Tajah and I were recently talking about her kindergarten-age cousin, and she said, “Rosalie’s a pre-teen—she’s less than 13!” I cracked up. My kids do enter the official “tween” age group this month when they turn ten. Last year they began attending different schools, and had a sleepover where not all the kids knew each other. They turned on music and danced. Friends of Da’Jon’s who usually can’t wait to wrestle came in quietly, looking at the new kids, checking the scene out.
Both kids take a much more active role in managing their own social lives than they did even a year ago. It’s made me aware of how the same needs to happen in the Kids section of Rainbow Rumpus. Our current bulletin board system is absolutely safe—and frustrating. Kids have to wait a day (forever on the internet) for their messages to be posted. We’re working on adopting a new system that will allow children to post messages instantaneously and take leadership roles in facilitating conversations with the guidance of an adult moderator. Similar systems, but with greater interaction privileges, will be implemented in the sections for older readers.
The importance of safety and adult moderation was brought home by our first hate mail. My children’s reaction to it was fascinating. Someone wrote into the Talking Pictures section of our games page, “It’s so nice to have a mom and a dad.” It was such innocuous harassment that I decided to share it with my family.
Sarah said, “Send them to the Berenstain Bears website!”
Tajah said, “That’s not fair to the Berenstain Bears!”
Da’Jon said, “I’ll get that *#@!”
I wondered if the kids thought I should, in fact, post the message for other kids to see. They were in agreement that I shouldn’t; it was too upsetting, and kids shouldn’t have to see it. They did think it was important for the adults to know about, so that adults could keep talking about how to keep kids safe.
We will be having ongoing conversations about just how to set up message boards that are both accessible and safe. If you’d like to join us in this process, or if you, your teen, or your child would like to be one of our beta testers, email us at admin@rainbowrumpus.org.
Now, back to planning that birthday party. . . .
