Babys First Year Blog
My Kids and Their Online Identity
When I started blogging in 2005 using your full given name was often shied away from in favor of using a pseudonym or your first name only. At least that was true for me and common in the blogs I was reading at the time.
Things change as time goes on.
Over the years I have watched the comfort level of what information I share shift in myself and have gone from just *pixie* to Holly to using my full name. I’m comfortable with that. What I share is my story.
But a huge part of my story is my children. What level of anonymity do I give them on the internet? How searchable will they be in years to come? Will they want to be?
Not really knowing how to answer those questions with any certainty—and since my children have somewhat unique names—I started using a nickname for my first son when he was born. I call him G-tot most of the time online.
I say most of the time because I will occasionally use their first names—announcing their arrival in the world for example. I also use their real names when write them letters about their growth and development as a baby because someday I intend to share those letters with them when they are older. Other than that I pretty much always refer to him as G-tot. I’m not sure what I will refer to him as once he is out of the tot stage in life.
When I was pregnant with our second son my husband and I asked G-tot what we should name the baby. This was before we knew what we were having and G-tot told us we should name the baby Huggy.
I liked that. We didn’t have any names picked out and wouldn’t have used them before the birth even if we had, so from that point on we started calling the baby Huggy. Or Huggy Baby as a hat tip to Huggy Bear.
Huggy Baby did end up with a name that starts with an H so I will sometimes refer to him as Baby H. But I keep coming back to Huggy Baby.
Somehow it just fits.
Do you use your kid’s real names in your online writing or on social networking sites?
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5 Comments
shannon commented on Nov 06 11 at 1:27 amOn my blog, I don’t use my daughter’s name. I just call her my toddler/daughter/”Pumpkinsauce” I went back and forth with myself but decided not to use it because it’s a kind of unique name and I just don’t want her google results to be awash in my blog posts OR people to know her name for various security reasons. That being said, if there are enterprising individuals out there, I am SURE that they could figure her name out. Almost everything can be discovered these days, unless you just never, ever go online.
http://www.motherknowssomething.com
Roni commented on Nov 06 11 at 6:25 amI have “Little Guy” and “Little Bean.” I also refer to them (or have) and “the baby”, “the toddler,” and “Big Brother”. Their names have been mentioned more in video posts then written ones as that content isn’t as easily searchable or indexed. And as my oldest gets older I’ve been getting more discriminatory with what I share and don’t as it won’t be long before his friends are on the internet.
chelsey commented on Nov 06 11 at 5:57 pmi don’t think i have ever written my son’s first and middle names with our last name – though my full name is in my blog’s URL. I use his real name as I doubt I’ll still be writing on the same blog when he is 16 years old and I highly doubt my blog will be the only thing that shows up on google if someone types in “elliot”. They would have to know my full name in order to find info on him. Not really worried about it – if I thought about it too much or thought it was an issue then i wouldn’t be writing about MY life. And as far as I’m concerned, Elliot is my life right now. I’m sure at some point once he is out of the baby stage I will move on to a future sibling or my own daily outings sans babies when he is more his own person.
Meagan commented on Nov 06 11 at 10:39 pmI’ve used the full name on my birth story/ announcement post. I never really planned to, was playing with various psudenyms, but when the time came I just couldn’t imagine not sharing. I guess I must be a little a part of the oversharing generation in spite of being to old- when I tweet, it feels right to refer to him as Ender, the name we call him. I’ll just have to try and not share anything too revealing or embarrassing I guess.
Rhonda commented on Nov 07 11 at 1:48 pmI use a nickname for both son and husband. Occasionally their first names.
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