>How Far is Too Far? Only You Know

The Internet is buzzing right now over a blogger who was having trouble getting her daughter to sleep, and Twittered something along the lines of asking if it was okay to smother her.

The next thing she knew, the cops showed up at her door, asking to see her daughter and make sure she hadn’t been killed. Yep. Someone read the woman’s Twitter and called the cops on her. You can read her take on it here.

This brings up the interesting conundrum mom bloggers face, regarding how far we should go when we’re writing about our kids online. I felt the heat over this issue on a much smaller scale last week, when I wrote in my newspaper column that my son sometimes acts like sort of an asshole, but that I felt bad saying that even to myself, and so instead had settled on “Monkey Butt.” A few people got up in arms over the fact that I dared to use the term “asshole” in describing my son. I thought it over, though, and I still see nothing wrong with what I wrote. I was being honest and it was a funny conversation I’d had with my husband, one I thought plenty of readers would (and did) identify with.

I suppose when I think about where I draw the line, it that I only write stories that I would tell my girlfriends over dinner, or a group of friends at a party. If I wouldn’t say it in public, I don’t write it.

That said, I don’t think we can make a blanket, across-the-board decision on what is and isn’t appropriate for mom bloggers to write about, and which terms we should and shouldn’t use.

I am part of a family unit that’s very demonstrative. We hug and kiss each other a lot (well, the older girls less so now that they’re teens), we tell lots of jokes, and we’re generally loud and boisterous. I honestly can’t imagine a situation in which Bruiser would read that sometimes he acted like an asshole when he was a toddler, and do anything other than laugh. There will be no doubt in my boy’s mind that he is love, love, LOVED like crazy by his mother, and I’m equally sure that he will grow up knowing that I write in jest quite a bit.

On the other hand, If my family wasn’t prone to lavish displays of affection and endless laughing, I could see my admission perhaps causing problems down the line. If my writing tended to be where I displayed my true emotions and not where I wrote funny stories, then I wouldn’t be surprised if my son read the story and was hurt or offended.

My point is that I hope that each of us who writes online knows how far we can go without doing damage. I think I have a pretty good handle on it, but of course, I make missteps now and then. I’ve apologized and taken down posts on occasion when I’ve inadvertently offended someone. I’m going to make mistakes no matter what I’m doing.

But I don’t like is seeing how quickly others judge a mother for what she has written. Apparently, mistakes aren’t allowed in motherhood the way they are in the workplace. When a mother goes outside the box in any way, she can expect to be called down by a judgmental public, and when she writes about it on the Internet, well, all hell may very well break loose.

Or the police may show up on her doorstep. Is it worth it?

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.