Dangerous Territory

I have had an epiphany this week regarding the pitfalls of staying connected to my children through electronic media. I like to keep up with what is going on in my children's lives.I am a friend to two of them on Facebook. I follow them all on Twitter. When they join the professional world, I suppose I will be LinkedIn to them. I want to be connected to them in this way because I get to hear snippets of conversation between them and their friends that gives me some insight into their world. The problem is that sometimes there are things you don't want to know.

When I joined Facebook a few years ago, I sent a friend request to David, middle son, who was in college at the time. He has yet to respond to my request. I was insulted at first. I get it now.

I should have understood David's reluctance to accept my friendship request. He does post some quirky things on there. That is just his personality. His profile pic was of a random black man and a dog. I know this because he would comment on posts made by mutual Fb friends. I guess when you do rather bazaar things you don't want your mother questioning them. He is a grown man now and if he wants to post bazaar things on Fb, that is his own business.

While an undergrad, my oldest son also had some less-than-flattering pictures of himself (really was him) on Facebook. But college is college. I didn't expect pictures of him studying for exams. Those are no fun. At least he was smart enough to take those pics down before applying for jobs and law school. Sort of like the Dutchess's topless photos, pull them all back in and pretend it never happened. He too is a grown man and has matured past the "firefly" stage. (You think you are lighting the world, but you are really just showing your ass.)

This brings me to my youngest son and the reason why I say staying electronically connected to your children is dangerous territory. Steven, my youngest, has been in college for exactly one month. He came home last Sunday to celebrate my birthday with the family. He arrived about 3:00 p.m. I was outside washing my car and was unaware that he had come in. He was unaware that I was outside washing my car. When I came in he was watching football on TV, playing a video game on his laptop, and tweeting/texting on his phone. He is quite the multitasker. We talked for a while, and by "talked" I really mean I asked him questions and he gave monosyllabic answers. I suppose his multitasking does not extend far enough to having a conversation while watching TV, playing a video game, and tweeting/texting. Anyway, I was use to this type of conversation, after all, I am the mother of three sons. The real blow came when I read his tweets a couple of days later. He tweeted at 3:30 p.m., the approximate time I came in from washing my car, "I wish I could go home." BAM! What a blow. First "home" is now a dorm room. Second, he prefers it to real home. Third, he had already told me that he was alone most of the weekend because most of his friends had left to come home (real homes) on Friday or Saturday because there was no football game in Tuscaloosa, so he would prefer an EMPTY dorm room to being at home.

I would have preferred to be blissfully unaware of all of this. I immediately "unfollowed" him. There are some things a mother just does not want to know. I try to think back to the dark ages when I went away to college at 18. There was no Fb, cell phones, tweets, or blogs. If there were, I would not have wanted my mom cyberstalking me (which I was NOT doing.) She would have wanted to remain blissfully unaware of some of the things I did back then too. I do know that I wanted to be on my own. My first taste of real freedom was without her being able to call me 24/7, or watch what parties I went to, or even if I would prefer to not come home to celebrate her birthday.

I guess some of my insecurities as a mother stem from the fact that I never got to know my mother as an adult. She died before I was able to do that. I don't want to miss out on that with my children. Perhaps after college and Steven is a grown man (not a teenager in a 6' 3" body) I will follow him again. Until then, I am going to close my eyes and pretend this is still "home" and he prefers my company to no company.