Parents and facebook

[HTSMumma]

It's had a parent of a child send me a friend request on Facebook.
I obviously want to keep my work life and personal life separate (and my fb is definitely personal and private).
This has left me in a little awkward position. Have any of you had a parent send you a friend request and how have you dealt with it?
I have nothing to hide, but I don't want the professional/personal lines blurred.

Any advice very much appreciated.

:-)

PS: I'm in no way anti-Facebook. It's as private/public as you make it. It's up to you how much you share with your friends and family. I make no negative remarks about anyone on Facebook (besides the odd corrupt politician for example) and I don't post any stupid cryptic posts. I don't ever post negatively about my job (I may say, thank goodness for the weekend). I am sometimes a bit sweary on there, but apart from that, nothing bad to hide, just like my privacy.

[littlebears1009]

I would message her and say thank you very much for the add however I'm sure you'll appreciate that I like to keep my business and private life separate. If you have a business page you could refer her to that so she can keep up to date with the business. X

[Pixie dust]

I have had parents send friend requests before and I have always politely explained about keeping my private life and work seperate. Parents have never had a problem when I have explained why.

[Mouse]

I have had friend requests from parents & just ignore them. Only one has ever mentioned it & I just said that I don't add parents as friends.

[CookieCutter]

I have accepted a friend request from a parent before, and regretted it massively! I was flattered at the time, and also thought it would be a good way for this parent to get to know me and trust I am the right person to look after her little one. She was a first time mum and her lo wasn't meant to start with me for 5 months, so I thought fb would give her a good idea of my personality as I have nothing to hide. What I hadn't realized was that fb opened me up to being contactable well outside of business hours. I leave myself logged into fb on my iPad pretty much 24/7 because I live far away from my family (thousands of miles and a big time difference), so that they can always reach me in an emergency (because they all have fb, but not all my family have Skype or the ability to make such long distance calls). I mentioned this to the mum in question once (because she questioned me as to why I am always online, as if I sit on fb all day). Shortly after this conversation, I began receiving fb messages from her at all hours of the day and night (I had a message at 3 am once- she had been up breast feeding and reading through my policies and decided she wanted to have a discussion about how she doesn't agree with my behaviour policy and would not be happy for her child to ever have to endure a time out!). Also, once her lo started coming to me, she would often tag me in a status which included a snide remark about me- like the time she forgot to bring lo's dummy so he didn't sleep very well and was grumpy in the afternoon, she tagged me in a sarcastic post thanking me for his sunny disposition. She then became angry with me when I asked her not to do that as it could be bad for my business, and she told me she was within her rights to say anything she wanted to her friends on fb! I didn't even get into the fact that it was actually her fault for not bringing the dummy!

The only good thing to come from having her on fb was that I started to get a good idea that she was going to be hard work before her lo even started with me, which made it an easy decision to end the contract when things went from bad to worse within the 4 weeks settling in period. It is awkward to explain to parents about keeping personal lives separate, but I now know it's just so important!

[greanan]

I live in a small town so knew most of my parents before they'd even started and most I was already friends with on Facebook. I'm actually now friends with all parents on Facebook. It comes in handy sometimes when they mention on there that their lo has been sick etc, if I don't see it on there then half the time I wouldn't even know!!!