Yesterday a friend and coworker emailed me a link to a parenting community Facebook page that I had never heard of before. That’s so awesome, I thought, they are sharing my hand-holding punishment post. This always makes me smile. After all, it’s one of my favorite posts!

Only, they uploaded the photo of my kids holding hands. And quoted directly from the post. And didn’t link back to the post or even leave a credit.

Curious, I thought.

So, I left a polite comment that said this: Hi! So, this is my photo from the post I wrote here: http://www.alimartell.com/index.php/2011/07/19/hand-holding-part-deux-the-punishment-version/ I’m okay with you sharing the idea, since it’s one I use all the time, but a link back to the original source of the post and the image is greatly appreciated, especially since you quoted directly from the post. Thanks!

I was simply asking for a credit back to the original source. Easy.

And then this particular parenting community Facebook page went a little bit crazy. They immediately got defensive and shouty and hostile and then proceeded to delete every single comment from anyone who came onto the site to suggest that they simply credit the owner of the original photo. I have about 25 screenshots of everything before it all got deleted. They used ALL CAPS to call people trolls. They took zero responsibility. It was all my fault, of course, for wanting a proper credit. They were screaming about pinterest and that their source is pinterest.com and they are not required to add my source and that I should copyright my material because how dare I ask them to credit me for photos I have taken of my children and words I have written on my personal blog. (WHAT?)

Now, the point of this post is not to rehash what happened yesterday. I could do this, of course. I could publish all of the comments left by my good friends, coworkers, and fellow members of my parenting community. I could publish all of their comments so you can witness their almost frightening and reddit-worthy spiral into a place of total crazypants. I could publish all of the emails I got from people who felt badly for me.

But I won’t.

Because what I really want to talk about is GRACE and CLASS.

In my eyes, these are two of the most important character traits. These are two things I want my three children to remember at all times.

Don’t feel badly for me.

Feel badly for the 3,175 followers and fans of this particular parenting community. They handled this very small and easy-to-rectify situation with absolutely no grace and no class whatsoever. I hope these 3,175 followers and fans are not turning to the people running this community for any kind of parenting advice.

So, I won’t be publishing their screenshots.

I will hold my head high.

With grace.

And class.

And hope that if my children are even in a situation like this, they would respond the same.