HerSpace

Sophie announced to me and her mother, quite randomly, that she wanted "a MySp@ce." Read all the pre-teen attitude and psuedo-angst into those quotes you want. Poor kid, she got a no from both of us, immediately and with no qualifications. She wheedled and cajoled to the best of her ability (which works well with some of the adults in her life, but not with me, nor with her mother - we are a strong and united front), and gained no ground from either of us, but did get a crash course on how weird and dicey the internet can be. Plus, more noes (is that right for the plural of no?). The agony. Oh, wait....

****** there is some man walking through my neighborhood, singing to himself, something about, "give peace a chance, and see what happens, bum, bum, bum....." not the John Lennon version, but something entirely of his own making - fabulous*****

Anyway. I really think it is clear she's not old enough to navigate an adult social/hook-up network by herself because she's still naive enough to think that she should ask her mother and me. I guess this is good, the keeping open of the lines of communication, but really, I think if she were savvy enough to pull off registering on her own, she'd be savvy enough to tell the difference between people who want to be her friend and people who want to be her "friend," or at least savvy enough not to tell these "friends" too much about herself.

But back to the plot, or lack thereof. So I told her I'd see if I could find any teen social networks for her and we let it all go at that. And I did, but she didn't mention it again. Until today, when she asked me what year she would have been born in if she was 13 now. As background, when we set up her now-defunct h0tmail account, we faked her birth date, so she'd be old enough to join. So I opened my mouth to prompt her to do the math herself, and then thought to ask what she wanted to fake her birthday for. Nothing, she said. Uh-huh. So I told her she was on her own to figure it out and went back to the comics page (I am a *very* attentive caregiver). I reminded her a little later that I had, as promised, found some teen versions of MySp@ce, and showed her the link to one that I cannot remember the name of the save my life. Whatever it was, she jumped on it. Jumped in an I-don't-really-care-about-this-tweener way. (Lord) Which means that she set herself up an account and fussed around with it for the better part of an hour. She even showed me her avatar.

Score! Puesdo-angsty pre-teen - 1! Me - 1! We're all winners chez Starrhill!