**Update: Mom not only being criticized for tweeting about child's death, she's being blamed for being negligent and potentially causing his drowning death!  Stay tuned. 

Mommy blogger Shellie Ross's 5000 plus followers on twitter were used to random tweets about her kids and pets.  But on Monday, they were shocked and saddened by several tweets that documented her two year old son's fall into the pool and his eventual death only hours later.   Needless to say, the mommy blogger community can be both a ferocious support network but also filled with critics ready to pounce on other moms' every online move.  In this case, Ross' public announcement of her son's death prompted both sympathy and anger, many so taken aback by the shocking announcement that they wondered if it was a hoax.

It's not unusual for moms, via their blogs, facebook and other social networks to share their triumphs and tragedies. For so many of these women, their online networks are their only support systems and they use them as such.  Those who contribute to or study this new online conversation, like Lisa Neal Gualtieri, an adjunct clinical professor of the health communication program at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and an expert in social media and public health knows this to be true.  She shared this on  Good Morning America:

"Many people become closer to the people who they use Facebook and Twitter with than they do with their friends and neighbors," said Gualtieri. "And many people even use social media as their primary way of connecting with their friends."

It can be very disconcerting when intimate and private matters are shared amidst banal details (or breakfast menus) and dispatches about pets from a person you "follow" on twitter but who offline you wouldn't necessary call a friend.  Catherine Conners of herbadmother.com shared news of her father's death on twitter and my first reaction was, "how does she have the time to be tweeting this?"  But it didn't take long, after I tweeted my condolences and then saw the outpouring of other messages sending love and support, that using Twitter to share the news and give friends the opportunity to reach out about, made complete sense.  

On my website, truumomconfessions.com, where women anonymously confess to their foibles and frailties, it can be jarring at first when a member shares something very, very personal.  But once the initial shock wears off, the community rushes in to embrace the member knowing that she often has nowhere else offline to turn.  We have seen painful confessions that run the gamut from the death of children to thoughts of suicide.  Needless to say, when we read comments like this - from a woman telling us that she didn't go through with a suicide attempt (following a confession in which she told the community she had just written her suicide notes), it was clear she just needed to know someone was out there who cared and would listen.  Sheilli Ross, dealing with every mother's worst nightmare, obviously needed to know someone was listening too.

Other really interesting takes on this ongoing story:

- Mom tweets, then the claws come out - Imperfect Parent

- I don't think I should apologize (for being critical of tweeting mom) - Madison McGraw