The Ability to Solve Problems Comes With Maturity

Yesterday I was on the treadmill when I heard Marisa baffled over a problem on the computer. She had just come home from school and was following her usual routine which included checking out her e-mail messages from friends and going to her Facebook page. "Where are they? I lost them!" I could hear her repeating this over and over and thought to myself, Oh no! Something's wrong with her Facebook page. Anger is soon to follow. As I was about to stop the treadmill and check it out, the problem seemed to have resolved so I continued my workout.

Later, when I got off the treadmill I asked Marisa what had happened. "Oh, I thought I lost my friends but it's okay now," she said. "Alright!" I answered and I went about making dinner. Then later that evening I went on the computer to check my own e-mail and saw that 10 of Marisa's friends sent me messages on Facebook accepting my friendship. "Marisa, what did you do? I have your friends accepting me as a friend on Facebook!" I had been reading some 200 comments on the guest blog written by Liane Kupferberg Carter entitled Cure Du Jour which had been posted at the Autism Science Foundation Facebook group page. The article involved Dr. Wakefield, the British physician, who had his license revoked for the unscientific procedures he used to conclude that autism was caused by vaccines. This was a very controversial subject and after reviewing the many comments, I apparently forgot to log out.

Then later Marisa assumed that the Facebook page that opened was hers. Considering the fact that Marisa has some 150 friends on her Facebook page, seeing only a sprinkling at first glance had to be very upsetting to her. So rather than get all upset and throw a fit, she went about requesting her friends all over again. This would have been just fine if it was on her Facebook page. But that was not the case. So, once I realized what had happened, there were two things that needed to be done. I instructed Marisa to always check the profile to make sure she was actually on her own Facebook page. Marisa also needed to send messages to all her friends to let them know that she accidentally invited them to be MY friend, because she was on my Facebook page. Oh well ... for me the Facebook messages keep coming to my e-mail. Marisa's friends are accepting me as their friends.

Later I asked Marisa, "How come you didn't have a tantrum when you were confused about where all your friends had disappeared?" "Babies have tantrums and I'm not a baby anymore." she said. "Good for you! I'm proud of the way you handled this problem and you should be too, but next time please make sure you're on your Facebook page," I said. I also realized that I had learned something from this experience too. Don't EVER forget to log out of Facebook again!