The Reality of Travel Ball...

[inthunder]

My wife is a high school teacher,,,, she did student teaching at a private middle school prior and the stuff she saw and now sees at ages 13 and 14 blew my mind. If you wanna know creepy and honestly scary / shocking just listen !! We monitor and will continue to monitor anything and everything we can. It is not necessarily what our / your kid says / does but what others are saying / doing and sending. Im not looking to start a fire here and to each their own, but at my house I love and trust my kids but that does not mean they go un monitored and un supervised on social media.

 

[bucket pinata]

Its to bad this younger generation will never understand what It was like before social media. I feel allot of personal and vital family time and personal communication skills will be lost.
Signed, Old fogey.

 

[teammom2]

It's Social Media. If the girls are OK with being friended by a parent or a coach I see nothing wrong with accepting the friendship. Part of that is being privy to what goes on. Stalking is a far cry from being an invited guest hanging in the background.

 

[BobInMadison]

A few random thoughts:

When DS first got his Facebook account many years ago, he posted some things he probably shouldn't have posted. (No porn, but some off-color comments). He was rather embarrassed when I went over some of the postings with him, and asked him: "do you really want Mommy to see that?". He has been more careful ever since, and DW forced him to accept a friend request from her.

I don't constantly monitor my kids' accounts, and these days they are more into Instagram. I do, however, occasionally look at what they are putting out there. So far, innocuous stuff, such as a school dance or a sporting event.

As far as suicide, I take that a bit seriously. Three guys I knew when I was young killed themselves. One was a guy who sometimes went with his family to my church, and I didn't know him that well. Another guy had been a pretty good friend of mine at one point. Not many details about his death, but it involved LSD and a Samurai sword. Bad combination. Another guy used to be my best friend, but I got sick of seeing him shoot up on the way to school. Dead now.

A few years ago, one of my kids, I won't say which one, went on a walk with me, and started asking some weird questions about suicide. Alarm bells started going off in my head. It turns out this kid knew someone who was in a bad way, and was talking about suicide and was probably anorexic. I never found out the kid's name, or what happened. However, I did immediately email the school principal, who found out the name of the kid from my kid. For privacy reasons, of course I don't know what happened afterwards. My kid says this other kid seems to be fine now, acts normal, and has a healthy appetite.

Meanwhile, there was a local kid who was RUMORED to have gotten in with a bad crowd, was RUMORED to have been heavily involved with drugs and gangs, was convicted of armed robbery, and several eye-witnesses say he was attacking people and "acting crazy". Then, something happened between him and a cop in a closed room. Cop injured, kid takes 5 shots, dies in the hospital. I am not the sort of person to jump to conclusions, so I have no idea if this was a justified shooting or a trigger-happy cop, or both. All I know is a young man is dead, and a lot of lives have been permanently changed for the worse. I also have no idea if the young man's parents could have done more to prevent him from following a path that led to his death. Maybe they were doing their best, getting him through HS and hopefully eventually into college. Or, maybe they could have done more to keep him on track. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now, and I feel really bad for them.

 

[Jquick823]

Just to be clear, which I wasn't, I was meaning to try and be potentially protective of you IF the team got word you were getting involved with their personal life like that (unless this was declared as what will happen as being part of that team). Social media effects are complicated but I think parenting is the job of the parent and the rest of us can run ourselves ragged if we take on the responsibility of all the missing or bad parenting out there.

I make it known publicly that I follow all the players. I don't follow anywhere but Instagram as I control what's posted for the most part on my IG account and can't really stop what's posted on facebook with all the tags and share options. I know how it appears to some and I will deal with that scrutiny when it comes.

Hopefully my last response to you didn't come off as an attack. Just what if'ing the situation.

 

[CoogansBluff]

Its to bad this younger generation will never understand what It was like before social media. I feel allot of personal and vital family time and personal communication skills will be lost.

Because of social media, kids are communicating more than ever. More communication might be a good thing. We'll see over time.

But, they are not talking to one another as much, IMO. Example: My daughter texts her friends all the time to check in or get information, like when practice begins or what chapter they're supposed to be reading for school. But if I ask her to call the person on the phone and actually speak, she gets anxious. An adult might answer. What would I do then? The horror. Another example: We're walking in the neighborhood, and her best friend rides by with her mother, who is driving. Instead of stopping to chat, they don't even make eye contact. They start texting.

As a result of social media, I think my child has more friends than she would've had. It's much easier to keep friends that you no longer see (in case you change schools, or change softball teams). That's a good thing. But I wonder whether kids are as comfortable and skilled ''face to face'' as they would be.

 

[riseball]

Because of social media, kids are communicating more than ever. More communication might be a good thing. We'll see over time.

But, they are not talking to one another as much, IMO. Example: My daughter texts her friends all the time to check in or get information, like when practice begins or what chapter they're supposed to be reading for school. But if I ask her to call the person on the phone and actually speak, she gets anxious. An adult might answer. What would I do then? The horror. Another example: We're walking in the neighborhood, and her best friend rides by with her mother, who is driving. Instead of stopping to chat, they don't even make eye contact. They start texting.

As a result of social media, I think my child has more friends than should would've had. It's much easier to keep friends that you no longer see (in case you change schools, or change softball teams). That's a good thing. But I wonder whether kids are as comfortable and skilled ''face to face'' as they would be.

More and more college coaches are telling me that the interpersonal skills of potential recruits is severely lacking. The recruit finally gets the opportunity for face to face interaction with a coach and they cannot carry on a conversation.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

Sounds like the coach is getting old to me. it seems to me our childrens generation communicates quite well, just not in a way our generation did (or does).

It's like bitching that are kids can't write in cursive anymore. Our kids just look at cursive and shrug while they text/email/exchange multimedia on their phones.

 

[riseball]

Sounds like the coach is getting old to me. it seems to me our childrens generation communicates quite well, just not in a way our generation did (or does).

It's like bitching that are kids can't write in cursive anymore. Our kids just look at cursive and shrug while they text/email/exchange multimedia on their phones.

Are you saying that the ability to carry on a face to face conversation is growing obsolete and there is no need to develop those skills?

 

[TMoney]

There is good and bad in everything, I guess, but kids most definitely need to learn communication skills, and if they are going to throw something out there on a public "social media" page, don't get huffy when someone or everyone reads and shares it...