No names is best perhaps

How do you protect the anonymity of  your children online? Do you use fake names or nicknames? Or do you use your children’s real names online?

Consumer Reports recently found that among adult social network users, 38% had posted their full birth date, including year. And 45% of those with children had posted their children’s photos. And 8% had posted their own street address.

It also found 26% of adult Facebook users with children posted those children’s photos and names.

It’s hard to blog or use social networks without mentioning those whom we mother and love. But in our rush to show off our child’s latest achievements … those photos of your darling with a bowl upside down on his head … are we putting the ones we love most at risk?  Are we abusing the online privacy of our children in our rush to show off how cute they are?

Please tell us how you handle this by taking the MomsToWork survey here (no names required ) and we’ll post the results online for everyone to see.

Please take the MomsToWork quiz here before you go. You can read our other post on children’s privacy online here.

Cute expat kids by Shermee on Flickr. Available by Creative Commons License

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Read, sing, dance with this video, Gotta Keep Reading with your little and big kids.

Students and faculty Ocoee Middle School in Florida made the video to promote reading — changing the lyrics to a song by the Black-Eyed Peas.

Oprah Winfrey filmed a segment of her show on the school’s grounds, and announced that she and Target would pay for a “wall-to-wall” makeover of the school library, including new furniture, new computers and 2,000 books, reported the Orlando  Sentinel.

They managed to get almost 1,700 kids pumped up about something you know I love,” Winfrey said.

Fabulous.

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Laugh, cry, agonize, relive bad moments of mothering, lust for food, laugh at pretentiousness and answer these book club questions:

• What is the significance of the stairs on the book’s cover?
• Is Lorrie Moore criticizing working mothers?
• Does she teach pretentiously named courses like the ones she lampoons?
• Have you ever done anything that could have easily caused great harm or worse to your child … but it didn’t? Is this luck?
• What is her favorite bird? Kidding.

This is my all time favorite book club book!!! We talked for two hours solidly and we could have talked for hours.

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• Books we love … books about families, women, work and the rest

I love Philippe Petit in Man on Wire, and Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (which starts with Petit’s amazing walk in New York’s skies) captured some of the magic.

Let the Great World Spin was described as “The first great 9/11 novel” by Esquire Magazine, says McCann’s site.

By the way, Man on Wire (about Petit’s walk between the World Trade Centers) is an absolutely engrossing ‘family’ film. We all watched it one night, my dad and my seven year old twins. And then we watched it again the next morning. Transfixed. For the adults, there was a certain post Sept. 11 fascination and horror. For the kids, there was just gob-smacking amazement.

For a great book club activity, consider a screening of the film (or the first 20 minutes) before discussing the book.

That’s my plan. We’re doing Let the Great World Spin for our next book club. Will let you know whether it was a conversation starter or killer.

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I have read so many great books lately.

The best? Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, but is she criticizing working mothers? Suggesting they are always too distracted, contracting out their mothering responsibilities? Love to hear what you think.

I’ve included some links from Amazon to others we’ve read.

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