LINDSAY WOODS: The best advice as on how to best deal with aggressive commentary online

Language, and how we use it, is incredibly important. Even more so in relation to our online engagements. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece outlining how I had found this summer challenging. The piece in question, explained that I had struggled. Me. Not my children. I admitted where I had failed: that spending every single day together for nine weeks had tested me. Me. Not them.

Language, and how we use it, is incredibly important. Even more so in relation to our online engagements, writes, Lindsay Woods

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece outlining how I had found this summer challenging.

The piece in question, explained that I had struggled. Me. Not my children. I admitted where I had failed: that spending every single day together for nine weeks had tested me. Me. Not them.

I also discussed the aspects of the summer break which I would miss; the lack of strict routines, no alarms to set etc. Yet, that ultimately, I was glad and ready for us to return to the security of predictability.

In response, safe behind their phone screens and keyboards, individuals wished my children into not being.

The usual rhetoric of being denounced as ‘useless’, ‘nauseating’ or a ‘waste of space’ suddenly was replaced with something slightly more sinister.

They questioned as to why I had deigned to have children if I ‘felt that way about them’ or if I didn’t ‘enjoy spending time with them’. They called me ‘mad’ and referred to my work as ‘one big long waste of print’.

Because I had admitted that I had struggled.

If they had read the piece in its entirety, they would have seen how I mentioned this particular summer. Not ALL summers with my children. Yet, they assumed and in doing so, arrived at the deduction that I was a rubbish parent for voicing my failings. Again, mine. Not my children’s.

They poked and jibed. They tagged their friends into the comments who vehemently agreed, ‘Is she mad?’ and again, questioned why I had children to begin with.

The advice as to how best to deal with aggressive commentary online is thus: ignore it. But, in ignoring it, I accept it. I invite you once more to repeat that pattern. Maybe some of you do not realise the hurtful nature of your words?

Because, we are used to that hurt, aren’t we? It is acceptable to be derogatory, insulting and to spill your rage across a public platform because it’s just words, isn’t it? I am a stranger. You don’t need to attach any positive emotions to me because you don’t know me.

Now, imagine I am your daughter. Your sister. Your friend. One of those people in your family photos you so proudly display across social channels. You know me. I tell you that I struggled.

Will you call me ‘useless’, ‘nauseating’, ‘a waste of space’ or ‘mad’?

I am not here to tone police you. Nor am I hear to alter your opinion. Some of the best engagements and debates have been with people who have had a contrary view to mine. That does not mean your opinion is invalid or wrong. It is, simply, different. What I do want to do however, is adjust the language we use toward one another. It benefits neither party if we cannot be respectful.

I encourage you to engage. Not attack. To debate. Not insult. To offer constructive criticism. Not belittle.

In brief, I want you to speak to me. Not shout at me.

It would make for extremely trite and monotonous engagements if we nodded in continual agreement with one another. Variety and discourse are what makes for enjoyable sparring.

I worry that my children, the children that contrary to your belief, were very much wanted and are very much loved, will enter an age where negative exchanges outweigh the positive ones. Because, if we as adults and parents cannot be courteous to one another, what does that mean for their future?

So, let’s clear a few things up.

I am not a bad parent. Nor are you.

Just because I admitted to finding a period of time, namely this summer, somewhat tough going, does not make me a bad parent. If you felt the same but could not admit it to yourself or those closest to you, that does not make you a bad parent. Because you do or handle things differently to me, does not make either of us bad parents.

If you only ventured as far as your back garden this summer, if you made all the #memories, if you cried in your utility room, if you gave them unlimited access to screens, if you never wanted the first day of school to arrive, if you could not wait for the first day of school to arrive… that does not make you a bad or a good parent. It just makes us parents.

It makes us people. It makes us human. Judging and insulting each other does not. It makes us nasty. It makes us into something that we would never wish our children to be.

Here is where we begin talking to one another. I look forward to meeting you.