Worst Mom Ever

In case you didn’t know I have a 12 almost 13 year old son and my daughter will be 14 next month. I grew up extremely poor and I try to give my kids everything they want despite how much it costs. If something is “hot” then I do my best to get it for my kids. I know what you are going to say, way to go mom, you are raising a couple of spoiled brats! Well, that is not true. Now don’t get me wrong my kids are not perfect by any means.

They do the dishes every single night, they clean the litter box and they do weekly Sunday chores that consist of them cleaning either the bathroom or the kitchen. The living room I usually do or it just doesn’t get done! They use to get paid for their chores until they started to slack on there work quality, so they got “fired”, but they still have to do the chores, except now they don’t get paid.

Now I am way off subject! So back to why I am the worst mom ever. A few months ago my husband decided to buy my children Iphones, I think they are 7’s I am not really sure. All I know is they are newer than mine! They were so excited, but the first thing they asked for was social media. Up until recently I only had Facebook, oh and Linkdin. I had heard horror stories and read articles about all the horrible things that can happen to kids online, so I told them no. As the months have gone on they continue to ask for social media. So, I decided to get Instagram and see how that works. I am still learning it but it seems appropriate for them. However, we all know how dumb kids can be when they are online. So, my fear is that they are going to take stupid pictures or post something really idiotic and it is going to be out there forever!

My husband and I decided that we would have the kids write a small essay on their argument for having social media. I thought that they were going to be smarter than that and really bring up some good points. NOPE! I was wrong, they basically just argued that all their friends had Instagram and that they were nerds because they didn’t have it. Now usually this works, because I never had anything so if they say “I am the only one that doesn’t have it”, I am instantly like get in the car lets go get it. Well, not this time!

With all the cyber bullying and other stresses online I just can’t bring myself to let them get social media. Now I am just talking about Instagram here, I don’t even want to start on Snapchat. I don’t really know anything about it except once you type it and hit send it is gone! What the what???? Oh hell no I want to be able to see what my kids are writing!

When I do let my kids get social media I am going to be their friend, I am going to have their passwords and I will do random checks of their friends list. I am just not ready to have to deal with all of this!

So, for now I am still pondering over the idea and hope to make a determination by the time my daughter turns 18, oops I mean 14. LOL!

What do you guys thing? What is a good age to let children have social media? What kind of safeguards do you have in place if your kids are on social media?