A popular talk show host recently featured a story about mothers who used social media to punish a child. One mother posted a photo of her daughter holding a sign that explained the bad thing the child had done. Another posted a child’s punishment to her own and to the child’s Facebook pages. When others commented, the child was made to respond, saying what she had done to earn the punishment.

One of the mothers justified shaming her child by saying that this is no different than her own parents, back in the day, telling the neighbors about a dumb thing she’d done. Is it the same? And whether it’s the same or not, is it a good thing to do?

Raising teens is as frustrating today as it ever was and it’s still difficult to get a teen’s attention. One of the mothers the talk show host interviewed said that publicly embarrassing her daughter on Facebook was the only way to get a response from the child. So what do you think: is public embarrassment and shaming a terrible idea or an ideal technique for managing your teen?

Let’s start with the job of a parent of teenagers. It’s our job to help a kid make the transition from being 10 to being 20. The ten-year-old is dependent on his parents, he can’t make many decisions on his own, and he definitely needs someone to keep him on track in a lot of ways. The 20-year-old person is nearly an adult. He’s making most of his own decisions and may even be living on his own. He still needs the guidance of Mom and Dad, of course, but only for major decisions and only along with the guidance of his friends and other adults. A lot happens in the decade between childhood and adulthood. If you want your 10-year-old to grow into a capable and responsible adult, then you have to work on that every day until he turns 20.

So every interaction you have with your teenager is an instructional moment. And in every instructional moment, two things are taught: what to do and how to do it. When your child makes a mistake or disappoints you, you want to teach her a different thing to do. And you also want to teach her how to confront someone who has made a mistake, how to guide someone in choosing a better path, and how to not let her anger and frustration take over.

This is where public embarrassment of your child fails as a technique. It may indeed be effective in stopping whatever it was that you didn’t like. But it does nothing at all in teaching your child how to react to another person’s failings. Adults do not go out of their way to purposely embarrass or shame someone else. A friend who did this to you would quickly become your enemy. Embarrassment and shame may stop a behavior but they also destroy trust and create hard feelings. This is not what you want for your child or for the relationship you have together.

The years between 10 and 20 are important in shaping the sort of adult your child will become. But these years are also important in shaping the bond between you and your child for the future. If it is important to you that your child trust you, that she think kindly of you, that she respect your opinions, and that she come to you for advice, then the teen years are the time to build these feelings. These years are too precious to waste on childish displays for all the world to see of her missteps and of your frustration.

Ultimately, resorting to embarrassment and shame reveal the parent as the one who is immature and petty. Be above that. Show your child and show your friends what real grownups look like.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved.

Of course your friends and family want to see your child in your Facebook posts and on other social media sites. But it’s easy to cross the line between sharing your child’s life and exposing his life unfairly or even using his lives as part of some sort of exhibition. There are reasons why social media restrict users to people over the age of 13. One of those reasons is to keep kids from being exploited, even by their parents.

A five-year-old is an Instagram sensation because of his fashion-conscious clothes. Surely this boy doesn’t choose these duds himself. He also doesn’t photograph himself in precociously sophisticated poses. The New York Magazine article that discusses this child’s social media fame reports “There are now five fan accounts dedicated to his style, two of which have appeared in the last month.” Other children didn’t create these fan pages. Adults did. Only adults are responsible for creating this boy’s alter ego and for publicizing his exploits for their own purposes.

Of course, your little posts don’t go to such extremes. But this child’s story is just one of a long line of cautionary tales. Christopher Milne, whose father wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh books describing his childhood exploits, spoke of feeling that his childhood was stolen from him. He wrote, “It seemed to me almost that my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.”

Children should not be the foundation of a parent’s next career. Parents who create a role for themselves by thrusting their child into the limelight steal their child’s potential. It’s obvious to us that this happened to Christopher Robin. It’s part of the horrifying fun of watching shows like Dance Moms and Toddlers in Tiaras. And maybe it’s clear to us that’s what’s happening in the family of the five-year-old fashion star.

But it’s not always obvious when we’re posting to Facebook or Flickr or other sites. The Internet has a long memory. Images and commentary never really go away. You can take things down but they already exist somewhere else, if other people have copied or shared or even just “liked” your post. So have a care:

1. If your motive in making a post is to expose or embarrass your child – or if it could have that effect someday down the road – then don’t make that post.

2. If your motive in making a post is to demonstrate what a good parent you are by using your child as an example or object lesson – then don’t make that post.

3. If your motive in making a post is in any way to make money from your child – by using her face on your book cover or by repeating her cute sayings or whatever – then don’t make that post.

Your child is a star, of course. She’s a wonderful person with a marvelous future and because she’s your child there’s a bit of pride and glory that shines onto you. That’s lovely. But don’t exploit your child in an effort to capitalize on her in any way. She is your child but you don’t own her.

Only children own children’s lives and it’s up to them to decide, when they’re old enough to make such decisions, what parts of their lives they want to share. No child should be a social media star. It’s a parent’s job to make certain this is so.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.