“I’m going to tweet that!” I proclaimed after my older son did something so very kid-funny.

“No. Don’t tweet that,” my five year old son replied, frowning.

“Oh,” I hesitated. “I guess I won’t then.”

“Mommy would never post anything you don’t want her to,” my husband chimed in.

I almost said, “Well, I didn’t say that.” Instead, I nodded.

I didn’t expect to hear the words “don’t tweet that” from him for quite a while, but the thought of “what’s appropriate to share or not about my kids” has been on my mind lately.

A few weeks back, there was an article by a mom blogger in the Washington Post declaring that she wouldn’t stop writing about her 11-year-old daughter even though her daughter wanted her to. Topics would be subject to negotiation, but what the mom wrote was ultimately down to her. The writer said that she simply wouldn’t be able to capture her life in writing if she didn’t include her experiences as a parent.

As a writer, I get it. There’s a classic Anne Lamott quote that says, “If you don’t know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it.” I’ve written personal essays of varying quality since I was 14. I certainly wasn’t going to stop once I had kids. But as a mom, I winced at the writer’s attitude. Are our children’s stories truly ours to tell? If we do, what will be left for them to share as their own?

For my own purposes, I’ve created some rough guidelines. You may notice that I have a lot of photos of the backs of my kids’ heads. I rarely post public photos of their faces straight-on, to protect their privacy. Similarly, I never use their real names. Using only nicknames and references like “my older son” makes it harder to Google them when they get older. I purposely shy away from the most sensitive topics that could be embarrassing when they get older. Potty-training is a big one. Even when I do write about my kids, I try first and foremost to focus on my experience and emotions, only including details when necessary.

And now I’ve started letting my older son know what I’m writing about him. Before putting up a recent post, I told him that I’d be writing about his fear during a particular scene in a movie. He just shrugged and went back to pretending he was in a video game. Honestly, that’s the reaction I expect most of the time. But I don’t know what he’s going to be sensitive about or not. So it’s worth asking.

This isn’t to say that bloggers or parents with different approaches are wrong. I know hilarious posts about the hardest parts of parenting got me through many long nights. Plenty of kids have no qualms about having their faces on their parents’ blogs.

To me, the important thing is that we think through these issues at all, whether we’re bloggers with thousands of fans or just parents that post photos on Facebook. Considering how we respect our children’s current and future selves is the least we can do in this online and offline world.

For more, follow We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So by Shannon Brescher Shea.