So…for the last three weeks, my son Zev has been asking me to let him start his own youtube channel. On the one hand, I’ve been thinking, fair enough, when i first started my channel it was with the intention of posting his videos. It is only fairly recently that I have been making and posting my own. I have some concerns about who he might subscribe to, who might subscribe to him and general restraint around comments stuff. I mean, for the past year he has been exploring youtube and he has a pretty clear idea over what is ok and not ok for him at 10 years old to watch.
So I’ve been contemplating it and had tentatively come to a yes with boundaries answer.
Tonight about an hour after putting Zev to bed, I received a) a subscription and a friendship request from a username i had never seen before. I went to that name’s site and of course even tho the name on the account was “Mike”, the video was one done by my son in his room using a slightly deeper voice 🙂 Then I noticed that this username had posted a few comments on my account one of which says
“your vid gave me a better thing to do in life thanks teach! i used to be a gangster but YOU gave me something to live for on! thanks!”
🙂
Upon seeing this, (posted minutes before) I snuck upstairs where of course his light was on and the laptop was near his bed. I settled him down and I have told him that we would discuss it in the morning. He asked if I would yell at him, I said ‘no”. Not quite sure how I’ll handle it. Oh with love, compasion and generally on a coin flip of wisdom 😉 just like most of the parenting moments. I guess. Just finding myself with an interesting emotional parfait of pride, concern, annoyance and most of all amusement.