This has been a long time coming. I’ve always allowed anonymous comments on our blog because I’ve wanted to be open to questions/comments from people who might not be able to go public (a good example is an adoptee a while back who was posting questions and comments to our blog that she did not feel comfortable having her adoptive parents read). But at this point it has basically come down to this for me: either I stop the blog altogether, or I try blocking anonymous commenters and see how that goes. I just can’t stand the negative and harsh comments coming from the pathetic anonymous commenters any longer. I am the kind of person who can get 20 wonderful comments, but it is the 1 hurtful one that gets stuck in my head. I’m just like that. And in the interest of self-preservation, I need to defend myself a bit from it. Do you have any idea the guts it takes to post something like I did last night? Do you have any clue how vulnerable that makes me feel? I blog, and make our blog public, for the reasons I wrote about recently in this post. But waking up this morning to what Anon-at-10:01 wrote… it is just like waking up to a kick in the gut. It stings. It touches on deep nerves. And surely, the author of that comment, if they are human, must know that.
Dear Anon-at-10:01,
You don’t know my kids and you don’t know me. Reading our blog does not make you knowledgeable about us at all. If you were my kid’s teacher, or if you were my mother, or if you were our nanny, or a friend-of-our-family, then your opinion would matter. We work closely with our real-life-community to raise our three kids. But you, you have absolutely no idea how amazing my kids are — and you have absolutely no idea how challenging they are to parent. I did not ask for your opinion. In the future, have the guts to tell us who you are… or don’t leave a comment at all.
I’ve changed our blog settings to no longer allow anonymous comments.