Snooping and Kvelling

Em knows that she has no expectation of privacy online, and in particular in her email account.* She's 11, for one thing, and she's gotten in trouble on the computer in the past, for another. So every month or so I log in to her account and check on what's come in--and gone out--just to be sure everything's OK. Just a couple of emails, here and there. I'm in, I check, I'm out. Well, most of the time.

We were taking a walk this evening, and she mentioned to me an incident that had happened at lunch, where some of her friends were joking about a boy in her class. This boy is on the spectrum--my guess would be somewhere just slightly south of high-functioning autism--and Em has been in his class for the past three years. She said that her friends were ragging on him during lunch, and she--as she always has, to give credit where credit is due--had told them to cut it out. Apparently, though, this time she took some flack for it and--as she told me during our walk--she thought that was especially unfair. Then she mentioned that she'd emailed one of the friends, a more-or-less innocent bystander to the talk, to try to tell her side of the story.

And so I decided that tonight would be one of the nights I'd do a little checking in her email. Because, really. I just had to see what she'd written. Sue me. And then sue me again, because I'm about to share a small part of it with you:

C says that I should lighten up and just have fun and that he doesn't know that they make fun of him but thats my point! He's just like any of us he's just a little more special.

Just a little more special. I think I know someone else that applies to as well.

What a kid.

*Yes, I know that expectation of non-privacy probably doesn't extend to my blog as well. Too bad. This should be the worst thing I ever do to her--invade her privacy so that I can tell everyone how wonderful she is.