If you ask any of my daughters what their dad’s and my mission is in raising them they will, without hesitation, answer: to raise good citizens.

It’s a four-word mission statement with brevity and simplicity that belies all it actually means.

We want them to be kind. And generous. We want them to give back. And stand up for what’s right. Fight injustice and intolerance. Be honest…with themselves and others. We want them to work hard and be proud of what they accomplish. And stay humble… saying thank you and living gratefully. And with grace. We want them to know what it is to be a good friend, to have a listening and forgiving heart and always be willing to offer a hand or a hug. We want them to laugh and love easily and for it to be hard to hate and hold a grudge. We want them to be intellectually curious and emotionally intelligent. We want them to be the kind of people they would choose to have as friends.

Said in a shorter, more crass way, their dad and I set out on a mission nearly 23 years ago to not raise assholes. The world, we decided, had enough of them, and we needn’t add to that population.

But how would I protect my kids from that seemingly growing population that I was committed to not add to? I still struggle with that.

When my kids were little, it was easier. I’d just politely decline the play date with the kid who made my kid cry. Ok, it usually involved some elaborate lie to the mom who offered the invite, if I’m being honest. Feigning that the family had been struck with tuberculosis seemed easier than telling a parent their kid was on a path to be a guest on Jerry Springer.

But infectious disease white lies aside, the older they get, the harder it is to protect them.

Raising kids gave me newfound appreciation for “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.” I mean, come on, John Travolta, or his hair at least, was thriving in that movie. I know it’s completely unrealistic to think you can stick your kids in a plastic habitat and protect them from the ills of the world. But man, I would love to try. (It works for hamsters…just saying.)

It’s especially unrealistic when the ills of the world have the ability to hurt their feelings, or make them question their abilities or steal their self confidence all from the palm of their hand. Parents my age didn’t grow up with the internet. When people were mean to us or talked about us, they had to do it in person or over the phone. They didn’t have the ability to tweet at us or about us. Or passively aggressively show us how they felt about us by liking a post that maligned us. They couldn’t hide behind a keyboard and not take ownership for their behavior.

It’s a brave new world…if we are defining brave as cowardly and dehumanizing. Like a lot of parents, my kids are no stranger to cyber bullying. I thought it would get better as they and their peers got older and more mature and became more fully evolved humans. But it hasn’t. And it’s not just people they know. The internet empowers complete strangers to very publicly malign others. And as a parent, it’s a special kind of helpless that I feel. I’d like nothing more than take those to task who say awful things to my kids online. But that doesn’t actually help. It only makes it worse.

It’s a bizarre and unfair reality our kids endure. Having someone subtweet something unkind about you and then having a bunch of your “friends” like it is a bit like getting invited to a sleepover and your “friends” decide they are going to stick your hand in warm water when you fall asleep or put your bra in the freezer. And in full insult to injury mode, they are going to do the unkind deed and then tell the entire world about it with a few taps of the keys.

There have been times when I have watched this unfold on the sidelines…and it’s sometimes kids who I have welcomed into my home who are being unkind on social media. I want to grab them by the virtual collar and ask them what they are thinking. Maybe they are not. Maybe in a misguided effort for likes and retweets they chose being unkind over being human.

My kids are not perfect. They have their unkind moments. Even though my older two are in their 20s, I still have alerts set so I get a text when they tweet. One, because I don’t live on Twitter all day, and two, because I’d like to be able to address in real time if they are being less than kind.

Like a lot of parents, I’m sure, I wonder if I’m making progress at achieving my goal of raising good citizens. The KPIs and ROI aren’t always immediately evident. But every now and then I get an unintended progress report.

Like when my middle daughter was getting ready to leave for college. Her older sister sat her down and said, “When you get to college you are going to meet a lot of different people, and you are going to encounter people who are not that nice, and you need to be prepared for that.”

I hate that she had to have the conversation. But I love that she did.

I hope my girls understand that some people were in fact raised by wolves. (Ok, probably not actual fact.) But I’m not even sure how they type the things they do with no opposable thumbs. But they do. I wish my kids could ignore some of what they hear on social media and realize there is a reason these haters are called trolls.
I know that’s asking a lot. But that’s what we ask of good citizens.

I hope my girls also know that even though they may leave the nest, their home team is always behind them, proud of where they are in this journey.