Families blogging for each other

Teen blogs can actually be good for parent-child understanding, some parents will tell you. At least that's what some people of both generations told the Wall Street Journal. Writer Kevin Delaney cites one 19-year-old experienced blogger who doesn't mind that his parents read his blog - he told Kevin it may even be parents' duty. Another teenager's mom told Kevin that reading her 17-year-old's blog has helped her understand what he's dealing with and opened up communications for them. A dad in a third family has his own blog, knows his son reads it, and hopes the latter will see in it the respect his dad has for him. It's the familial twist on the blogging phenomenon. Kevin (who also talked to a mom who first contacted Net Family News about something scary she found in her 16-year-old's blogging), calls it "intra-family blog-tracking," and I'd call it another one of those helpful pointers for parenting in the Digital Age. Over the weekend, the Journal also ran an article on schools' student-blogging dilemmas. And the New York Times looked at teens' "enthusiastic self-revelation" in a shorter piece focusing on all the tools at their fingertips. Here's the WSJ piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in case you can't get it at the Journal.