Our psychology class has to do a paper on trixie ( "the most up-to-date baby on the web"), at first i thought, dude, this guy has no life, but after spending 4 hours looking for major milestones (such as holding her head up, and if she was on time according to psychologists) on Trixie, I have to say, your awesome. Plus the class is in NC too, and like that other photo of trixie at the zoo, makes me wanna go there. I just hope i can do at least half of what you do when i have a kid, b/c this site is awesome and i know trixie will especially love it to show off to her friends when she gets older.

TPOD "As for what Trixie is doing --who knows?"

My guess? She's swimming in a sea of flowers. Sure, it's not like swimming in water, but who's up for swimming when it's pink sweater weather. Next thing you'll know, she'll want to run (or roll) around in a field of wildflowers.

psychology papers on a real baby on the internet. kinda weird and invasive of the teacher, unless he asked. oh well, i suppose you put it out there it is fair game.

in other news, another great picture ben.

I'm with Dave on this one. I certainly hope that the teacher emailed Ben. Looking at pictures and reading milestones is one thing. Doing psychological writeups on a minor w/o parental consent is another.

Maybe to Trixie, the mosaic reminded her of those big colorful playmat/baby gyms from her "youth." (If I weren't at work, I'd search for a photo of one)

All my life's a circle....sunrise and sundown....

im with trixie, i would roll around too, that is a nice looking mosaic. it looks like it is nice and warm from the sun... mmmm sun... i wish we had some of that here.

All: This is the first I've heard of the psychology class project.

C.: Are you the guys in the white van across the street? Actually, if I understand correctly, you aren't writing a psychological profile, only looking for Trixie's development milestones. I'd like to hear more details about the project if you have time.

BTW, if you guys do detect signs of serial-killerism or patricidal tendencies, please give me a head's up. Thanks-

Ben, Trixie is going to be the most well-adjusted adult when she grows up, due in large part to having parents who don't take life and parenting too seriously. The patricidal tendencies comment made me laugh out loud.

No we are in the black van.....
~now that i think about it, her trying to feed the plastic doll the gold fish, all i can say is uh, don't have real fish or another baby :-).

well here's a little of what i discovered (picture reference only), trixie like the picture of faces, or ones that resemble a face, most do, and the black and white contrast. Also she was born at 20in., most are born that length. She lifted her head in one month, which is in time (28th and 29th september), october 10th she exhibits smiling (sorta), doing mini push-ups by two which is on time, october 18th, she was bearing weight on 2 legs, she was ahead of the game. There's a whole lot more but I gotta go.
(these are pic. references though, and what your captions say sometimes)

well the teacher was going to use their kid, but this had soo much more, and i worked in a childrens clinic, what do you think the doctor does?, he judges your baby's development, due to how they act and respond and most people don't even know it. It's really how you find a child who is socially behind, all kids progress differently, for example, i never crawled, i rolled, then would pull myself up when i reach an object. But it's by studying these "milestone" they can discover problems early. Thats how they caught my friend's son autism on time, thanks to early intervention he's not years behind the crowd. Sure it may seem invasive, but in all fairness it is on the w.w.w. :-)

It's none of my business but maybe C should say what school he or she is from and what the teachers name is. If I were Ben I would want this information. I think ben and the teacher should chat just to feel comfortable with what they're doing. I dunno I'm just thinking if it were my child I would want to at least know who the teacher was.

Good topic for debate. Privacy on a published website is a tricky one.

Having given the matter a great deal of thought (in other genres), I'm on the other side of this one. I see weblogs as informal journalism. Don't put anything out there that you don't want people to see and react to. In fact the essence of blogging is readership reaction.

The project is taking data as posted on a published, popular website. From what c has written it sounds like basic, how-does-this-compare-to-average information gathering. Nothing exploitative there. In fact, any potential exploitation of Trixie has its roots and responsibility in Ben's authorship of this data (the ultimate conclusion if one makes the argument that her milestones should not be viewed by the public and examined closely... in which case they shouldn't be published in the first place).

I think a psychology project based on milestones, is a waste of that students time.
Some parents put too much stock into "milestones"
Babies will walk, talk etc. Milestones get some parents worked up over nothing. Were all unique.
A few generations ago, competing which baby said what by when etc, was just talking smack, now its "Psychology"

"ditto" Posted by:

I with the previous two posters. Though I DO measure my daughter's progress against established milestones, mostly for reassurance, I still think this "project" is a little specious. It seems very simplistic and vague for a college assignment.

[part of this comment was removed because it contained personal attacks - benmac]

I believe that C. probably does have this assignment, but as compared to when I took child psych, it seems like they are looking at a lot of physical things, whereas in the class I took we largely looked more at cognitive, social, and emotional developement. It seems odd that they would look so strictly at physical milestones.

For example, we went into a daycare (with the parents' permission of course) for a couple of hours for 10 weeks and observed for "milestones" such as object permanence, when they learned to play in groups, imaginitive play, etc. etc. etc.

Ben's "experiments" with the black and white pictures cracks me up, because actually do experiments like that on babies! They have shown that even very younng infants can remember which pictures they have seen and spend less time examining those, than if a new one is presented. Anyway...i've rambled long enough, but the research is pretty cool!!

Ben has c.'s IP address - probably not hard to find which school c. attends and then browse the psych department's web page for the assignment.

A recent grad from a social science speaking here...

It's most likely just busy work for an undergraduate student. It would be difficult to measure anything other than physical development by the pictures, I think. And I am with Heather, if you post something on a public website, you may as well expect the public, including undergrads, to scrutinize it. *shrugs*

-internet privacy is a joke. You make it accessible to all, then want it restricted? it's the WORLD WIDE web. need i say more?
and the teacher certainly didn't ask us to do anything that has already been done to the kid by their doctor. Analyze.

-All i can say is if you have a kid, you will know milestones are important, if the kid is a few months behind (so what who cares), but if the kid is a year behind there's a problem, 99% of the time.

[A LOT of this comment was removed because it contained personal attacks - benmac]

Sorry everyone. I dropped the ball on this and things have turned bad. I don't mind discussing (or arguing over) the issue of internet privacy -- it's totally valid given the format of this site. But let's not sink to personal attacks. Keep it issue based.

hmm, if there was a psych assign. i wonder why others in that class haven't posted comments?
anyways! never too late to add a password and make this a private website for you and your family benmac.
just a thought.
adios

I've been thinking about this since the discusion started, to my mind there are two issues, that of copyright and the stickier one of etiquette. As I understand it, copyright applies just as to any other published material. If that's so, then referencing this website is no different than referencing the New York Times or the Globe and Mail (gratutous canadian reference :) ). However, it *feels* different to me, because, unlike those papers, this is a personal site and I for one, feel like a part of this family's circle of friends even before I had ever commented, and feel as protective as I would toward any friend. (If anyone could be friends who writes as long sentences as that!) So that's why I think this is an etiquette question, and we don't have the right way to address it yet.

personal attacks aside, my guess is that in the TPOD, Trixie's just already learned to read, was trying to hide it, and blew her cover. "As for what Trixie is doing" -- she's following the instructions! (At least as much of them as I can see. . . )

I've been watching this little sweetie grow and and advance as a normal little girl for over a year now w/o any comments. Just enjoying all the milestones and anticts as she goes thru her life.

Why turn this a Project for someone?

That is so dumb.

Let us enjoy all BENMAC has to share with us before this turns into an inclusive site where we have to have passwords to view.

I so love viewing this site.

I view this site severel times a day and and I'm distressed By the people that try to anyalize
Trixies progress.

She's just a cute little girl with a loving father getting through the trials and tribulations of raising this little sweetie.

GET OVER IT

TTU's on the web, and publicly available; I don't think it's fair for anyone to somehow insist that the only visitors are those with particularized intention.

BenMac has and had the technical option to make the site password-protected and/or to keep everything pseudonymous (like me). By not choosing to go that way, the site is left open for irrelevant-but-relatively-innocuous uses like the one in question here, or even more nefarious ones.

Certainly, I don't think anyone would have objected if someone had posted a comment to the effect that, "hey, I'm in a web design class and our prof pointed us to this site to talk about different aspects blah blah blah..." Or even if the question was an assignment in a class about the graphical representation of information (what's the name of that guy BenMac and everyone's always talking about here?)

That's the nature of the web. We as a community can shun or otherwise discipline certain interlopers who break the rules, so, for instance, we will counter-flame any trolls who show up, affirmatively NOT shop at any comment-spammers that slip through, and like that.

Similrarly, BenMac can, by technical means, exclude certain IP's and whatnot, to the extent that such technical defenses are effective.

But at the end of the day, if our social approbation is unimportant to the bad actor and the technical fixes are insufficient to deter him or her, then that actor is as entitled to look at this information as is anyone else, and quite honestly I think that a child-development class is probably one of the more innocent such "abuses."

I mean, let's be honest. With all the press this site's gotten, you don't think there's at least one or two pervy freaks out there, checking in on Trixie and family every bit as regularly as any one of "us?"

Okay. That was long winded. Sorry.

Point is, I think we should lay off both C. and his/her professor or classmates.

Besides. Maybe the whole thing is really a class in internet social mores or something, and the comment was just a bit of bait.

--FD

PS: The value (or lack thereof) of the whole "milestones" thing is really a side discussion, but for what it's worth, I find them useful in a sort of general sense, but not as specifically applied to my child. They make a good list of "things to look for next," but obviously, everyone's mileage may vary.

PPS: Note to pervy freaks: touch Trixie -- even look funny at her live and in person -- and there's a whole posse of folks out here (me included) who will happily feed you your own skin. Just so you know.

Thanks, FrumDad, for the PPS. I was trying to figure out how to address the idea of pervy freaks, and you done good.

Maddie'sMom: I second the motion!!!

Yeah, I'm always amazed by the visceral nature of that particular anger. As a general rule, "child-in-danger" speaks to the primordial core of people, but one of the great mental shifts involved in becoming a parent myself was recognizing the incredible darkness of which I'm capable when faced with "child-in-danger" now. I find that I don't want to merely protect the child; I want to utterly (and slowly) destroy the threat. Think Marsellus Wallace and his acquaintances with the pliers and the blowtorch.

--FD

Wow, FrumDad...a movie reference from before Maddie, so I actually GET it!

I just saw the comments on the psych project. If it is the same project that my class (in NC) did last month there is nothing to worry about. We were studying childhood milestones and early childhood development and compared Trixie to the norms in the book. The professor thought the data on sleep, etc., was very well organized and was somewhat like Piaget. I liked the site so much I checked back on Trixie today and saw all the emails. I don't think invasion was the intention.
Trixie is great!

glad someone else posted about having to do a project on the same thing, really, i wasn't making it up lol. I just checked back to see what trouble, i really didn't mean to start. i just wanted to say good site, i was seriously not even gonna post myself. Trust me my class has long moved on.
On the milestone side, there was a woman who came into the daycare i work, and her daughter is 2, can't even talk, can't eat with a spoon, i think she knew her daughter was behind, but was in denial, so i copied her a chart from my book and gave it to her, and the child has been seeing therapists and etc, i mean not to tell anyone that because your kid started walking a month behind there's a problem. I didn't want anyone getting the wrong impression.
Anywayz, sorry ben, didn't mean to invade your privacy, but in all fairness, if i didn't say anything, no one would have ever known, so i just hope i didn't ruin it for other classes in the future. I'd feel awful, b/c i had fun doing it. And it helped, so I hope u keep it open like before.
-C.

sorry last post i sware, okay before someone gets crazy, I didn't tell her, the mother, she should go by the milestone chart. But if you ever notice, children with mental problems especially has certain features to clue you in, the child did definately have some. But i was just trying to show her, that at 2, most kids are here.... and she's at an 9 months old level... And unfortunately the child does have problems. So just to clarify. anywayz no more posts from me i sware, hope everyone had a great easter!
-c

C.: I'm glad you stopped by for another visit. There are no hard feelings. Sometimes there's a breakdown in communication on message boards and w/o moderation tempers flare and the whole thing implodes. But I think everything resolved ok, and Frumdad hit the nail on the head with respect to the privacy issues. And no, you didn't ruin it for any classes in the future.

C. and Kate-

I'm glad that Ben's taking such a reasonable approach on this, and I agree that this is a great class project for you guys. But you might want to mention to your teacher that the flareup happened, and that it would be polite for him to warn Ben when he's going to do this kind of assignment.

Like FrumDad said, there's no question that your teacher had the right to make this assignment. But as a matter of manners, it seems like it's nice to tell someone if your whole class is going to be studying and writing on whether his child is "normal."

And I can see why your teacher thought you guys would learn stuff from this site, because the presentation of data is great, and oh-so-useful. Plus Trixie is as cute as they come!

I have to admit I was surprised when I saw this thread. I thought the teacher would have contacted Ben to let him know about the project and maybe to warn him that students might be contacting him for quick help since some of the answers took some digging. It never crossed my mind that Ben would mind people looking at the data. I had heard of the website before the class from a local radio station but I did not visit until I was given the assignment. Ben, I'm sorry if this felt invasive but it must be kind of nice to know that your data is being looked at and put to use. It was an undergraduate glass with mostly nursing students. Everyone liked Trixie (and Ben) and no one spotted any future psychiatric problems......

I know people are sensitive about this so I just wanted to add that the last line in my post is a joke. We were not looking for anything like that. This is just a basic class.

I used to teach college classes, and every good teacher I know would always ask permission before telling students to use a personal website for research. You don't need permission to study the New York Times online or msn.com, but the Institutional Review Board requires prior permission before using human "subjects." Even online. Even if it's technically okay not to, it's just not good form.

Then again, it's also very true that people can be using this site for study and not leaving any post.

That being said, what a great picture. I love the idea of Trixie hiding that she's learned to read!