guiding the plane, not the one flying it. But now my role as a parent, how I was going to handle this, had become public, too. I had another mother waiting for my next move. I felt exposed in my little windowless, cinderblock office. Our screens are also cameras, and it felt as though the Internet itself were watching and saying, “Oh yeah? Parent this.”
I actually wasn’t that concerned about the pot. It was summer. He was 16. I was more concerned about why this act was being posted on social media. This incident was, to me, one of the worst kinds of oversharing. I thought teenage acts of rebellion were meant to be clandestine and that getting away with it was part of the fun and excitement. But maybe broadcasting breaking the rules is the new normal.
