"Facebook Parenting"

“You best teach others about healthy boundaries by enforcing yours on them.”
― Bryant McGill

Did you see the video of the boy who was forced to walk to school after his school punished him by banning him from the school bus?

The video was posted to social media by his father. His father “escorted” his son by driving the car behind his walking son.

Did you see the video of the father who shot a few bullets into his daughter’s laptop?

The daughter posted some very rude and insulting things online. When her father found out, he took her laptop and shot a few bullets into it.

He also filmed all of this, and posted it onto his social media.

There are thousands of such videos and posts.

Posts of parents punishing their children, sharing personal information about them, venting about intimate details of their child’s life.

For the parent’s friends to see and cast judgement onto the child.

For their own children to see and be embarrassed that their punishment has gone viral.

For their children’s friends to see and have ammunition to tease.

For the entire world to see.

So much has been made lately of cyberbullying, and rightfully so. However, this type of behavior by parents is a form of cyber bullying.

Online etiquette and safety isn’t just words that parents need to tell their children. It is behavior that needs to be modeled for them.

If there is information you don’t want your child to post (e.g. where they go to school, where they live), don’t post it yourself.

If there is a medical issue or behavioral issue you’d prefer to keep private, don’t post it yourself. (If you are posting in an online support group or in a forum where you can seek help/guidance, try to keep details to a minimum, so that others won’t figure out who is suffering from what).

If there is a picture or video that might cause your child to get into trouble (e.g. with a potential employer or amongst their friends), don’t post it yourself.

If there is something your child would be penalized for writing about an authority figure (e.g. principal, teacher, boss), don’t post it yourself.

Just like what they say can come back to haunt them, what you write and post can also come back to haunt them. That’s the reality, whether it is fair or not is irrelevant.

Boundaries are extremely important. Both for the parents and for the child.

Don’t violate these boundaries because you feel the urge to post about your child online.

Also, please don’t confuse discipline with embarrassment. You can justify the first two cases as good discipline, but the embarrassment the child received by being publicly shamed is unjustifiable.

Raising a child is a long-term game. Online posts are short term gratification. As with most things in life, best not to sacrifice the long term plan for some short term gratification.


Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more.


To speak with Yisroel about speaking at a child safety event or to discuss a personal case, email him at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn Here
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Victimization: Child Sexual Abuse Victim & Family of Abuser

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Every now and then reality strikes.

Every now and then someone, unknowingly, reminds me how far we still need to go to protect children.

Every now and then someone who should really know better, shows that not only do they not know better, but they indicate that they have no intention of knowing better.

Every now and then I hit reset. Realizing that things which I take for granted should not be taken for granted.

Here is the back story:

I was speaking with an individual about a recent case of sexual abuse which made it to the news.

In this story, it was reported that the abuser had sex with a 14 year old. This was not a case of a victim physically forcing his victim to have sex, rather it was a case of grooming.

The abuser was arrested and it made the news.

This was the case we were discussing.

The person conversing with me told me that he really feels bad for the kids of the abuser. That they didn’t do anything wrong. They will suffer due to the wrongdoing of their father.

I agreed with him.

He then said something which still sends a shiver down my spine.

He told me that the family members are the biggest victims in the story. His logic, if you can call it that, was that the family members did absolutely nothing wrong, whereas the 14 year old abuse victim “agreed” to the sexual encounter.

This was his view about both this specific case, as well as victims of child sexual abuse in general.

There is so much wrong with this statement.

First, there is no such thing as a child “agreeing” to sex.

A child is never “also to blame” for sexual activity.

You can never say that the child “wanted it” or “requested it”.

Then there is the second issue, the issue that comes up so frequently, and that is the question about the family of the abuser.

Let me make this clear, the family members of the abuser are victims, albeit a different type of victims.

They are secondary victims, and their suffering is real.

But one cannot focus so much on the secondary victims that it costs the primary victims (or potential primary victims).

Let me explain using the example of a car accident.

Two paramedics arrive on the scene where a car struck a tree. There are two people in the car. The driver is not breathing and his pulse is extremely low. The female passenger is in agony, she is screaming how her leg is broken.

Both are victims, yet one deserves greater attention.

The passenger with the broken leg will need to wait for a paramedic who is not treating the driver.

So how can this error be fixed? How can we stop ourselves, and others from giving too much attention to the secondary victims (the family) at the expense of the primary victims (the child being sexually abused)?

The answer is three-fold.

First, we as a society need to stop stigmatizing the family of the abuser. If they haven’t done anything, live up to those words and stop stigmatizing people based upon other people’s behavior.

Second, we need to accept the fact that we as a society do not know how to handle an abuser on our own, and that they are often magnificent liars and manipulators. We cannot convince them to stop. We cannot send them to someone who will magically get them to stop. Making them move just makes it someone else’s problem, and transferring a problem shouldn’t be confused with solving a problem.

But more importantly, we need to take the time to learn the studies about what happens to victims of child sex abuse. The struggles which they will (possibly) have in both the short-term and the long-term.

The more you know about what actually happens to a victim, the less likely you are to confuse who is a primary victim and who is a secondary victim.

One final thought. There is a point that people make when defending the family members. They claim that the family members will suffer when the abuser gets put into jail, whereas the victim’s suffering ends when the abuser gets put into jail.

Sadly, this too is misguided.

The victim’s suffering doesn’t magically disappear once their abuser is put away.

This defense, like many others, are borne out of ignorance.

There are those who will choose to remain ignorant and there are those who will educate themselves to escape their ignorance.

For the sake of the children, please make an active effort to escape the ignorance when it comes to child sex abuse.


Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more.


To speak with Yisroel about speaking at a child safety event or to discuss a personal case, email him at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn Here
Follow Yisroel on Facebook Here