Friday 6 April 2012

Protection

I wrote a post last week which attracted many re-tweets, was linked to on a few other blogs and mentioned in various Twitter timelines. As a result I had over 700 visitors to my blog in 2 days. Great, right? Yes, of course but the thought of all these people reading about my children and looking at pictures of them awakened my protective instincts and suddenly I found myself feeling very guarded and nervous. Yes, nervous.

But why? When I started this blog it wasn't for the intention of becoming a 'Mummy Blogger'. Quite the opposite in fact. Whilst I was keen to write about family life and document what we've been up to (more as a diary than anything else) I also wanted to use it as a platform to share my life. Write about whatever is on my mind, things I find interesting and hopefully things people want to read about.

Reading my posts, it has taken a different direction. I find myself writing frequently about the boys, adding images of them even when they're not the actual subject. I guess if you're going to write about your life and your life revolves around your family (only natural when you have small children, yes?) then it's inevitable that the writing reflects this eventually.

So, what to do? I'm happy to keep writing about the children but I don't think I want them to be the main focus and I don't know if I want to share as many pictures of them. I like the approach of Lucy at her excellent Attic24 blog. She writes about her family but never names her children and limits images of them to feet and hands. Red Boots, a new Mother, has recently posted on how she'd like her daughter to remain private to protect her from potential implications in the future.

I'm still undecided as to which direction I'll go but would love to hear from you if you have an opinion on this. Do you share your children on your blog? Do you limit the information you share or do you choose to not write about them at all?