Lessons from Queen Victoria

Hermaphrodite Mum 
Three kids and a single mum

I read in The Times newspaper that a quarter of 14-year old girls are depressed. Good grief. The reasons cited for this dip in teenage mental health are familiar - a preoccupation with body image, as well as the pressures of social media and achieving academic success.

The lure of the mobile phone
© Mirko Vitali | Dreamstime

Helpfully, the newspaper provides a little quiz to test your daughter's own mental resilience. So when Quiet One gets home from school, she's barely had time to reach for the biscuit tin before I start firing questions at her.

"In the past two weeks, can you tell me if this statement is true, untrue or sometimes true..."

"Untrue."

"But I haven't told you the statement yet!"

Where wild things go on

My 11-year old daughter has just discovered the photo-sharing app, Instagram. It is her first foray into the digital world. At the moment she has a private account with a nickname, and only a handful of followers, all of whom she knows. Mostly she posts pictures of the dog ("another picture of my lovely doggy") or the cat so hopefully we are safe for now.

Instagram: a gate into the world of social media

Which is a good thing, particularly as she behaves online just as she does in real life, in a characteristically candid way. 

"I am not sure I like that very much. Sorry )-:" she wrote under her dad's picture of some autumn leaves the other day. Under another picture, she wrote: "Completely gorgeous. Never seen anything so beautiful and colourful, Mister Fantastic Photographer!"

The point is that she has yet to moderate her behaviour between a personal and public sphere - and why should she? She is only a child with no experience of these things. The problem is that anyone reading her comments wouldn't be able to see them in that context. To most people online she is just another user.