Mediation is Thursday. I think I’m prepared, but the truth is, I’m scared shitless. I’m worried about my financial future, and more importantly, I’m worried that I’m going to lose time with my kids. My lawyer has assured me that I’ll be OK, but it’s like doing your first school play; you rehearse and rehearse, but you don’t know how it’s gonna turn out until it does. Adding to my anxiety is the fact that I recently made a mistake as a parent, and I’m going to have to admit that in front of a counselor and X during a meeting on Tuesday. Let me back up and explain.
In case I haven’t mentioned this already, X has accused me of having an affair over Facebook. Not accused as in the legal sense of the word, but accused as in she’s told half the town that’s what I’ve done. As of now, our divorce is still considered uncontested. On a recent weekend, I discovered my oldest daughter (who’s 12, almost-but-not-quite 13) had opened an email and Facebook account. I didn’t know what to do; considering what X has accused me of, I didn’t think I could have a rational discussion about Facebook, but I didn’t see any harm in what the oldest had done. I figured she had done it once, and she’d do it again even if I told her not to. I made the stupid decision to NOT inform X about it, but I did tell the oldest that I wanted her password so I could monitor it. I also told the child that she needed to inform her mother about it.
X found out about it, and of course, flipped out. She immediately called the counselor (and her lawyer, I’m sure) to get this appointment set up so that she could demonstrate that I’m a bad parent. So, now I have to eat crow in a meeting TWO DAYS before the most important negotiations of my life. However, I want to be clear what the mistakes I made were:
1. I should have checked the age policy for both Gmail and Facebook. Point blank, the child is not old enough according to their policies; you have to be 13 to use the services.
2. I should have told X about the accounts regardless of my concerns; I thought I was protecting the oldest from X, but I was just setting her up for the inevitable discovery and argument.
The content that the oldest posted was not inappropriate for her age, and her conversations weren’t out of character. There were some things she had done that were a bit risky (like her privacy settings were out of wack), but that could be dealt with as a lesson, not as a disciplinary act. The Internet is part of our kids’ lives, and we can’t protect them forever without teaching them. If we keep saying “No” without explaining “Why”, the kids will never learn. I thought that it would be better for the kid to do something knowing that I could check in at any time than to keep sneaking around without some sort of parental guidance. I don’t regret that decision; I do regret that I didn’t run it by X.
I guess the question I’ll have for the counselor is “what do we do when we disagree?”
