“Excuse me while I hold my arms up high and completely block the view of your child singing. I need to record every second of my Princess singing. Yes, it’s true that the lighting is awful and you can barely see her face, but it’s important that I record every minute of her life.”

This is what the woman sitting in front of me forgot to say at my daughter’s recent school concert.

“Why didn’t you say something?” my husband asked.

“I just got up and moved.”

“That’s not like you.” And he was right.

Instead of politely asking her to move to the back row where the rest of the Steven Spielbergs stood, I wanted to grab her camera and smash it on the ground. A confrontation with ugly words and a few hair grabs would end badly with the mom laughing hysterically (me) escorted out by the principal, while the crying mom (her) receiving unwarranted sympathy. My daughter humiliated forever, would never speak to me again.

My parental patience meter is shot these days. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a mom hop on stage at a pie-eating contest and block everyone’s view so she could get the best shot of her son covered in whipped cream. Did she think it was a good idea for her son to see her being disrespectful to others while she got what she wanted? Sure a picture of Bobby Junior covered in cream could be fun for the wedding slideshow in twenty years, but how about waiting until the contest is over? Or here’s a concept: Use the zoom lens on your camera.

Who better to appreciate the desire to document our children’s lives than me. a documentary filmmaker and teacher? But let’s get real and talk home office. Do you know anyone who actually captures, edits and makes movies for their relatives to watch?
On a rare occasion when the planets align, I have managed to do just that. One of those moments taught me a valuable lesson.

When my girls were both in diapers, my husband and I had no idea what to do on the weekends, so we would buy a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and head to the park for some obscene sugar consumption. Obviously not a healthy habit, we rarely partake these days. One day last year, my youngest, six at the time, ate a donut in her rocking chair. My husband videotaped it with a Beatles song playing in the background. Absolutely adorable, we posted it on YouTube, the video-sharing website, for our family and friends to watch.

Within months, the page views shot up to 18,000. We have a big family, but not that big. When someone left the comment ‘nice legs’ I knew it was time to pull that video and all other pictures of my kids offline. I became obsessed with checking out which of my friends had pictures of their children posted on blogs and Facebook. Strangely enough, pictures of little girls with their tops off seemed to be popular. Hadn’t they read Catlin Flanagain’s article “Babes in the Woods: Anybody could be tracking your children online. Even me.” (Atlantic Monthly, August 2007)? Catlin was able to track down ‘Jenna,’ a high school student through various postings on MySpace and the school’s website. Creepy and scary.

I think it’s time we become more responsible with our parental photography and stop documenting every second with a tape or film that’s most likely going to end up in a drawer somewhere. If we have to push the record button, blocking other parental views is not allowed. And finally, if sharing is a must, we need to know, without a doubt, who’s watching.