The “Recording Epidemic” Has Made it to My Daughter’s School. It’s Bringing Out the Worst in Kids.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Our daughter (12) was recently recorded on the school bus by two other girls (also 12) using a cell phone. This was done without our daughter’s consent. The girls who were recording were putting a phone right in our daughter’s face and saying what they did and did not like about her. Our daughter, of course, came home hysterical over the incident. I promptly emailed the teacher, vice principal, and principal. I did not hear anything more than, “We addressed this with the girls, and it won’t happen again.” Well, two days later, the girls from the bus started making fun of our daughter at school. I again contacted the school and firmly said this was unacceptable behavior. I also asked what the kids’ consequences were and whether their parents knew about their behavior. The principal said consequences are confidential, and the parents of the perpetrators said their kids were recording “silly little videos.” I feel totally unsatisfied with this conclusion. I wanted to escalate this further with the school, but now school is over, and my husband wants us to move on. Is there anything else we should do to document the video situation and to plan for future recordings without consent? File police reports? I worry that something like the Meta AI glasses may bring out the worst in kids. My heart goes out to your daughter. Being bullied is already painful, but technology today amps it all up to an entirely different level. Even as an adult, I worry about how normalized recording other people without their consent has become, especially with the advent of Meta AI glasses and other smart tech. It can feel like we’re in a surveillance society in which people don’t think about privacy—even if there are still laws in some states that require consent to record people (though particularly audio). My advice on this specific incident is to document everything that happened: names, dates and times, what happened between the girls during the incident, and the school’s responses. Regardless of the kind of bullying, while your daughter is on the school’s bus, the school district is still responsible for her care until she gets home. While she might not have been physically harmed, you can argue (regardless of what your state laws are) that they invaded her physical space by getting so close to her. That’s a form of harassment, and it could have escalated to a physical altercation. If the school isn’t taking your concerns seriously, reach out to the greater district. I would not file police reports. I generally do not advise involving law enforcement in the behavior of minors unless it’s dangerous—for them or for other people. However, you can consult with a lawyer regarding whether any recordings like these might be illegal under state laws (especially if they are posted to a social media platform) or might be classified as cyberbullying, for example. From there, they can advise you on what further action you could take. Your husband is probably suggesting you let it go because your daughter might not even interact with those same girls that closely next school year. Or, they may grow up and move on. But this is a good time to talk to your daughter about how to handle these kinds of situations in the future. Help her find the language to either gently tell people, “I don’t feel comfortable with you recording me,” when they mean no harm, or, like in this situation, just straight up saying, “Don’t record me.” Also, empower her to physically remove herself from the situation when needed, like getting up and moving to another seat, and not feeling bad about it. Your efforts may be best focused on her. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Thanks! Your question has been submitted. My husband and I have two kids, “Anthony,” 4, and “Leo,” 7. Anthony has been suffering from night terrors for the past year. The kids’ bedrooms are next to each other, and we leave Anthony’s door open for when he has an episode, so we can go into his room and get the lights turned on and be there for him when he wakes up. As you can imagine, Leo finds these episodes very upsetting. He’s a light sleeper and is frequently woken up by them (around one to three times per week). We’ve tried noise-canceling headphones for him, but he finds them uncomfortable to sleep in, and he doesn’t like the white noise we’ve tried playing for him. Can you offer some suggestions for helping him (and us!) deal with this? White noise doesn’t work for everyone, but there are other sounds to try! My fellow parent friends and I have tried bilateral music, lo-fi music, and jazz—jazz has actually been a favorite among a few of our kids! Since he doesn’t like the fit of headphones, playing music on a regular device would be just fine. There are also some newer innovations that I haven’t tried yet, but that I’m personally looking into as a person who now struggles to sleep without something calming playing and prefers to have sounds close to me. For example, there’s the Sound Pillow sleep system that plays calming noises from the actual pillow. You can test out its sounds before you get it to see if they’d work. Maybe try them during nap time. It also sounds like Leo’s door is closed, but the noise from Anthony’s room is still coming through. Some of that can be helped with decorative acoustic sound panels on the walls they share in each of their rooms. While nothing will block out all noises, these panels do a pretty good job of muffling the sound, and these by Felt Right are adorable and give you a lot of aesthetic choices that don’t actually look like acoustic panels. They even have a Bluey collection if your boys love that character. Good luck. Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to hear about it—and help you navigate your problems at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here! We’re trying to figure out bedroom arrangements for our three daughters. Our girls are an incoming 2nd grader, an incoming kindergartener, and a 4-month-old. Right now, the baby is still in our room, but we’re starting to think ahead. Before the baby arrived, we tried having the two older girls share a room with bunk beds, but it wasn’t a great fit for our family due to constant debates over who got the top bunk and the bunk bed itself not working particularly well for them. The plan was to eventually go back to sharing with two twin beds side-by-side like they had before. Originally, I assumed we’d put the two older girls together and give the baby her own room. Part of my thinking is that our oldest sleeps through just about anything, and I’d love for the baby to have her own space so we can focus on establishing healthy sleep habits and helping her learn to sleep independently without worrying about waking siblings. We were thinking of making any room changes before the school year starts, hoping everyone would have time to adjust and settle into a new routine before school begins. Another factor is that my middle child has a hard time sleeping through the night and really doesn’t like being alone. When she wakes up, it’s often not a quiet wake-up—she’ll call for us, come looking for us, or otherwise make it known she’s awake. I’ve wondered whether sharing a room with her big sister might help her feel more secure at night, and since my oldest sleeps through almost anything, I suspect she’d be less likely than the baby to be disturbed by those wake-ups. The part that’s making me second-guess things is that my oldest recently told her therapist that having her own room feels like her “safe space” when she needs alone time, a break, or a place to regulate. That made me wonder whether moving her into a shared room would be the right choice. How do we decide who shares? Should we prioritize age, temperament, sleep needs, privacy, or something else? It sounds like your original plan for your second grader and kindergartener to share a room makes sense. If the baby wakes up the kindergartener in the middle of the night, no one in that house will get a good night’s sleep. And with a full house, you’ll all need your rest to tackle your mornings. I do think it’s so great that you want to give your oldest daughter her own space. Sometimes, we just can’t do that because of what we’re working with. The number of rooms is the number of rooms. However, think about whether there’s a way to create a sacred space for her in another way. Is the room big enough to create a special nook for her within it? Are there other places in the house that might not be extra full rooms, but that you can section off with a room divider and some new cool but small things, like a bean bag chair, a little table, and space for books and toys? What comes to mind is how creative people became during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders, when everyone had to make do with what they had at home. All of a sudden, most families didn’t have enough space but needed play areas, work offices, and all kinds of spaces so that they could function. We saw people turning closets into entire offices or window areas into reading nooks. Sheds became lounge spaces, and basements were turned into family rooms. People reimagined what they already had. This might not necessarily seem like an easy thing to do, but I bought a room divider and created an entire new space in my home. I would look at articles about pandemic home design and see if it sparks a little inspiration. And I bet she’ll be so very happy that you valued her need for space enough to try to create something special just for her. I take great care in my cooking. All the produce I use is freshly picked from my organic garden. I don’t cook with salt or spices, as it is healthier and my family has a history of heart disease. I taught myself how to cook in my youth and it is a passion of mine. My husband adores my cooking. However, lately, my daughter has been belittling my cooking abilities. “Jenna” is 15 and has gradually stopped eating any of the food I make. She has started cooking her own meals after my husband and I eat, as the kitchen isn’t free until after we’ve tidied up. She spent the birthday money her grandparents gave her on cookbooks and spices, and has been begging us to buy her certain kitchen appliances. I’m happy that she shares my interest in cooking, but her refusal to eat my food is deeply insulting…

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