Dear Snarky,
My family has recently been devastated by a family member. After what I thought was a very nice Thanksgiving that included 31 members of our family from a great grandmother to nieces and nephews my cousin went on Facebook and wrote a disgusting post about how awful our family is.
She went off on just about everybody including kids. In my case she used my name and my kids’ names and said that I was a “mean girl raising mean girls.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough her post got a lot of likes and sad faces and even my high school math teacher from way back in the day gave it a sad face.
It has taken everything I have not to go on Facebook and comment and defend my family. I want too so bad. I’ve been going back and forth over what to do because it feels wrong to let her say these things without my family defending themselves especially when it comes to the kids.
Signed, Furious
Dear Furious,
To begin let me congratulate you on not losing your mind as soon as your cousin posted about your kids on social media. That took major self-control.
Now let me also share that my advice is going to be skewed because I don’t know anything about your family. You could be the best family in the world or horrible. I’m going to go with that your family is average. This means flawed with a crazy member or two or three.
My recommendation is that you do your family due diligence and get some relatives to meet with this cousin and try to decipher what’s hurting her because her Facebook post could be a cry for help.
After that is done I would let your cousin knew that writing about anyone’s child on social media is basically game over for your relationship.
I would then be prepared for your cousin to go back on social media and post some long, rambling diatribe about how her family tried to silence her. Because here’s the deal – your cousin craves attention, Facebook provides it. She’s probably not going to stop posting.
You also need to realize those likes and sad faces she’s getting are because when people see train wrecks on social media they feel uncomfortable so the easiest thing to do is the sad face.
Don’t fall into her social media pit of cray cray. You need to block her and move on. I’m going to say that again – BLOCK AND MOVE ON. You’re not going to stop her and to engage with her on Facebook is just going to create more fireworks.
If you have a question for Dear Snarky – advice with an attitude – email me at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com. 😉
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