Facebook and Le Petit Chaperon Rouge

When my kids were little, there were a few children's TV shows I wouldn't let them watch. Barney and Elmo were irritating, and Caillou was a whiner. My kids were already experts at obnoxious and whiney, so I didn't figure they needed the encouragment. (My favorites were anything that had music and no talking, like old Looney Tunes.) As they got older, there was the constant question of how much media should they consume and what was appropriate content for books, computer games, etc.? There was also the inevitable exposure to more material at friends' houses who had older brothers or sisters.  

I was raised nearly media free -- without a TV until I was 12. We were allowed to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and read just about what ever we could get our hands on. This made me the biggest loser in the fifth grade. I could sing the entire score from Oklahoma! but I had no idea what happened on Party of Five or The X-Files. Recently I found out that celebrities like Madonna and Roseanne don't let their kids watch TV or play computer games. To make up for my childhood, I'm letting my kids, who are all too young, create Facebook accounts with a few rules, like hand over your password and friend me or I'm deleting your account. And I've promised that I'll ask before I post anything about them, so it won't be embarrassing.

American moms feel pressured to be quite vigilant about what our kids read and watch, and with good reason. There's lots of garbage out there. However, no matter how much I feel like I should monitor absolutely everything to make sure it's Disney pristine, I can't. I'll monitor our computer network, limit screen time, and nix the really bad stuff, which is usually easy to spot.  

It was a French copy of Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) from our au pair Lucie that helped me chill out. Instead of Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood getting rescued by the woodcutter, the story ends when they're eaten by the wolf! That's it! I was looking for the next page, but the book was over. Imagine that as a bedtime story!

However, when you think about it, this ending is actually a pretty good lesson for operating online today. Don't give information to strangers. Consider the source and don't believe everything you hear or read.  If something looks suspicious, get out of there. And getting rescued isn't a valid Plan B. 

So, now I'm off to read the other book Lucie sent us, Michka. The language is more complex, so it's going to take a while to plow through the French. Maybe that will teach me how French kids do chores and laundry so I can get my own to follow suit.