From My Mailbox: “10 Ways to Use Technology to Spy on Your Kids”

I hate all of these, yes I get checking your kid’s internet history once in a while, but the rest of these are utterly insane and would be considered stalking in any other case.
I especially “love” #9, “… emit an ear piercing sound if they’re driving too fast…”
Yes, because when I’m driving 20 over, a shockingly loud shriek will help me keep my attention on the road and I wouldn’t jump and swerve all over the road AT ALLLLLLLL.
Lord save me from imbeciles.

I don’t know what to say…these are so not okay! Car monitors that can “emit an ear piercing sound?” That seems like more of a hazard than a safety measure.

Wait, that’s from The Onion, right?

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/kids-off-to-college-stalk-em-with-social-media/

Take it from someone who WAS a more tech-savvy teen: if your kids want to hide from you, they will. I learned quickly enough to only visit certain sites at school/a friend’s house (nothing unsavory; just sites my mom hated because they were time-wasters), to delete history, and get around the Net Nanny.

And it is true about alternate aliases. I have about ten that I still use, some of which, I keep private even from my friends.

But still. Knowing my parents trusted me actually kept me away from using unsavory sites more than any net nanny could. Knowing they would be disappointed was worse than knowing they did not trust me (and now my dad enjoys some of the same sites I do. XD).

Seriously. Having a talk with your kid, trusting them, and occasionally checking their history is better than spying on everything they do—and if you are really bothered, then only allow the public computer to have net with the desired controls. It is easier to check up on what kids are doing, and harder for teens to hide when Mommy or Daddy could walk by at any moment.

We were all teens once, and we all did something stupid that we would rather not let our parents know. If they are not doing anything illegal, en hlet them screw up and make mistakes. It is better they learn some lessons now than later as adults.

OUI VEY! So, I used to work consumer tech support for a large ISP (still do, but don’t have to take phone calls now YAY!). I’m tech savvy. People would ask me “How do I make sure kids aren’t doing anything wrong on the internet? Is there any software I can use?”. I’d say “Put the computer in a public area. If your kids are smart at all they’ll figure out a way around it”. One lady said, and I quote “Well I hope my kids are never that smart”.

Oh dear LAWD I weep.

You know, I friended my son on FB so that I could occasionally spot check how he was handling himself on social media (he’s younger, it was still very new to him) – with his full knowledge and consent – and really the only censoring that gets done is mine, since I know he could be reading my status updates just as easily as I read his (which are nearly all about the fantasy soccer team he manages and occasional chit chat with various relatives, maybe he’s trying to bore me out?).

And, I’m happy to say, when he did have a problem with a classmate’s FB behavior that I’m the one he came to for help.

It’s all about keeping the lines of communication open and free. The more you try to sneak, the more they’ll feel as if they have to hide.

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If the government did this without a court order, I believe the evidence would not be allowed in court….. unless of cause we are on Cuba!

Nanny cams? Seriously? If I were a teen and I found a hidden camera in my bedroom (or was made aware of one’s existence) I would go APESHIT. If a parent is that worried about a kid’s activities, then they need to have a talk with the kid now, whether or not anything has happened— and if the parent isn’t worried, they should respect something known as ‘privacy’.

I know, Let’s find more ways to alienate our kids from us, If you have so little trust in your kids that you have to resort to any of the measures listed in the article, there are deeper issues you need to face.

Pretty sure my kids would never speak to me again if there were cameras in thier rooms. And aren’t some of these suggestions borderline illegal?

Oh my freaking goodness. Someone sent this to you thinking you would be SYMPATHETIC to what they were advocating?

{Laughing out loud, so hard they can hear me in Italy, with earplugs in their ears.}

They got your attention all right, but not in the way they had hoped. Way to go Lenore.

Anyone else got any “tips” they wanna share? Any John Walsh worshipers out there want to be “helpful?” Don’t raise your hands all at once! (Ha ha.)

LRH

I have my son’s email and password as well as his facebook information. This is not because I don’t trust him, but because he is in a learning stage of internet use. Consider it the training wheels of computer use. Once I am confident in his ability to navigate the web in a safe and friendly manner he can have those training wheels removed. (Our one and only computer is in the dining room in full sight of everyone though, so really, I consider it safe anyway!)

Wow. So much to comment on here. First, you can be Facebook friends all you want but you cannot see their private chats. I’m friends with my son but he never posts anything, just uses it for instant messaging. It’s totally useless as a spying device.

Unless you feel there is a legitimate reason, such as illegal activities, spying is a horrible choice. My best friend installed a keystroke spying software on her computer. She has begun a cat and mouse game with her son. The more she spies, the more he tries to evade her. He’s doing some “bad” things, smoking, sex, shoplifting, but I’m not sure which came first. I believe her total lack of trust may have pushed him further into seeing what he could get away with.

I have, on occasion, looked through drawers in my son’s room and logged onto his computer as him to “look” around. If anything was amiss I would have addressed it with him, not spied. There ahve been a few times when my son has looked at me and asked, “Don’t you trust me?” If you’re spying on them how do you answer that? Do you lie and say yes, or tell the truth and say no? Neither one is a very good choice.

Lenore –

You have been trolled.

Lo siento!

-op

If you feel the need to spy on your own children because of technology concerns, perhaps being a parent and TAKING AWAY the items that cause so much distrust would serve all better. I assume said child is not paying for them (I can barely afford my high speed internet and car insurance), so do as many parents need to do these days, have child pay for luxury items. This may mean you need to actually talk directly to your kids, but I think in the long run you will have a stronger relationship vs. SPYING on your own child.

This is the modern day equivalent of reading someone’s diary. It does not build good relationships. If you feel the need to know every little thing your kid is doing, maybe you should have considered a dog instead of being a parent. Kids have individual rights to privacy, and not respecting them (and never trusting them) makes for one paranoid kid.

The thing that gets me is that barely two generations ago, it was possible for teens to be considered mature enough for marriage. Now, rather than being treated as nearly-adults, they’re treated like babies. So they act immature and irresponsible. I don’t understand why wouldn’t educate them towards the potential dangers of the world and then let the kids explore with guidance. Seems a lot better to me than suddenly expecting them to know how to handle creepers online.

Though, I’m suspect of the reports about how common strangers approach teens online– I have to wonder if it isn’t their friends (or enemies or frenemies) screwing with them or a distortion of the survey data to manipulate the fear-factor. Not that the media would EVER do such a thing…

I will say, I am pretty free-range in my attitudes toward parenting (I – GASP – let my kids, 7 and 4, walk to the next-door neighbors unescorted!) and yes, most of these are pretty crazy. However, I may use GPS tracking for my kids’ phones when they are old enough to have them (at least initially), and will put a GPS tracker on our cars when they are old enough to drive and still in high school. I have no plans to check that data on a regular basis, but in a truly need-to-know situation only. And they will know such monitoring is in place… my real intent is that by knowing I can look up at any time where they are and how fast they’re going, they will make better decisions. I want these things to be a proactive deterrent, not a reactive source of punishment fodder.

I also plan on having a couple rules:
1) you CANNOT text me for a curfew extension; such requests must be made in person or via phone call
2) you must always answer your phone when I call you, except if you’re driving. In return I will call you as infrequently as (motherly) possible. Not answering can be grounds for checking the GPS data!

And I will NOT get a GPS tracker that makes noise when they go too fast! Egads that is just stupid.

I’m just entering the crazy tween-dom, so these conversations are starting among my friends. I find it really sad that people don’t trust their own parenting enough that they feel this is necessary. My kids prove (when they’re unsupervised) that I’ve done things right more often than the reverse, maybe because we’ve explained *why* we do the things we do and ask them to do. This goes for all parts of life – walking to/from the bus stop, internet, going to friends’ houses, etc. We practice situations where there may be issues so they have something to say that doesn’t sound completely dorky.

I do supervise or check up on them when I feel I need to, and the rest of the time, I am as blissfully ignorant as my mother was, and that’s how I intend to stay unless given reason to do otherwise.

and ^Lisa … great cell phone rules.

I have no issue if the kid is told in advance these things are in place (except the nanny cam- yuck!) and can be accessed by the adults at any time. I view it as similar to computer use policies in many workplaces- if you use the equipment then they have the right to check everything.
My stepson uses the computer here and knows we can check his email/internet history anytime- the computer is in the living room where we can see it and he is a good kid so we never have.
A friend’s teenager had the car monitor in her car and she was able to beat a speeding ticket when her time/date stamped report showed her mph when she was stopped. This kid had not been making good choices and just got her driving privileges back so that is why they had the monitor installed- if she was driving dangerously as a minor and killed someone then her parents would be on the hook.

I’m surprised that they don’t suggest bugging your teen’s clothes in order to “monitor” all their FTF conversations. (And aren’t hidden cameras illegal? Here, in the Netherlands, even a kid could have you sued for it.)

I let my 16-year-old read this. First she was indignant, then the absurdity dawned on her and she howled with laughter; then she showed me her mailbox. Apart from the spam she hadn’t bothered to delete yet, it contained about a thousand messages about collaboration on school projects, some “please print this” messages to me, and a conversation with her grandfather about what she planned to do with her birthday money.

That’s not Spy vs. Spy — if it’s anything familiar, it’s a spy from the Pink Panther cartoons, I think. Spy vs. Spy was a black and white line drawing of one spy dressed all in black, and one dressed all in white, and they had huge noses, not invisible faces.

“Anyone who needs these measures has deeper problems than a slightly wayward teen and should probably be seeking professional parenting assistance.”

Right, and in situations just short of that — they’ve lost your trust by doing things that could be directly harmful and/or you could be held responsible for and so you need to know what they’re up to, for example — why not just TELL THEM they’ve lost their privacy by their behavior, and that you’ll be monitoring and restricting their behavior, rather than all this cloak and dagger stuff? (And with everyone else, the Nannycam is right out, period.)

But read the first paragraph — this isn’t even being suggested for extreme situations like that. It’s being touted as a normal measure for….wait for it…. the dangerous world we live in! (paraphrase) It’s just kneepads, “never say your kid’s name in public,” and toilet locks, all grown up!

I know a few people have already said this, but there are situations where some degree of monitoring is important. Some of those are bizarre and creepy (nanny cam, fake profile), but there are times others might apply. I have a close family member who has been involved in some serious stuff. Had her parents not been watching her computer use they wouldn’t have seen her telling a friend about suicide or seeing someone else offer to give her some really hard drugs (and her say she’d accept!). In her situation, this was important for her to get help. As my kids reach that age, they will know we can check on anything at any time. Of course you need to respect privacy, but you also need to protect your kids. For the average kid, no this probably isn’t necessary. Establish boundaries from the beginning and most kids won’t need this.

Milo – you are absolutely correct. The kids that have phones and computers in their rooms are the ones who will be tempted to do things they wouldn’t do in the living room. I see facebook messages sent from the middle of the night. What the heck are they doing up then? They’re teens, they need sleep.

Anonymous – No, the houses are not huge but the parents are usually at work or the kids are locked in their rooms. Why come out when you have everything you need there?

For God’s sake! Do not advocate against this spying on kids. They have to learn to get around technical oppression for the future. We live already in a fascistoid state. Any technical education helps them in the future. They have to know that somebody spies on them and they have to know that some parts of what they do is perfectly legal. After putting the nagging feeling away of potentially being caught ( so called second thoughts) and getting used to it they will do the same when they are adults.

They will look for GSM-jammers, GPS-jammers, how proxies work, how dns-aliases word, how Ubuntu-Live-ROMS work, how cheap a netbook really is (a week of work in the summer and they can buy it), how to get wireless from a uninformed neighbor with a yagi, etcetc.

Many won’t learn anything, but if only 10% learn *something* about how our surrounding technology works and how you can jam it, then I have hope again.

As I think about it, I had it much easier. My parents didn’t even know about other browsers, so installing a browser without a shortcut on the desktop did the trick 😀

I’m 30, so I was in 8th grade in 1992-93ish. I recently learned that when we were moving, my mom found a VERY graphic note I had written (but never gave!) to a boy in my class. I have always been (and still am) highly sexual and while I explored my own sexuality (through writing, mostly), I didn’t act on it until I was 20.

Bless her heart… when she found the note, she could’ve said something to me. But instead, she never said anything to me. She knew I would be MORTIFIED, and she’d rather I keep exploring my sexuality via the written word than act on it. She also knew and trusted that I would come to her if I was ever going to act on these very graphic fantasies. In turn, I trusted her enough to know that she wouldn’t lie to me, and that if she thinks I should wait, then that’s what I would do.

If she ever parented me under the guise of “it’s for your own good,” but without explanation, I probably wouldn’t have trusted her advice. Instead, she always gave me very good reasoning for why I was or wasn’t allowed to do something. That really helped in our trust.

Wouldn’t an adult posing as a teen raise flags to the authorities that that person may be a predator? So the parent would set themselves up for accusations and labels that may well be undeserved.

Actually all these suggestions are insane. How about communication and educating your child first?

My goodness what happend to talking with your children and teaching them?
I am in my forties and I still recall being a teenager and wanting to grow up and not having my mum and dad interfering in my life. I think I would have been a much more difficult teenager if my parents had snooped this way

Though I think it’s a creepy and ridiculous idea, I don’t think you can be arrested for putting a camera in your own home. Or for child porn if your children misbehaved in front of a camera, because what someone chooses to do in front of a camera you own, that you do not initiate, is not a crime.

I’ve just finished raising two amazing, well-adjusted teens. (My youngest is 19, oldest is 23.) I did a ‘little’ bit of spying over the years, i.e. reading a chat log that was left open on a computer, checking facebook pages and friends, etc. I found some things of concern but nothing earth-shattering. I was able to use that information to start a conversation along the lines of “You know, if x ever happens you can always come to me.” Nothing will ever replace an honest discussion. Make sure that they know your concern is based in love, give them a little freedom and the results will be amazing.

One successful attempt at getting a link, but it still amazes me that people can even think that way. I hope they’re just going for reaction and not really suggesting this stuff, especially the car monitor making a high pitched sound. Most of the advice goes beyond a sensible level of knowing what your teen’s up to, but that part sounds dangerous.

Wow, Lenore, you almost found a topper for that nutty cop who said that toddlers were safer standing by the gas pump at the gas station than buckled into the car!

Here’s my attempt at a list with some actual rational thought in it:

1. Our house is not everybody’s house–Clearly explain the rules about who can visit when you are away. Outline consequences if the rules are broken. Make sure that your teen has your number in case overbearing “friends” butt their way into the house and try to start a party in your absence.

2.Facebook and similar social media–Friend your teens after informing them beforehand that you plan to do so. Check in on them occasionally to verify that they are handling social media well, but don’t talk to them where their friends can see if you can help it because MOOOoomm, that’s emBARRassing!

3.Twitter–Explain that nothing ever vanishes from cyberspace. Take them to see the Wayback Machine. Print out the stories of earlier scandals involving incautious sending of pictures, etc. Take them to Fandom Wank or SF Drama to see the consequences of saying stupid crap in a public forum. Follow them on Twitter if you must, but you probably won’t have the time to read it all.

4.Internet search history–Tell them exactly how much usage your system can handle before you get billed for overage and let them know that you’ll be checking the browser history now and then. Warn them about malicious sites, phishing scams, etc. Be sure that you are passing on verified info, not net rumors.

5.Email–Teach them not to give their e-mail or website passwords to ANYONE, EVER. Friends having a spat have sent nasty e-mails to third parties in someone else’s name before they cooled down. Let them know that they can leave their usernames and passwords with you in case they forget, show them where the list will be kept, and don’t spy.

6.Computer monitor–Make sure that they have been briefed on safety when using public terminals. Resist the temptation to use keystroke loggers at home. Install anti-virus software and update it regularly. Forbid the installation of any program whatsoever without clearing it with you first and outline consequences.

7.Remote monitoring–Arrange more than one way to contact you with your teen when you are away. Not every method should run through your cell phone or other device–just in case.

8.Cell phone monitor–Reiterate that any file can be stored, duplicated, shared, altered, and otherwised used to ruin a teenager’s day. If your teenager shows poor judgment, get a basic cell phone. Also explain the limits of your minutes and if your teen uses them all up, that’s it until the next purchase period.

9.Car monitor–Forbid other teens to ride with your teen. Statistics show that one teen may be a safe driver, but more than one teen in a car is dangerous. Get your teen a learner’s permit, explain the rules of the road, and practice response to common problems.

10.Home security–Make sure that your teen understands that nobody gets the password to turn off the burglar alarm without your permission!

Final thoughts: Your teenager may not be able to control her use of social media; she may be up until 2:30 on most school nights because she simply can’t stop talking, txting, and Tweeting with her friends. She may be a trusting, gentle sort who can’t stand up to the “friend” who wants to have a party in your place because you’re gone. But don’t assume this beforehand. Prepare your teen for increased responsibility and freedom and if problems arise, deal with them as they happen.

There is no magic device that will remove the onus of responsibility from you. Your prime directive is the same as it was when your teen was a toddler: Get off your butt and parent!

I agree that it’s much better to warn kids about what’s out there, than to try to hide it from them. That means talking about sex at a level beyond “birds and the bees”: pornography, rape, molestation, etc. Information quells curiosity; I’ve often thought that teens might not be so obsessed about sex if we had them attend nude drawing classes: “This is a breast, this is a penis, this is a vulva: now you don’t have to devote all your spare time trying to see them.” 😀

And speaking of which, if you put a secret camera in your teen’s room, then you will have film of them masturbating, end of story. Do you really want to see that, even for the moment it takes to hit the fast-forward button?

And, as is often in these threads, the issue of age comes to mind: there must be a transitional age where some of these measures, at least, would be appropriate? When my daughter gets her first email address or starts surfing the web for the first time, I will be monitoring her very closely because she won’t know anything about spam or porn sites or anything like that.

I think a useful guideline is if that a kid’s old enough to seriously bristle at being monitored, and old enough to find ways around your security, than they’re old enough to understand their responsibilities and the dangers you’re trying to protect them from.

Dolly, let me just say that in my experience, the kids who have engaged in dangerous / age-inappropriate behaviors mostly did NOT have working moms. Mostly their parents were themselves messed up – including some who were living in the clouds – “my kids would never do that.”

My parents both worked and we came home to an empty house. But my parents had rules and enforced them. They also remembered what they were like as kids. We had a lot of freedom, balanced by a lot of responsibility and accountability. None of us (we are 6) got into any serious trouble. Yes, there was some experimentation (NOT in our house), but that would be true regardless.

Knowing how much it aggravates me even now to think someone is looking over my shoulder, I think it would have driven me nuts as a teen. I liked being able to go somewhere and NOT be monitored – not because I wanted to do something wrong, but just so I could be do my own thing without wondering what anyone else might think about it.

This post has me feeling like maybe my boss has a nannycam pointing at me right now, to see how much time I spend on the internet. (If so, I’m screwed! Or liberated, depending on how you look at it.) Eek. Think about how that would feel. Teens are people too!

Dolly “The biggest problem though is working parents. I don’t care if that gets me flamed. It is just the truth of the matter. Working parents that work 9 to 5 jobs are not home when their teenagers get home”

Well that thought is okay if there is no need for both parents to work. But what if both parents have to work to feed and clothe the kids. can’t always be helped. just because some people can have the choice to have both working or one not working, does not mean everyone can.

Many couples have to be both working, just a fact in today’s economy.

and both my parents worked, no serious trouble, from any of us 4 we were more responsible than friends with stay at home moms(or dads), we knew more was expected of us.

Before you blame working parents, realize that in many cases there is no choice.

Dolly– my experience working with troubled-teens is actually that I saw more children of stay-at-home moms whose whole life revolved around their chidlren. They wanted so badly to be the “cool” mom who was “buddies” with their children, that they would hand over the car keys, cash, and more without even checking on the kids because that would be “uncool.” Not to say there weren’t a few working parents who had similar problems with wanting to be freinds instead of parents, but at least in my area, it’s more the stay-at-home moms that created the little hellions in my classroom. (Also created young men with little respect for women, but that’s a whole separate issue.)

“The biggest problem though is working parents. I don’t care if that gets me flamed. It is just the truth of the matter. Working parents that work 9 to 5 jobs are not home when their teenagers get home”

Growing up the classmates that I had who got into trouble came from both working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. There was no one over the other. As a matter of fact, probably 98% of our juvenile clients have a stay at home mothers. if not 2 stay at home parents. Their issues are many, but not having someone home when they get home from school is definitely not one of them.

Kids are either inclined to do these things or they’re not. Parents either instill good values in their children or they don’t. Parents are either good disciplinarians or they’re not. Parents are either in-tune with their kids or they’re not. Location isn’t relevant as to whether you will get in trouble or not. If they had a stay-at-home mother, kids who want to drink, smoke, do drugs and have sex after school will simply do it at another location. Even if their parents work, kids who have no interest in drinking, smoking, doing drugs and having sex will not do so.

Talking with your kids is certainly the most important thing, but no child (under 18) is going to be telling their parents the total 100% truth about their computer and phone usage. I say checking computer use (internet, Facebook etc) and cell phone use is an absolute must. Not only for what they’re doing but for what other’s may be doing to/with them.
I would certainly hate to get a nearly naked pic of my daughter sent to my phone by accident, like a friend of mine did. Only after that did the mom check the computer and phone use, and she was most unpleasantly surprised at what she found!

Your little angel who you trust so much is probably not as innocent as you think. I certainly know when I was a teen my parents didn’t know half of the things I was up to (and that was before the PC and cell phones), but we did talk a lot and they trusted me implicitly, I never got into trouble, but only because I was lucky and never got caught. They still think I was a great teen!
Thinking back on my own teen years, I know I can only hope my daughter will make the right decisions, but I cannot assume that she always will, so we will most definitely be checking her computer and phone. And, the minute we hand her her first computer/phone we will explain to her that we will be checking the usage and why.

I think one thing that really disturbs me about these ‘tips’ actually is that it proposes that parents should be enforcing rather than teaching. Behave and don’t do anything stupid because Big Momma is watching you! Rather than doing the right thing, because, well, it’s the right thing to do.

‘Because your parents are watching and you’ll get in trouble’ may have a place to some extent in the social learning of young children, but teenagers?

Also, the monitoring of cell phones they talk about isn’t a special device like the article implies, it’s a service offered by major cell phone carriers. Available to any customer free is the ability to go online and check call and texting activity/content, that’s nothing special; available at a small premium are the GPS-based tracking and activity allowances/blocks toward certain numbers and timeframes. Kids should know by now that anything they do on their phones (unsure about browsing history though…) is visible to the person paying the bill.

Creeping around and spying on my kids doesn’t count as me being involved in their lives, Dolly.

Good parenting doesn’t mean lurking around every corner just waiting for them to do something wrong so you can leap out and go, “Aha! I caught you!” Good parenting means bringing up your children to be the kind of people who are hopefully going to be able to resist the temptation to use drugs, or have risky sex, or other harmful behaviours.

If parents put as much time and effort into being involved with their kids lives as they seem willing to spend spying on them, there might not be a need to spy on them in the first place.

“I don’t think you can be arrested for putting a camera in your own home. Or for child porn if your children misbehaved in front of a camera, because what someone chooses to do in front of a camera you own, that you do not initiate, is not a crime.”

Are you sure about this, Pentamom? Because if putting a hidden camera in my teenage daughter’s bedroom so I can spy on her isn’t a crime, it damn well should be.

Another point is that if you read your kids emails or notes etc you are not just violating THEIR privacy but you are violating their friend’s privacy as well and you definitely do not have that authority. I told my mother about how my best friend’s mother would record phone conversations and read notes etc and my mother was pissed about it. She was upset my privacy was being violated and my own mother was never consulted about this.

My mom actually told her mother off several times because when she was spending the night with me she would call my mother all hours of the day and night over and over bugging my mother checking up on us. It is like if you trust us to have your daughter in our care, than just trust us and don’t call 100 times. Otherwise, don’t let her come over here. Pick one. She probably wanted her daughter out of her hair for the night but still wanted to feel she was 100% in control of her and sorry it doesn’t work that way.

Dolly, the statistics you are quoting are talking about getting kids involved in after school activities instead of hanging out on the street and NOT working vs non-working parents. Most of this juvenile crime is not happening AT HOME. If it were, the kids would be taken from their homes and put in foster care. The juvenile crime is occurring on the street. Unless, you are planning to refuse to allow your teens to leave the house after school, whether your home or not is completely irrelevant to these statistics. A kid with a mother at home can rob a convenience store (in fact I could give you the names of several who have) just as easily as a kid with a mother at work. It may take lying about going to a friend’s house instead of simply walking out of the house but it’s really the same result. All these statistics indicate is that teens do better if they have some activity to do after school rather than having nothing to do until dinnertime.

Further, without more information these types of random statistics are totally meaningless. Life in America includes too many variables. Are we talking about my child’s peers – middle class, educated, intelligent kids with decent parents? Or are we talking about kids in the ‘hood with crack whores as parents who run with gangs? Obviously the results are going to be VERY different.

“If they are home alone, then chances are they might be having boys over and having sex like my neighbors (funny how everyone quoting me didn’t bother to talk about that point at all),”

Actually I did but it seems like you care more about the location of the sex than the actual sex. My mother had a stay-at-home mom and still got pregnant at 17. Why? Because when she wanted to have sex, there were a million other places to go. Again, unless you plan to hold your teens hostage in the house after school, they can have sex anywhere.

Further, being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t in any way shape or form indicate that you are an involved parent. 98% of my clients had parents who didn’t work. They also didn’t stop their kids from running the streets. They also didn’t stop their kids from joining gangs. They also didn’t teach their kids right from wrong.

Frankly, I don’t care whether parents stay home with their kids are not. I’d rather blow my brains out than be a stay at home mom but many enjoy it. Ultimately the quality of parenting matters a whole lot more than whether you work or not.

Rob C said: “Good parenting doesn’t mean lurking around every corner just waiting for them to do something wrong so you can leap out and go, “Aha! I caught you!” Good parenting means bringing up your children to be the kind of people who are hopefully going to be able to resist the temptation to use drugs, or have risky sex, or other harmful behaviours.

If parents put as much time and effort into being involved with their kids lives as they seem willing to spend spying on them, there might not be a need to spy on them in the first place.”

This reminds me of how I deal with minor infractions (usually profanity) in my classroom. I have to start with “You’re not in trouble” before the kid will even listen to the request to watch their language. They’re so used to just being in trouble for every single (little) thing that they get defensive at the drop of a hat. And yet, so many of their infractions aren’t worth any real penalty. I know adults that can’t keep their profanity in check because they use it so fluently.

I think there’s a great emphasis on teens being trouble-makers. Instead of guiding them as they explore the good and bad things in life, it’s all about figuring out how to catch them when the do things bad. Instead of waiting until they get caught, an involved parent will talk with the kid pre-emptively and repeatedly about sex, drugs, alcohol, and reinforce why the parents are concerned. An involved parent will also be in their kid’s life enough to notice changes in friends, behavior, or other things that might signal a need to do some further investigating. Being involved builds bridges, but spying builds paranoia and mistrust.

I suppose, though, it’s hard for many parents to give their teenager some trust and freedom when they’ve never offered their child any real trust or freedom up to that point.

“Unless you know that they’re using the computer responsibly, they shouldn’t be allowed to use it unsupervised.”

That doesn’t even make sense.

Actually, Dolly, the statistics simply show that kids are better if supervised after school. If your point is that teens are better off if supervised in some way after school, I agree wholeheartedly. My daughter staying home alone after school every day will not be an option at any age.

However, that is not what you said. You said children of stay at home parents fare better than those of working parents. That I completely disagree with and that assertion is not backed up by your statistics at all as there are many other types of supervision and a parent present at home does not automatically equal good supervision. After school jobs, activities, clubs, teams, study groups, volunteer work, mentoring, college classes all provide supervision. A crappy parent provides no supervision by their mere presence. Nor does one preclude the other. My mother worked from home all my teen years. I still never saw her before dinnertime. I was too busy with my many after school activities.

And I have no chip on my shoulder about being a working parent. I love my job. I love being a parent. I have no desire to change either aspect of my life. I’m very glad that it’s 2011 and I don’t have to. It seems more to me that you have a chip on your shoulder about being a stay at home parent.

“Are you sure about this, Pentamom? Because if putting a hidden camera in my teenage daughter’s bedroom so I can spy on her isn’t a crime, it damn well should be.”

You really don’t want to live in a world where that would be illegal, because making that illegal would remove all kinds of underlying rights you have to do things in your home and with respect to the raising of your own underaged children.

Like I said, it’s a bad and creepy thing, but it isn’t, and shouldn’t, be illegal to place a camera in any part OF YOUR OWN HOME.

Eika, a school spying on other-people’s kids with school-issued laptops is, legally speaking, worlds apart from people putting a stationary camera in part of the home that belongs to them in order to see their own minor, dependent children. Rich’s example is a little closer, but the home still not being the guy’s property and the child who lived in the home still not being his own makes it, legally speaking, highly significantly different.

PR Fail.

Seriously Pentamom, you have no problem with a father setting up a hidden camera in his teenage daughter’s bedroom with the sole purpose of spying on her, knowing full well that she’s going to be naked in there at some point, and probably doing other things that, while not harmful to her and anyone else, she wouldn’t want her parents to be watching? You don’t see a potential here for misuse at all, even knowing that most sexual abuse of children takes place within the family home?

Wowie! This is outrageous. I really don’t have a problem w friending your teen on FB or following them on Twitter. That really does seem like common sense, to monitor what they’re posting in a public forum. But cameras all over your home? That is appalling. Monitoring the computer to make sure they aren’t playing on YouTUBE? Monitoring their every move on the cell phone? Why not just force them to sign an agreement that they have no right to any privacy until they leave your home? At least that would be honest.

This is a massive thread, and I am actually surprised at how much agreement there is on this thread. The only thing I am going to add is more agreement with those who advocate keeping technology away from kids post bedtime. Call me what you will, but the evidence is clear: Teens sleep dramatically less per night than they did in the 1970s. There is a correlation with lack of bed times and lack of rules around technology and depression and anxiety symptoms. (Yes, I know correlation is not causation, but it should not be ignored.) Teens have always fought against sleep, but it is becoming a very real cultural issue in an age of electric light and ever increasing electronic distractions. To me, we are talking about health care here.

You should also explain to them the importance of punctuation.

I don’t understand why so many people are against pentamom…

Baby monitors with camera are legal, yes? And there is no “age limit”, yes? So why normal cameras would be illegal?

I don’t say that I approve of people who do that, it just seems to me that it’s legal.

@Pentamom – I can’t speak for any state but my own, but, yes putting a camera in your child’s bedroom can be illegal. I’ve represented a client who was arrested for placing a camera in his own bathroom in his own house. He was convicted of something – I can’t remember what now but it was solely based on the placement of the camera. He was not charged with anything pornography-related because he never captured anyone on tape.

Much will probably have to do with placement of the camera. If you put a camera in your child’s room and it is set in such a way to capture him/her changing clothes or it is aimed directly at the bed or something otherwise suggestive, you will likely be charged with something. If you place a camera in your child’s room so that you are unlikely to catch anything suggestive – i.e. it’s aimed at the window to make sure your child isn’t sneaking out – you can probably get away with it and would not be charged with kiddie porn even if your child happened to crawl out the window naked.

I suspect this was sent by a blog-bot. It doesn’t have anything to do with reality. Anybody reading it would say, Oh my God, look at how fearful some parents are. It’s just a scam to get people to click.

This is a prime example of how we have to be aware on the web.

I love Free Range Kids. I’m raising one. But remember to watch where you’re looking because you end up going where you look.

I’m sure this is a spoof! Surely!

Dolly: “This comes from a site about after school care and activities being a good thing for teens.”

Well, no kidding! A site promoting after-school supervision selectively pulled some stats from . . . somewhere (?) to support what it’s promoting!

Correlation isn’t causation. If SOME kids who are unsupervised after school also have sex etc., the question to ask is, what’s the common denominator? Because there are many, many teens who have developed enough responsibility to conduct themselves prudently while home alone.

Is there something about going home from school that makes kids feel horney? I never (with a capital N) thought about having sex after school. I thought about doing my chores and my paper route, taking care of my younger siblings, and planning my homework. I chatted with my siblings while dinner was being prepared, played the piano, drew in my sketch pad. I even visited friends – yes, even troubled friends (who, by the way, had stay-at-home parents). What does after-school free time have to do with sex?

Now if a kid is already obsessed with having sex, sex can occur on school grounds, at a friend’s house, in a car, on the school bus, etc. My granny used to climb out her window at night to do it. (Yep, I’m the indirect result of illicit sex!) Sex happens, but not because moms work.

If you don’t want your kid trying to have sex, help her to understand that she has something better to shoot for and live for. Give her something important to do (like, you know, taking care of household stuff while you work) and let her know you believe she can do it.

RobC, how many times do I have to say I think it’s weird and stupid before you stop saying I “have no problem” with it?

“Have no problem” and “legal to do on your own property with respect to your own children” are vastly, VASTLY different concepts. I thought anyone would know that. I thought most also people knew that everything that someone could possibly misuse neither is, nor should be, illegal.

Besides, sexual abuse of children is already illegal, so sure, the camera being used *for that purpose* being illegal, I get. I was less sure about the *mere existence of a camera* in one room of the house as opposed to others being a legal issue. So you can stop with the words in my mouth and the implied stupidity, thanks.

On the legal point, though, I’ll defer to Donna’s superior knowledge.

Wow. Just wow. My parents know better than this. I think this chick was vying for free publicity of her list, and most of the comments are ridiculing the list. Epic Fail.
I am a teenage female. Sometimes I walk ~5.5 miles home from my high school on a secluded-ish walking trail and I have not once been accosted, mugged, harassed, raped, abducted, or murdered (my parents’ chief worries about my walking home alone).

Alright Cedric, you can spy on your kids by law but you have no right to spy on other people’s kids. So are you saying you would listen in on phone conversations without alerting the other teen? Or read notes written by another teen to your teen? Reading emails from other teens to your teen? That is all invasion of the other teen’s privacy and it is not acceptable unless you get permission from that teen’s parent first. If my teen is ever friends with your teen and I find out you were breaching my teen’s privacy, me and you will have WORDS!

Then that is your prerogative. If it is in my house, how is that spying on other people’s kids? I have every right to read every email and listen to every phone call in my house, if I choose it to be necessary. It is not against the law, or an invasion of privacy because 1. minors little to no right to privacy, and 2. it’s only illegal to record the conversation.
You are choosing to take what im saying to the extreme. Free-range parenting is not letting your kids do whatever they want because you ‘trust them’. If a situation warrant my intervention, my kids know that no matter how much freedom I normally give them, it can and will disappear the instant that I feel it is necessary.

Uly, I don’t want to beat this to death, but the comment you were responding to used the words “legal” and “illegal” in the part you quoted. So I was responding to your response to that, which was certainly “speaking legally.”

Anyway, like I said, I’ll defer to Donna on that point.

Tracy, if your teen’s friend sees this and doesn’t inform you, they may have made a bad choice.

But parental rights do not extend to other people’s behavior. You do not have the right, as a parent, to be told things by other people’s children. If you want to know what-all is in your teen’s diary you can go ahead and break the lock and read it yourself.

@ Dolly: If you think that the recipe for instant teenaged sex is a working parent and a few hours after school, I have beachfront property to sell you. I got pregnant at 15 in the back of my boyfriend’s Pinto on a parent-sanctioned date. Ever seen a Pinto? All you really need for instant teenaged sex is two motivated teens. (Extraordinarily motivated if the boy drives a Pinto!)

@ Neener

Very true…..

I have older relatives and they got pregnant as teenagers, fortunately there was a healthy relationship with the father and got married and remain married for 35+ years.

My own parents and in-laws married relatively young, still married.

I know most people don’t want teens to marry in the state we have raised to be, and some of it is by necessity because of post-high school education/training and financially get off your feet. Still they’re adults, who actually can raise children of their own and if allowed be responsible.

I remember as a teenager, I didn’t want to ‘have fun’ or essentially be babysat with activities to keep me out of trouble. I wanted to something more productive, why pretend, when really at the time I had the mind to actually do something.

Definitely an automated spam/bot/troll email for 2 reasons: 1–It’s a lot of generic and somewhat sensationalistic info which is freely available on the net, and 2–the big tip-off is the comment: “It has been a sincere pleasure to read your great content.” Usually this kind of blog compliment (stilted wording, complimentary, sounds like someone for whom English is not the first language) is posted on blogs by websites selling something or to create a linkage for page ranking.

Cedric, accept when I was a teen I was spied on by my friend’s parents and I was a good kid that actually encouraged their teen to do their homework and just spend the night hanging out in my room watching movies. The point is their parent had no right to listen to my phone conversations with their child without my knowledge or read my notes to their child to find out what I was doing good or bad. Especially because I was not being bad. Never did I get an apology from that parent. Never did my mother get an apology from that parent. You sound just like that woman and sorry that is wrong.

You only have authority over YOUR child. Not mine. Not anyone else’s. If you want your kid to have friends you have to accept that you cannot control their friends only your child. If you can’t handle that, then make your child a social pariah and never let them have friends. Your choice, but not a wise choice. Otherwise you need to get along with their friends and especially their friend’s parents and be respectful to them meaning you have NO right to invade their privacy.

Not sure if this pertains to listening in, but in MD it is illegal to tape a phone call unless both parties know and agree to the taping. So taping your kids’ phone calls there, unless you inform both of them, is illegal. This has come to court with cases where the police or one party taped the other without consent.

Dolly, you are assuming, again, that I have the whole house wired up for sound and Technicolor, and then I don’t communicate with the parents of my children’s friends-I do, and they welcome it.

I never said I would record anything, thus, if necessary, I am fully within my rights under the law to listen-i only need to notify another party if it is being recorded.

If they were checking up on you, then you have an issue with creepy parents. If they were checking up on their kid and you happened to be involved somehow, they were perfectly within their rights to do so.

IF I need to do any or all of this, I will. If your (collective your) kid is involved, tough. Free range is not a blank check to your kids. My children know that these are the results of breaking our trust. So long as they are up front and communicative with my wife and I then none of this is necessary.

Another former teenager who spent time alone after school. I always came home unless it had been prearranged for me to go somewhere else. I couldn’t even drive to my best friend’s house after school senior year if I hadn’t already talked to my mom about it.

Never got high, never drank, never had sex in all that time. I would mostly just come home and watch TV, then do my homework.

Like I said Cedric, you don’t think it would be a little creepy to be listening in on your teenage daughter talking periods with her best friend? I mean come on! Or how about your son discussing erections during math class with his best friend? That is something you have no right to listen to and frankly the fact that you seem eager to listen to such things, makes you seem like a perv.

Maybe I am reaching with that, but you get the point. Teens discuss all kinds of stuff, drugs, sex, and other bad things being only a small small percentage of the things discussed. So you are sticking your nose in all forms of conversation by listening in and spying. I just hope for your kids and their friends sake they discuss at length shopping, periods, erections in class, jock itch, bras, tampons, masturbation, and all kinds of really really boring and gross stuff so that maybe you will get so bored and grossed out you might back the hell off of them!

Tracy, I’m not assuming ANYthing other than the fact that if one unrelated child declines to tell you something about your kid, they’re not actually violating your parental rights.

The term “parental rights” does not mean “things I’d like people to do for me”.

Let me fix that for you, Dolly. You are reaching. Here is me…..Here is the issue at hand______

Here is you, assuming that I run my house like a Stalinist gulag. I do believe ive stated more than once “IF” it is necessary, and that I DO communicate with the parents of my friends. It is common knowldege amongst them from us, or from my kids to their friends (and thus to their parents) that IF my children are doing something that I feel endangers them legally, or myself, then all bets are off, and the law agrees with me. I couldn’t care less about my sons erections or my daughters’ period. That is not the discussion here, though you continue to make it so.

Nevermind the fact that many teens now have their own cell phones they pay for. So then where are the whole “I pay for it” argument going? I worked and bought and paid for my own pager when I was 15. I gave my mother the number to be nice and so she could page me if needed, but I didn’t have to. She signed for me to get it and all, but she was decent enough to understand that it was MY property because I paid for it on my own. She never once read the pages or even touched it. That is how a proper parent behaves. They respect their teens as a soon to be adult and treats them accordingly. Now if I was staying out too late, not making good grades, skipping school, etc, sure, she might have a right to look at the pages or take it away. Otherwise, hands off.

Cedric: I agree with you that if kids are in trouble that parents need to step in. Agree 100%. But you step in to your kids. Not someone else’s. That means if my son is skipping school and getting bad grades, I just cut off all phone use. There. I fixed the problem without getting into his friend’s business. Easy.

You know what is way more effective way to keep your kids out of trouble online.
1. Have a relationship with your kids, so that you can trust them.
2. Keep your family computer in an area of the house where any person using it can be walked in on at anytime by anyone. A major hub of the home so the reason you walk through is never just to check. (This is as they are starting to use the internet, where they stumble into places they shouldn’t be)
3. Talk to them about online safety and modle it.

I have been working with Teens for 10 years, and with very few exceptions they are all interested in keeping the trust of adults who have given it to them. They all screw up, but few endever to loose your trust once they have it. If you never trust them, they have nothing to loose.

well, fine, but noting that exception……

it doesn’t change much. Some people seem to be reaching for the moon to make an argument that a parent has no right over their child’s activities if it happens to touch or involve someone else’s child. I called BS. There is the gist. If Dolly’s kid is skipping school and it doesn’t affect my kid, then it isn’t my problem and she can do what she wants. I only care about teh information that is relevant to my child’s activities-unless they are involved with something illegal. In that case Ill quite happily drive my kid, and yours, to the police department, and call you on the way.

As parents are legal custodians of a child until that child reaches the age of majority in their jurisdiction, a child’s mail is not sacrosanct and can be opened at any time by a parent or legal guardian.

My intent was not to set up Dolly for cross examination, merely to demonstrate that, as a parent, I have considerable authority and power over my children should I need to exert it. I am not a ‘friend’ to my children, that comes later. I do not treat them as ‘equals’ because they aren’t, yet. That being said, provided that my kids don’t give me a reason to do any of the above, they have nothing to worry about and they know they can bring anything to me. Its when I find about it from somewhere or someone else that the problems will start.

What is your point? You deliberately engaged in behavior that would invite more scrutiny on the part of an involved parent.

What part of ‘minor child’ do some of you not understand? Just because you are free range parents doesn’t mean your kids get to do whatever they want to in the interest of perpetuating how much more of a ‘free ranger’ you are than other parents, or me. This is not a competition, but I feel like some of you are deliberately looking for things to try to ‘prove’ that parents can’t parent their children or something.

Cedric, I love my mother very much, but you know what? She’s crazy. I can’t fault her for that, now I’m an adult and understanding bacck ground. But she had no business opening up my mail. It wasn’t about parenting, but control. Home is about feeling safe and secure, not imprisoned in fear of parents. Now I’m socially conservative, I don’t teach my values by control. I teach by example and the ability to explain my values and why I hold them with my children.

I am not trying to cross examine Dolly. I wanted to correct any misconceptions. Dolly was presenting her opinions as if they have some kind of legal validity.

As for the mail thing: My husband (then boyfriend at the time) was 20 and in college and living with his mom. She opened his grades from college before he could even get a chance to look at them first. I felt that was a huge breach of all things right in the world. She opened his mail which is mail tampering first of all. She did not even let him look at his own grades first. And it shows she did not trust him at all. FYI, the grades were perfect as usual. So she had no reason to doubt him or get uppity about it. Her conditions to live there were he made good grades. Well he did, and he would have happily shown her his grades if she asked. However, she had no right to open them first. They came addressed to him, not her. He got out of that house the MINUTE he graduated and has never gone back, not even to visit more than a handful of times. So lesson learned folks. TRUST YOUR KIDS OR YOU WILL PAY FOR IT LATER!

Donna- I wasn’t responding to anyone in particular-Dolly and I have had a pretty good dialogue going, I just didn’t want people trying to create litmus situations to try to disprove anything that she is saying.

Donna, any of the things that you mentioned would be inviolate, until such time as my kid did something that required my more direct intervention-and if someone else’s kid is involved in some manner, so be it. If my kid was caught doing something on the phone that was illegal, after they finally got the phone back you can bet Id be listening for a while. Since these are the house rules anyway, ‘your’ kid would know them as well as mine, and so the easy solution is don’t do anything that requires scrutiny in the first place.

as for the example with the mail-he was no longer a minor and thus could have pursued charges for his mother opening his mail. Of course, again, if the parents are paying for the school, then they are a vested party and have every right to know what grades he got. If he didn’t want to tell them then they could just as easily get them from the school.
This, in part, is why I have issues with legally extending adolescence past the age of majority. Now you have ‘legal’ adults that are still using their parent’s insurance, or living in their houses, or aren’t paying for school on their own ( or at least in part) -now the line between who has the defining interest is blurred.

None of what I presented as examples of penalties for my kids is an absolute-but they are still legitimate and perfectly acceptable examples of the rights of a parent, despite what a teenager barracks lawyer would construe as a violation of their ‘rights’.

Personally, I don’t believe that you should read your kid’s notes or listen in on their phone calls. However, a reason you would do so is because they will tell their friends things they will never tell you. If your child is misbehaving on the phone, taking the phone away resolves that problem. If you suspect that your kid is suicidal, using meth, has a 25 year old boyfriend you don’t know about, is pregnant, knocked over a liquor store after school, etc, taking the phone away will not provide an answer to those questions. Listening in on your child’s phone calls and reading their notes and email may. If I am desperate enough to resort to spying in this fashion, I’m way more concerned about my child’s future than I am about what her friends are up to and some notions of privacy that I have no legal obligation to follow whatsoever.

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever you can legally do about another parent reading his own child’s email (notes, listening in on phone calls) that happens to include your child. If you attempt to “get them back,” YOU are in the wrong and YOU could be prosecuted. All you can do is refuse to allow your child to interact with that other child. Odds are you will never know if I’ve “invaded your child’s privacy” anyway. I’m not interested in your kid so whatever he said would be ignored unless it was something dire that the parents need to know. Most parents, upon seeing a note I intercepted where their child expresses plans to kill himself, are not going to be concerned about their child’s privacy over their child’s suicide. If you are, I’d be glad to know that too since my child is NEVER going to your house again because I don’t trust you anymore.

I wish i had never used the term parental rights. It was not meant in a literal sense. However Uly, should you ever come across a suicide note written by your child that someone else knows about and doesn’t tell, i hope u remember your callous remark about “things I would like other people to do for me!” Good luck with that attitude! May you never bump into someone like yourself should it hit the fan for you one day!

The problem with what you’re advocating, Dolly, is that it’s tantamount, if I understand it correctly, to telling another parent that if your teen is somehow intertwined with that parent’s teen in someway, then the parent now has no business doing any investigating because your teen happens to be there also.

Nope, wouldn’t work that way in my house. You come into my house, you’re subject to it too. Otherwise, don’t come in my house.

Understand: it’s not like there will be metal detectors scanning everyone as they enter our house. I’m going to basically respect privacy so long as nothing goes wrong. However, I have the right to know at least some BASICS about other people in my house, if not their life story. More to the point: if something goes wrong and I (say) feel compelled to read the content of my teen’s phone & I HAPPEN by COINCIDENCE to read something that reveals some aspect of your own teen in the process, or I search Internet history & the sites I think my teen visited were in fact sites your teen was visiting & so now I know what sites your teen were visiting while at my house–oh well. How was I supposed to know it would be there, and even if I did, why should that stand in the way of what I feel I need to do? It’s a coincidental side-effect of what I have the right to do regarding my own kiddo.

LRH

Well actually Donna in my parent’s case I did invite the girl but her parents never let her come because of their problems with my parents. So she missed out because of her parents when every other kid in the whole grade was there.

Dolly, are you aware that I can legally record any conversation we have on the phone without your knowledge or consent and play it on prime-time TV? You only need the consent of one party to record any phone call. Obviously I consent since I’m taping it. And that is for an adult, not a minor with less right to privacy.

You don’t have the privacy you want to have. You can stress out about, make a big deal about it and make yourself look stupid over it. You can choose to punish a child because your pissed at the adult. None of that changes the fact that a parent can read his own child’s email and notes and listen to his child’s phone calls even if those things involve your child. While your child may never enter my house, his notes, emails and phone calls do, making them my property.

Actually Donna in TN where I live last time I checked you have to have BOTH parties consent or at least notify them that you are recording a phone conversation if you call them. I know this because I checked the laws when I was a teen and my best friend’s mother was recording my phone conversations with her daughter without my consent or knowledge. So she was breaking the law since sometimes her daughter called me. I could have had her arrested or at least have sued her.

In all 50 states and through federal law, it’s considered illegal to record telephone conversations outside of one party consent. There are a couple of exceptions. In the state of California, one party consent can be applied only under circumstances in which one party is involved in criminal activity which would include extortion or blackmail. In the state of Arizona, the subscriber to a telephone service can record telephone conversations with no party consent when criminal activity is involved. Other than those two known exceptions, all other recordings outside of those states that permit one party consent are a violation of state and federal law. The question is often asked by clients if they can record the telephone conversations of their spouse in a domestic case or the conversations of their children concerning drug usage. In both of these cases, the answer is it’s unlawful. Many clients will complain that they own the telephone and pay the telephone bill so they should therefore have a right to record what they want. However, the law doesn’t address who owns the phone nor who pays the phone bill. It only addresses the use of one party and all party consent. Anything outside of that is a violation of state law and federal wiretapping law.

The Federal Communications Commission goes further into details on recording telephone conversations and states that the party recording must give verbal notification before the recording and that there must be a beep tone on the line to indicate that the line is being recorded.

BooYa! According to this it is illegal to record phone conversations of your kids specifically without notifying at least either your kid or whomever you kid is talking to.

I believe that we all conceded that we could not RECORD our kid’s conversations. I said that I can record OUR conversations, a recording to which I, as one of the parties, consent.

Dolly, the ECPA (ive already mentioned this case once) provides an exception for people in thier own homes to listen to their own phone conversations that take place on their phone line. You insist on focusing on ‘recording’ and most of us are not talking about recording, anyway.

“No, they lose the right to read my kid’s private notes, eavesdrop on private conversations and read private emails.”

No, they don’t. You can be bull-headed all you want. You can insist that you are right all you want. You are wrong. I always have the ability to read my child’s notes, emails and mail and listen in on her phone conversations (albeit not record them unless I notify my child that her phone calls are recorded). That power is not altered in any way because your child is involved.

As a teenager, Dolly, you could not have had anyone arrested for anything, as you could not initiate police contact as a minor. You don’t have as much power as you seem to think, and you aren’t as smart either. I work in information security, and Donna has a legal background. You are not right, despite your assertion to the contrary.

That case was from 2004. It predates the USSC case that was won in 2006, and discussed previously.

Wow, look what I’ve missed!

As my kid’s parent, I have a “right” to be all up in her business 24/7 until she’s 18. Just like I was when she was a little baby. It’s up to me to decide how much to back off and when.

My four-year-old has a “boyfriend” and she writes notes at school. I beg your pardon, but I take the liberty to read whatever she writes, and if any of her love notes make it to his house, I’m sure his mom does the same. I will decide when it’s no longer appropriate to read my kid’s personal correspondence, and other kids’ parents will decide when it’s no longer appropriate to read theirs. It’s an individual maturity thing. Same goes for being able to chat with friends in a closed room.

If my kid doesn’t want to embarrass herself in front of her friends’ parents, she had better have enough sense to watch what she says, where, and how. Hopefully her friends’ parents give them similar advice.

I will give my kid all the privacy she is ready for, but if I have any reason to believe it’s risky for my kid to have a secret conversation / visit, then I’m going to put my kid’s safety first. I could think of lots of examples of when this would kick in, but the point is that it’s up to me to decide. I really don’t care what my kids’ friends’ parents think about it.

I would not put a video camera in my kid’s bedroom – eew. But depending on her age and behavior, I might find it advisable to limit internet access to the open living areas, forbid closed-door meetings with the opposite sex, or whatever. I don’t expect my every parenting choice to be appreciated in real time by my children. They will understand when they become parents.

Dolly, the point is, when you read your kid’s e-mails, you can’t know in advance that you’re not going to see something that someone else’s kid has written. When I pick up something someone has written, if it’s not sealed up in an addressed envelope, I can’t tell if your kid or my kid has written it. (Remember that not everything is hand-written.) And when I listen to a phone call, there are TWO PEOPLE talking. There is no way to keep tabs on your own kid’s phone calls without hearing other people!

Would be great to hear what the kids think of this – in their own words!

My kids live with their mom, but i mentioned this article to my 15 year old, he laughed and when I asked him what his thoughts were, he said, If a parent wants to make sure thier child moves out at 18 and never comes back, they should do this, and Dolly, my son said that if his mom or I read his e-mails, or listened to his conversations, or read stuff that his friends had, or anything like that, he would stay until he was 18, but not do anything but stay in his room and go to school or work and just not be around if possible, ” If a parent has so little trust, than they either did something wrong in the way they brought thier kid up, or they are paranoid” his quote. So go ahead, do all that, see what happens. as for the video camera, he said, get ready for the show!

haha JustaDad. Your son is a very smart and cool dude.

Dolly, Thanks, he is, keeps me on my toes, But for me the issue of the whole thing is this, I trust him, and his brothers, and they trust me, so to violate that trust would undoubtably cause a huge rift between us, and we are just now getting back on track after the divorce. I don’t want to jeopardize that at all. If you have areason to believe that there is a problem then there are other avenues than spying. talk to your kids, their friends, thier friends parents, teachers, whatever first.

From Barbara Colorosso
“Having worked with many pregnant teenagers, I’ve yet to see one of them pregnant on information. It just doesn’t happen. Kids are less likely to have intercourse in their teen years…if they are given good information, have open communication with their parents, and see their parents interacting in sexually healthy ways.”

If you try to keep the communication open (and non-judgemental) i believe that teenagers will come to you before the problems are severe.

“The part that you and Dolly are missing is that for many of us these practices are an anathema to what we are trying to foster in our kids but should the measures be necessary they are perfectly within our legal right to do enact.”

Exactly. I hope and pray that I never feel as though I need to read my child’s emails or listen in on telephone calls or read her diary. However, if I am seriously worried about my child and talking to her is failing to get to the heart of the matter, I would do so. I would certainly rather my child (or parents of other children) be pissed off at me for invading her privacy than to read my child’s emails after her funeral and realize that I maybe could have done something to prevent it if I hadn’t put her privacy over her life.

Cedric, no I’m not my kid’s friend, I’m their dad, But I have open and honest dialogue with them, and that’s what I’m advocating, and yes, where I live, if you use a keylogger on someone else’s computer it is illegal , at work, it is not yours it is the company you work for that owns it. My kids all have thier own laptops, do you not think it is a huge violation of thier trust and privacy to use a keylogger on them? A work computer is diferrent than someones private one.

If you fell that you have to go that far than so be it, just be prepared for the backlash. And if your read what I have written , i too feel that the whole idea of spying on my kids this way is wrong, I would never do it unless i felt there was a huge reason to do so. everyday spying, never going to happen. ANd If I was concerned, the technology would be taken from them.

I am the account holder on thier cell phones. I can get the records anytime I want them, they are aware of this so no issues there. My ex is the account holder for the Internet where they live, one phone call and the internet history can be obtained by account holder it is tht simple, Less invasive yes?

And I didn’t say that he would be ticked after I keylogged his computer if he did something to deserve It , he and I both meant if i did it for no apparant reason, plus If he did do something of that nature the computer would be locked up from his use anyway, until the trust is earned back.

I’m way more on the side of “give em enough rope” If teens aren’t allowed some freedom to use thier judgement, than they cannot learn form thier mistakes and do better, is’nt that part of this job of rasing them?

(…boring comment below, has nothing to do with the legality/illegality of mail snooping and whatnot 😉 …)

@Pentamom: “And you’ll learn which kids actually DO get excluded from the parties — the ones whose parents make excessive demands about what they can and cannot do to parent their own kids if your kid walks into the picture somehow”

I can attest to this 100000%. My daughter already has friends I don’t enjoy having over simply because I find the parental “rules” in place to be intrusive and onerous. One girl is not allowed *in the front yard* without an adult, no exceptions. One must phone her mom every time we change location (going to a restaurant, the mall, a movie). One has a mom who grills me on what they’ll be watching on tv that night (lest I pop in a porn DVD?). I love these kids to pieces, but HATE having them over. My daughter doesn’t even enjoy having them over anymore.

My feeling is, okay, YOU may want to have your child in an iron vise 24/7 and that is certainly your right, but you won’t force ME and MY KID climb in, too.

justadad-if i own the network that the computer is on I can log whatever I want. If I purchased the computer, I can key log it, despite a password lock on the laptop itself, even if I gave it to one of my kids.

Drastic? Yes, but a blanket statement such as “it’s illegal to……” is not correct or accurate in all situation, and when it involves a parent Federal wiretapping laws and the ECPA all have exceptions built into them for parental monitoring of their children. At school and at home there is no expectation of privacy for a child under the direct care and supervision of a parent. I am required to notify third parties, but as a parent I am not required by law to tell my child anything. As their legal guardian it is not illegal for me to keylog, monitor URLs, remote view desktops, or anything like that. If you have been told that, then you (and they) are either misinformed, or not understanding the laws and what protections that it affords parents.

Yes, we are on the same page, but as an IT Sec professional I REALLY get tired of hearing what ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ be ‘legally’ done on a computer or to monitor a person, based on what many people saw in “Hackers” or “CSI”.

Cedric, I’ll say this, I have been misinformed, you would know the law better than I would. But how about myself, the non-custodial parent, do I have the same right, not saying I’m wanting to do this, just curious is all. And what about thier frinds laptops, if they bring them to my house do I have that right?

I guess I’m just concerned that there are parents out there who would go to extreme measures like this without justification, as I said the paranoid ones who believe everyone on the internet is out to get thier child, and who assume all teenagers are up to no good.

There are definitely parents who would go to extremes to monitor their children without justification. While I think this particular article is a scam, the sad fact is that there are parents out there who would do these things. I don’t know any who would do ALL of these things but there are definitely parents who do some of them regularly. Based on us all being free range to different extents, I don’t think there is any regular reader of this blog who would go to extremes to monitor their children without good cause.

“To make a blanket rule that parents have to be hands-off on all of kids’ comings, goings, and correspondence is foolish.”

To adhere to a blanket rule that parents have to be hands-off on all of their kids’ correspondence lest they read or hear a word uttered by another child is even more foolish.

I would also observe that the parents who are most up in their teens’ business are the ones who remember being a bit wild themselves.

Seems to me that the best way to prevent irresponsible behavior is to introduce responsibility earlier and more thoughtfully. But again, only the parent knows if that’s enough for a particular child.

Well Cedric my mother had my back on the whole being illegally recorded so if we felt it was worth it to have her arrested, my mom would have backed me. However, I loved my friend and she was one of the only good friends I had at that time. I knew if I had her mother rightly and justly arrested we would probably no longer be allowed to hang out anytime outside of school. So we let that bitch get away with invading my privacy and illegally recording my phone conversation with her daughter. However I made sure to tell my friend on the phone that her mother was probably recording that “What your mother is doing is illegal and she could be arrested for it. If she continues to do this I might involve the authorities.” I think she backed off after that for a while.

Good grief, Dolly, if the girls mother was recording on her own phones and her daughter, in her house, she probably wasn’t breaking any laws then, either. Where do you get this idea that parents have no control over things in their own house, or over their children? If you said, in a conversation, that you knew you were being recorded, then you GAVE consent because consent only means that you know you are being recorded, not that you have to like it.

From waaay back:
One does not need to be age of majority to sue someone else in civil court.
One does not need to be age of majority to convince a DA to press criminal charges against someone else.

And

If it comes to secretly recording your teen’s phone, or recording keystrokes, you’ve lost. Morality and legality aside, you’ve lost. For whatever reason, you and your teen failed to build a necessary level of trust for you to effectively parent.

Cedric: I am not trying to be bitchy here but have you paid ANY attention to the above posts? I gave cites proving and others backed it up that YES it is illegal to record a phone conversation if neither party has consented to the recording. Even minors. Even in your own home. It does violate wire tapping laws. You don’t have to like that but it is the fact. Look it up. Or better yet read the many cites I gave above.

No. I did read your cites. The USSC ruled on a similar case in 2006, and that would set precedent over your case citation from Seattle in 2004.

Rich-a minor child in most jurisdictions must be represented by an parent, legal guardian, or attorney. whether they are the plaintiff or the defendant.

Cedric: I posted more than that. I posted a specific cite where they said that parents cannot give consent in recordings for their kids. The kids have to.

If my kid was at risk you know what I would do? I would not listen in on phone conversations. I would just take away phone privledges. Simple and no one has their privacy violated. If they needed to use the phone I would let them do so on speakerphone and get permission from the other teen that that was okay. I would not read emails. I would just take away computer access or put the computer in a public room and be nearby. Simple. I would not put a camera in their car. I would just take away car access. Simple.

You guys are having a hard time proving that invading privacy is 100% necessary to help out an at risk teen. Because its not! You can handle things by just restricting access. You don’t have to spy. A teen that can’t leave the house, can’t use the phone, can’t email, can’t get into trouble. Of course that might require the parent to buck up and stay home with the teen and be present and pay attention, but get over it. That is your job. It is not your job to be super spy 007.

A parent cannot abandon or consent to a violation of their child’s civil rights to the State, such as approving a search of their possessions. The laws applicable have no such distinction or restriction on a parent themselves dong the same thing, or monitoring their communications.

You continually come back to recording on the phone. If no one is recording their kids its not against the law. If the mother was recording her own phone HERS was the 1 party consent. You admitted that you knew she was recording as well. You would have to prove that you knew she was recording you before you knew she was recording-and once you KNEW, that was your being verified.

The FCC laws that you cite only apply to inter-state or international calls.

“Cedric: NONO ! You cannot give consent as a parent. Not according to what I found and posted above…..”

the block text you keep referring to in that post is from a blog/sales website-not exactly the place id be going for competent legal advice. If you’d chosen to read the Federal Wiretap act of 1968 (that the site even linked to) you’d find that it grants certain exceptions, and those exceptions have been strengthened since 1968 with the passage of up dated versions of COPPA and the ECPA.

Actually a parent absolutely CAN consent to the search of his child’s possessions as head of household. A parent cannot consent to a search of his child’s person and a parent cannot waive Miranda for his child but a parent can consent to the search of just about anything contained in his house.

Dolly, are you purposely being obtuse or do you really just not understand teenage problems? The point of reading kids email and listening to phone calls is not always to monitor the use of those items. Much of the time it is to gain information about other things! If I am worried that my child is contemplating suicide, how does taking away phone privileges and internet answer that question? If I am worried that my child is doing drugs, how does taking away phone privileges and internet answer that question? Locking her up in the house doesn’t answer those questions (drugs can still be obtained in school). Reading her email may answer those questions. My child’s privacy ranks waaay below my child’s life and your child’s privacy as it pertains to emails and notes given to my child ranks even lower. If push comes to shove, I will read her email, texts, notes, etc. to try to get to the bottom of questionable behavior when all else fails.

“I could have had her locked up or filed a lawsuit against her and won.”

Possibly, but the world doesn’t revolve around Dolly. The odds of the police being interested in prosecuting parents who record their teen who happen to overhear other teens (a requirement unless the teen is talking to herself on the phone) are almost nil. They MAY, and that’s a big may, tell the parents to stop. But once the teen knows her parents record her calls and continue to make calls, they don’t even need to stop. There is consent. They don’t need yours. Even if the police do arrest or your do sue, the odds of winning in a jury of parents are even less. I’d love that trial as a defense attorney; I have a 99% chance of winning as long as I can give a good reason as to why the mother was monitoring her child’s calls.

“It’s not your job to by SuperSpy 007….”

Actually………it kind of is.

Neener: Than don’t assume it. Several of my best mom friends work and they kick butt.

SKL: I would TALK to my kid. Wow crazy concept! Who would have thought of that?! I certainly would not invade his friend’s privacy by reading emails or eavesdropping on their phone conversations. I would take my kid to therapy if need be. Restrict phone, internet, if need be. I would ground him if need be. But NO WAY would I invade another kid’s privacy that is not my child and really I would try to even respect my kid’s privacy as much as I could.

Secondly, emails ARE private. Do you read every email your husband has? What about your best friend? Your mother? Would you be mad if you found out one of them read all your emails? See I bet you would be very pissed about it. Well, teens are people too and they have the same feelings. You cannot tell your kids or anyone else to respect your privacy if you don’t respect theirs because it makes you a huge hypocrite.

Why would you need to read my kid’s emails to your kid as long as my kid is not the boyfriend you are worried about?! That really would not have anything to do with the situation. Instead of snooping why not keep your kid in the house and then they don’t meet the boyfriend? It seems common sense. It is like most of you guys think snooping would be the first and best step when to me it would be a very last resort.

The point you keep missing is that the snooping wouldn’t start until our kid did something that opened up their life to the scrutiny. After that point it’s game on.

And, without more detail we can dance around all day that you ‘could have, should have’ had your friends parents arrested. All they would have to show is a good faith reason why they felt that their daughter and the phone in their house warranted the extra scrutiny and there is hardly a jury in the country that would touch them. If they had no reason or basis for listening in, then yes, it was probably illegal, but since you are not them, and your friend may have been circumspect about the specifics to win your side of things to show that her parents were “Teh HorrIbLzZZ”, for all you know they were justified because of something she was doing. You never pursued it legally so the ‘facts’ of your situation aren’t really up for discussion, except that you keep bringing it up as a legal litmus and proof that they were legally in the wrong, and it may not be the case-all we have is your words, no specifics. Cases like this are all about the specifics. In the internal investigations that I do I have to be able to justify every thing, every file I save, every IP number I scan, every connection I monitor. There is no room for supposition.

The only negative impact of the prior case you cited from Seattle in 2004 was that some kid (who had already had time served) got his conviction thrown out because the only evidence they had was the mom’s notes of the phone call. I still think the amicus filed by the ACLU on that one was wrong, and I think that the WA State Court of Appeals was as well. To me, it sounds like either there were extenuating circumstances to her reasons WHY she was listening to the phone calls, or, she couldn’t produce a good faith reason (as defined by the Federal Wiretap Act) for listening in.

“Why would you need to read my kid’s emails to your kid as long as my kid is not the boyfriend you are worried about?! That really would not have anything to do with the situation. Instead of snooping why not keep your kid in the house and then they don’t meet the boyfriend? It seems common sense. It is like most of you guys think snooping would be the first and best step when to me it would be a very last resort.”

When an email is sent it is no longer in the possession of the sender, and therefore is not their property. If I went on YOUR computer and looked it up, that is illegal. If they send an email to my child, it is not.

Good grief Dolly for the millionth time – I know this a hard concept for you, but the world does not revolve around you!!! The mother was not recording your conversations. She was recording HER DAUGHTER’S conversation of which you were a part. I don’t need a good reason to record your conversations, I need a good reason to record the daughter’s conversations and you said she wasn’t a good kid so that’s there.

Dolly, you raise your kids your way and deal with their problems your way and the rest of us will do the same. Just don’t expect everyone else to do it your way because you don’t have a leg to stand on if they don’t.

With all do respect, it sounds like your husband is more of the problem than she was. To hold a grudge like that for years unless she abused him is absurd, but hey, each to their own.

Did she call his teachers at school every day? Show up at a HS District Speech/Drama competition in the middle of it to take him home (since he was grounded and went anyway)? Show up at his friends houses with police to humiliate him and make him return home (truant)? Call the cops on he and his girlfriend so she could be harassed by them since she was 18 and he wasn’t? (in NE the age of majority is 19)?

I had all that happen to me, by my own mother. Did I warrant it? At the time-YES. I was belligerant, truant, disrespectful, involved with a girl that turned out to be really bad news later, and getting into stealing stuff.

And, I still visited her in college-and THANKED her before she died that I was able to make it through HS and get an academic scholarship because she forced me to get my head out of my third point of contact. It made boot camp a breeze, as well.

You… Are…… Inventing……. Rights…… That……. They…… Do……. Not……… Have.

As someone diagnosed with SIWOTI syndrome, I gotta say, y’all should look up the symptoms.

http://xkcd.com/386/

Cedric: So what? My mom still had a relationships with her Dad and apparently he molested her! People stay in all kinds of f-ed up parent/child relationships. Doesn’t make it right.

My husband did not deserve any of her treatment of him. Never had so much as a speeding ticket. Never made lower than a C and even then the C was only for AP Math. It was mostly all As and Bs. Went to school every day. Worked a job and saved all his money up for his adult life. If most parents had a kid that good, they would be doing cartwheels in joy! He didn’t have his first girlfriend until he was 19! So no, he did not deserve that treatment.

I can tell you the first time he ever brought a girl home (me), at age 19 his mother had a damn fit because in her tiny house he wanted to shut his door so we could talk privately from sitting across the room from one another. He introduced me to her first like a good boy. She kept freaking out and slamming open the door. He was not 15! It was not like we were going to strip our clothes off and start screwing with her bedroom being 2 feet away! She was just a freak and she saw her control over her son slipping since he finally had another woman more important than her in his life. So then she kicked me out of the house and screamed at him for about 2 hours so badly he ended up in the fetal position and the neighbors called the cops.

So yeah……..the woman deserves what she gets and then some. How dare you say the problem is my husband?! Or how about how she threatened to boycott our wedding at the last minute!? Or how she wore black to our wedding!? Yeah no, that woman is a saint and we are just horrible cruel people……..

So explain to me again how my husband was the problem? Because he didn’t want his mother opening his mail when he was 19? Yeah what a horrible son……

Going outside the privacy scope here, but DOLLY, remember when you said sometimes you would ask older kids not to do things on the playground b/c your smaller boys might imitate them, or get trampled…even though that involved OTHER parents’ kids, you were doing it to protect YOUR boys…you don’t ask other parents’ permission. I think what Cedric, and Donna are getting at is that they WOULD (only IF a situation warranted it) read emails or listen (not record) phone calls to protect their OWN kids. The other kids are like the jumping/climbing big kids. Maybe they are a bad influence, maybe not…

You know what they say, “little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems”

Dolly, if a parent steamrolled over here and told me that I was not allowed to read emails from her kid to mine etc., I would inform her that in that case, her kid’s emails would be blocked or deleted before they reached my child, so he might as well never send any. I don’t care if her kid is an honor student boy scout.

Basically you are saying you want to be able to tell me what I must allow your kid to do in MY house, regardless of my house rules. I set up my house rules based on the needs of my family first. You are welcome to visit / interact or not.

As for your earlier argument that my right to read my kid’s emails is going to make my kids unpopular – I doubt it, since most parents consider that to be their right, and many exercise it. I really think your views on that are in the minority. So if popularity is your biggest issue, you might want to tone down the hysteria before it starts to scare other families away.

It’s true, I believe in respecting other parents’ rights. BUT you have NO right to make the rules that apply in MY house, including rules about emails. Get over it. And if you told me you didn’t want your kid receiving emails from my computer, I would respect that. Because it’s about your kid, and you’re his parent. My kids aren’t going to drop dead because they aren’t allowed to do XYZ (privately or otherwise) with your kid.

Maybe I take issue with the fact that you’re always there after school when my kids come to visit at your house. You should get out of the house because you have no business to watch what my kids are doing while they are there. What if you hear something they say to your kid? That’s an invasion of my kids’ privacy. Please find somewhere else to hang out while my kids are at your house. See how ridiculous that sounds?

It wouldn’t be ridiculous if I were actually putting my ear on the door and spying on them. If I was doing that, then you would have every right to tell me to stop it. Because it is creepy and wrong.

I plan on monitoring my kids internet usage too. When they are young the computer will be in a common area so I can check up on them. But that is not the same as reading personal emails between my kid and another kid. When it comes to that I won’t go there. I am not saying parents should not check up on their kids. I am saying you should not be doing it in a way that violates not only your kid’s privacy but other kid’s privacy as well.

SKL: You don’t even have to tell me the reason. You just need to ask me before you read my kids private emails to your kid. Because if you just do it and I find out after the fact that my kid’s privacy was invaded without my or their consent, me and you would be having words. It is a respect thing. Just like I would not take your daughter to the OB to get birth control pills behind your back. I would check with you first. You don’t steamroll over another parent’s rights like that!

So you don’t have email privacy then SKL? Okay then give me your password and email account and I am going to go in and read every email you have ever written. Since emails are not private you should have no problem with me doing so. Right? And don’t pull the “I am an adult so I can have it, but my kids can’t argument.” That is a dumb argument. Things don’t magically change the moment a kid turns 18. How are we to prepare our kids for the adult world if we don’t start showing them how things are for adults. In the adult world, barring work email, email IS private.

You never answered my earlier question about how you would feel if your boyfriend or mother or friend read all your emails against your wishes? How would you feel about that? Oh wait, emails aren’t private so I guess you would be cool with it. We need to teach our kids about respecting other’s privacy and what better way to teach it, then showing them by example.

I don’t really care if you and I would be “having words.” However, this conversation has taught me something. When my kids are old enough to have email, I’m going to tell my kids and all their friends and their friends’ parents (to the extent I know them) that I reserve the right to read all emails addressed to my kid, to (without further notice) monitor their texts and phone calls, etc. I reserve the right. Doesn’t mean I will ever exercise it. But that way, you can’t complain to me that I went around you and infringed a “right” that you would like you kids to have.

Funny you should bring up the OB. My sister-in-law has two daughters around the same age as my kid sister. One day she rounded up all three girls (my sister was 13) and drove them to Planned Parenthood for the “talk.” My mother only found out about this later. Can you imagine? Now that is an invasion, but reading emails that come to my kids in my house is a different story.

I think the root of this argument is you guys think parenting is about “Do as I say,not as I do”. I don’t. I parent by leading by example. I tell my child eavesdropping is rude and I show them that by not doing it toward anyone. My father often tried to parent me by the “Do as I say, not as I do” and it horribly backfired on him because everytime he tried to lecture me on something, I just pointed out to him all the times he did the exact same thing he is lecturing me on.

Dolly, to answer your question about how I would feel: actually, my mother did feel free to open my mail (we didn’t have email in those days). Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. I didn’t love that about her, and I let her know it bugged me, but then I got over it. I also had 5 siblings who had no qualms about reading my journals or listening in on my phone calls. They knew it wasn’t nice, but that wasn’t enough to stop them all the time, and I had enough sense to know it. And I moderated what I said accordingly. I also slept in the same bed with my sister until I was 13, so yeah, privacy is relative. It’s your choice to give it so much importance. People have managed to live their whole lives without much of it.

No, I don’t think parenting is do as I say and not as I do. Nobody here has said that they would monitor their children’s communication willy nilly or to monitor their friends or to control them. That is your interpretation based on nothing since Cedric, Larry, SKL, pentamom, me and everyone else who jumped into the conversation has directly said otherwise.

That said, if I believe there is a serious threat to my child’s future, I will read her email, notes, diaries, etc. If my child hates me for the rest of her life, that’s a price I’ll have to pay. At least she’ll be alive to make me pay it. At the end of the day, I would hope that my mother, child, spouse, friend, other loved one would do the same if they seriously thought my life was threatened in some way and needed information I was not giving them to help.

Dolly, throwing up strawman arguments when you can’t counter what others are saying is entertaining but not effective.

How you got “do as I say, not as I do” out of any of this is beyond me.

Dolly, it’s not up to you to decide when my kids are ready for that level of privacy. The law says 18. I decide how much sooner.

So basically you don’t mind if I read your kids’ emails if they are sent to my 10yo but you mind if they are sent to my 16yo? Or are you saying I’m supposed to know how old all my kids’ friends are and only read the stuff from kids under a certain age? What if your kid doesn’t know how old my kid is? What if my kid or your kid lied about their age?

SKL: Because as an adult eavesdropping is considered rude and intrusive. Here is a little story. When I was about 9 or so I developed an eavesdropping problem. I would try to listen in on my parent’s phone conversations, open their mail, etc. My mom caught me and sat me down to have a talk. She explained that is was rude and not proper. She promised if I gave her privacy and respect by not snooping on her, she would show me the same respect. Do as I do= good parenting. She didn’t yell at me and punish me for eavesdropping and then turn around and eavesdrop on me. Do as I say, not as I do= bad parenting. I learned not to snoop anymore and therefore she was an effective parent.If I caught her being too snoopy later on in life I reminded her of that conversation we had when I was 10 and she apologized and stopped snooping. Then we would sit down and talk about what caused her to feel the need to snoop. THAT is a good teenager/parent relationship.

Donna: I probably would not do the room searching or drug testing except in the most extreme of situations. I was just showing there are ways to find out if your kid is on drugs that don’t involve snooping on other people’s teens. Those ways would not involve another teen. It is possible.

Read my above post on how I plan on parenting my kids. I never use the old parent approach of lecturing my kids on something and then I turn around and do the same thing. I won’t be a hypocrite. I lead by good example. Kids will be good when their parents show a good example. Studies have proven that. If kids see their parents being polite, they will pick that up. If kids see their parents using drugs, they in turn might also use drugs. Parents are models. So I try to be the best I can be in order to inspire my kids. That is how I parent. I will never say “BECAUSE I SAID SO!” I will do as my parents did and sit my kids down and explain why they shouldn’t do that with logic and care. I turned out great. Good student, responsible adult and citizen. It worked with me.

Dolly, you have said repeatedly that you were a good child. Nobody here has advocated eavesdropping on “good” children who are doing the right thing. That is bad parenting on so many levels. But you cannot say “I was a good kid who did nothing wrong and my mother could figure that out without eavesdropping so you should be able to parent your troubled teen without eavesdropping.” You have no idea what your mother would have resorted to had you had serious issues. Your mother probably has no idea. Hopefully, you, me and SKL (since all our children are similarly aged and young) will not have to discover to what lengths we will go either and this will all remain theory. Hopefully, our children will all be “good” teens who get to keep their privacy. I did have a troubled brother and my parents should have gone to more lengths to try to straighten that problem out and maybe he wouldn’t be a 26 year old high school dropout drug addict.

Donna: well that is one thing we can agree on. I hope none of these measures are necessary either. As I said before this is a hot button topic for me because me and my husband were good kids. I had my privacy invaded by a friend’s mom and I did not deserve that. My husband had his privacy invaded by his mom and he didn’t deserve that. So I am a STRONG advocate for respecting the privacy of good kids. It is probably on my list of top 5 important things in life. If a person is good, then you treat them as such always. They deserve, they have earned it. I never said that if your teen is in trouble that you can’t start being more intrusive with them. I just said if their friends seem like good kids, leave their friends out of it. My best friend in high school had some problems, I was a good influence on her and was trying to help her. The only reason she passed the two classes she did pass freshman year was because of me helping her. So I did not deserve my privacy invaded by her mother. Period. At the very least I deserved an apology from her and I never got it.

Dolly, “do as I say not as I do” does not apply to the things that are *necessary* to do in the course of raising and protecting your kids. Do you let your kids boss each other around? Discipline one another? Decide where you, Dolly, will go and what you will do that day? Tell you and your husband when to go to bed, what to eat, and to get dressed in the morning?

If you let your kids do these things, you have a problem with your parenting. If you don’t do these things to and for your kids because you don’t let your kids do them to you, you have a problem with your parenting.

Keeping tabs on your kids past the point of privacy *in necessary situations* falls much more into the realm of things that are necessary to do in your distinct role as a parent, than in things that you have to model in exactly the way you want your kids to do them. If you actually haven’t been teaching your kids that, while the rules of general human behavior aren’t different from parents and kids, there are things you can appropriately do that they cannot, it’s time to start.

ps maybe the reason I turned out to be such a good kid is because my parents respected me even as a small child. They always talked to me like I was intelligent and reasonable and big shock I turned out that way! Kids live up to our expectations of them. You treat your kid like an idiot, they will turn out to be an idiot. That is one of the fundamental parts of free range kids isn’t it? Our kids can do more than we give them credit for and they will rise to the occasion if we give them the chance. Well there you go.

“even as a small child. They always talked to me like I was intelligent and reasonable”

Dolly, I am not saying you should treat your kids like they’re stupid, but really, small children are NOT “reasonable.” That’s something they have to learn. Sometimes they simply have to be told what’s what for their own good. Only when necessary, of course, and as they grow, this happens less and less, of course. And even teenagers can be quite unreasonable, I assure you, though this is not reason not to treat them with respect. Treating people with respect and thinking they’re always reasonable is not the same thing.

I really don’t think anyone is advocating treating our kids like idiots. Actually, I think you are treating your kids like idiots if you think they cannot understand “be careful what you write.”

And by the way, we all need to be careful what we write. I once replied to an email (on my private Hotmail account) the recipient she picked out selected parts of my email (to make it look nasty and unprovoked) and posted it on her very popular blog. Boy, was that a great reminder! Part of being internet savvy is to never write something you wouldn’t want to see on CNN the next day.

Well Dolly, you do say that about teenagers, but you are far from having teens yet, so your comments are still theoretical. As are mine.

I was just going to say – you have criticized me in the past for expecting more of my kids and giving them more freedom than you consider age-appropriate. Maybe 10 years from now, we’ll be having a similar discussion about how much more online freedom my kids are allowed than yours – who knows? I never said I “will” snoop. I said I reserve the right to, because I don’t know what the future holds. Better to tell my kids up front that privacy is a PRIVILEGE granted at MY discretion which can be removed any time I see fit. Then they at least won’t feel betrayed if I ever do have to take such measures.

But what you don’t seem to get Dolly, is that my teen doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She interacts with other teens. I may not be able to get more intrusive with her without impacting other people.

If there are lesser methods, we’ve all said we would try those first but sometimes you know something is wrong but have no idea what. These were your symptoms of drug use – “it is easy to tell if someone is on drugs by behavior symptoms-grades slipping, personality changes, smell, appetite changes.” Those are the symptoms of drug use (except smell unless it’s pot since coke, meth, prescription pills etc. have no smell). Those are also the symptoms of major depression, emotional difficulties, being a victim of bullying or molestation, eating disorders, possibly even a serious medical condition. I’d kinda like to narrow down what we are dealing with without sending my suicidal child to drug rehab.

I can’t compel a drug test as that is illegal. I suppose I could refuse to allow my child to leave her room until she consents but that is going to have tragic consequences if my daughter is actually suicidal and I’ve further isolated her. Even if I get the test, drugs don’t stay in your system for more than a couple days so a negative test doesn’t indicate a lack of drug use, just a lack of very recent drug use. Searching her room may uncover drugs, but the lack of drugs is not indicative of no drug use. My brother never brought his drugs in the house. Reading her email might get me more answers so I know what problem I’m battling.

“And don’t pull the “I am an adult so I can have it, but my kids can’t argument.” That is a dumb argument. Things don’t magically change the moment a kid turns 18.”

That is EXACTLY how it works, whether you like it or not. A line was drawn by the courts and the police, and society in general and it was at 18. I can choose to treat my child as an adult on my own before that, but if I let my kid drink, then I am breaking the law. If I let my kid drive before 16 I am breaking the law. If I pull them out of school I am breaking the law. Thems the realities.

If the computer is a shared marital asset (and most courts have ruled that it is) then you can, once again, read a spouse’s email if you can provide a good reason for doing so-he or she is sleeping around and her whatever might be sneaking around the house and your kids? You BETCHA. But monitoring your spouse’s email is illegal. It all hinges on intent and ownership. I don’t own my wife, I may not own her computer, but if she was having an affair with a violent guy I have EVERY right to protect myself and my kids. Checking email is then warranted. I have my wife’ password because I help her run her business-in Dolly’s view, it sounds like im supposed to depend on my wife clearly labeling all email subject headers perfeclty in such a way that I don’t have to hunt for the specific emails that pertain to her business, lest I see some ‘other’ email subject in her in box and commit the unforgivable sin.

It doesn’t work that way, and you are assuming powers under laws that don’t grant you the rights you think they do.

Geez Dolly, it’s world gone mad if you think you are easy to reason with. Your self-awareness is at an all time low.

With spying suggestions like the ones on that list, who has time for a job outside the home? What’s even more sad then than the list itself, is the idea that there are parents who are already doing some of that, and those who will read it and say to themselves (or heaven forbid a Free Range Parent!): “That is a great idea! I’m going to do that to keep track of my kid!”
(long exasperated sigh at the thought of anyone believing these “tips” will prevent their child from doing something they shouldn’t)

Neener: But you know best. I guess my several working mom friends I am super close to are just total idiots who choose to be friends with a working mom hater like myself. Maybe they are gluttons for punishment. If you can’t tell I am being VERY sarcastic.

I said I always had a good sense of fair and unfair and right and wrong and therefore was reasonable. I am. I said I would be willing to work with another parent if they wanted to read my kids emails or listen in on their phone conversations as long as they came to me first. Let’s see another great example of what a good kid I was and how even at a young age I had that great sense of right and wrong. At 13 every teenage girl I knew thought stealing was THE thing to do. They all would go to the Gap and steal clothes from there. Then make fun of the other girls for not having Gap clothes. These were my former best friends. I refused to do it. I refused to steal the clothes. I got made fun of for it. But I refused. I rose above it. At a very young and impressionable age I stood up for morality and beat peer pressure. Go me. If that is not a good example of someone with a great sense of fair and unfair, right and wrong and a good kid, I don’t know what is.

I’m 5 days behind and in no way prepared to read the 300+ comments already here. Likely everything I have to say has been said, but I really really must react to this post.
Given the abuses technology is being put to, even innocently–such as the case where a girl texted a nude photo to her boyfriend and within 24 hours school admin discovered everyone had it,with a slanderous label — I think adults really do need to help teen monitor technology usage. But nearly every suggestion on this list undermines what we want for our children. Research into relationships as I’m familiar with it, plus the strong, independent young adults I know, say build trust, get your kids to talk to you and tell you when someone has invited them through email. Putting cameras throughout the house or monitoring every key stroke your teen makes only undermines the underlying relationship that would keep kids safe.

The fact that you need to insult anyone is telling Dolly.

Also telling is the fact that you seem insist on providing examples of how a good a kid you were when we couldn’t possibly care less. So you were a good kid. So were many others on the list I’m sure. Good kids are not a rare commodity. They are actually the norm.

Most of us are never going to find it reasonable that you expect parents stressed out about their child to figure out that they have a note from your child in their hand, track you down and ask your permission before they read it. Nor are we going to think it reasonable that you keep insisting that you have this right when that is 100% wrong. The fact that you were a “good kid” is irrelevant to anything.

Spoken like a teen.

I personally am a teenager and have followed this blog for almost a year, but never posted. What the last 45 or so post have been is absoulte nonsense. This blog advocates free range, but at the same time you treat them as if they lack the intelligence to voice thier opinion behind your back. I personally there is a biasness in this thread towards teens in gerneral as poster ‘Cedric’ displays in his comment; No, Dolly. Teens are not adults, and have no expectation of privacy.

In my opinion that is contridictory to the free range movement. Aren’t we supposed to give youth more rights, not less. And I am completly with Dolly on this one. She had every right for privacy in her situation. I feel these comments against Dolly are biases because of past debates with posters that will remain nameless.

It is obvious who knew their rights and was mature as a teenager and didn’t let others step all over her. And finally when you parent, always think about how you wanted to be treated as a teen: and I want you to think with the maturity you had as a teen. If you think this won’t work with a teen, then you must have lacked the maturity to even has cognetive awarness of your personal rights and frankly you didn’t deserve any.

Ren, as a teen, I was frequently offended by blanket rules designed to control the relatively few teens who did need controlling. I don’t advocate such rules. What I advocate is that the parent, who is closest to the teen and should know what she’s capable, be the person to decide what’s an appropriate level of supervision. I had a lot of freedom as a teen, and I deserved it. However, I’ve known some young teens who truly could not make decisions in their best interest. Usually they were mentally ill or some variant of that. (Surely you can think of an example or two in your own life.) Leaving them to sink or swim on the theory that they are “old enough” for privacy was not in their best interest. A parent has a right and duty to make that call.

I also strongly advocate that everyone, regardless of age, avoid putting something in an email, text, voice mail, or internet post that they would not like to see on CNN the next day. That’s just common sense. I would advise my kids of this whether or not I personally believed in reading my kids’ emails.

The rule we’re advocating for is NOT that parents read their kids’ emails etc. It’s that parents get to decide whether that’s what their individual kids need. Surely most of us hope our kids won’t need that.

Hypothetically, someone puts a spy cam in a place to watch their own 15 year old child. Said child brings a “friend” home one afternoon while the parents are away. They start fooling around, clothing gets removed and there is now video of a couple naked 15 year olds on mommy and daddy’s computer. Who will get in more trouble? The kids? Or the people with the kiddie porn?

Its not ‘kiddie’ porn if it isn’t distributed. If it was recorded non-specifically in the course of the normal recording, e.g. not recording a specific act than the possessor of the camera shouldn’t have any issues. There is a ‘mens rea’ requirement (intent) that applies.

If the child is aware that there are cameras in the house then they have been notified under the law. A camera in their room is a bit much, though, and only the most paranoid people would probably do that. I would know something was up with my kids long before it got to that point using less invasive methods. The purpose of this whole thread is to show, though, that parents CAN do it, not to defend an individual parent’s methods and create straw man arguments to apply statutes against.

No problem. Ive spent all day summarizing HIPPA and HITEC for a theoretical info sec policy that im drafting for work. Info Sec is on the brain today.

I hate to say it, but as a parent, our perspective is somewhat different than yours. It makes me sound like one of those 35 year olds I knew when I was your age that said things like ” when I was your age……”. Legally, parents are culpable all over the place for the actions of their children, punitively or financially, so that explains, somewhat, why our view is different than yours.

Is this a result of Adam Walsh Act? What about that lady photographer (name escapes me, sorry) that takes pictures of kids? Doesn’t mens rea apply? I wouldn’t likely be putting a camera in my child’s room, but once again, isn’t intent one of the key factors?

What an amazing number of responses! Is this a record? (I don’t really “have a dog in this fight” because my daughters grew up in the 1970’s, when the only “technology” in the house was a second-hand color TV and a rotary-dial phone.)

My parents have a shoe box containing kiddie porn. Yep, that is right. Photos of their kids, and even some friend’s kids, in the tub buck naked and bathing. No bubbles to cover things. When I was about 12, was when the first person was charged with having kiddie porn for photos of their child. That box of my parents’, it probably also has photos of them, and possibly some other kids from the 40s through 50s.

Adam Walsh is a big deal with me. I have a co-worker friend that is married to a guy (11 years) that has a son from a former gf. That gf’s family was fine with them despite her being 15 and he 18 (small town) up until he sued for custody of the baby. Suddenly he was being arrested as a sex offender. He paid is fine and did his minimum in jail, registered at the time, and eventually fell off the list. Now, he has JOINT custody of the same child, and thanks to Adam Walsh, NE passed their own retroactive law that says he has to register again on the new and improved “Everyone is an Offender” list. He can’t go to his 8 year old daughter’s school things. He can’t go to his 15 year old son’s things at his school. I’m honestly surprised that he and his wife still have joint custody of him.

Yeah, the Adam Walsh act is a big deal with me.

Thank you Ren.

See what you guys keep ignoring is that you said that teens that are GOOD earn privacy. Several of you said it. Okay then! I was a model teen!!! So I earned my privacy. Therefore what my best friend’s mother did to me was WRONG! At the very least after she realized I was calling her daughter to talk about the boy I had a crush on or about our homework or about how someone farted in PE, she should have stopped recording me and apologized to me. She never did. She continued to treat me as a criminal and it was not right! Sometimes adults do need to realize that the teens might be more right than they are. In this case I as the teen was right and she was wrong! Nevermind the fact that under consent law me and my friend had not given consent to be recorded and therefore she was breaking the law. Same with my husband having his grades opened by his mother first. She was not only breaking the law but he had never gotten a bad grade in his life and therefore she was out of line. He had earned his privacy! Thank God my parents actually lived that and as long as I was good, they left me alone.

Tara: Honestly by keeping your friend’s from driving drunk you were being responsible. I think it is very wishful thinking to expect your teens to never experiment with sex, pot, drinking, cigerettes, etc. Most will. I did. I was still a good kid. I never got arrested. I never drove drunk. Never had a wreck. Never got knocked up. Never got a bad grade. Never let it keep me from my activities. In fact, I quit my experimenting with smoking when it effected my ability to dance because I got short of breath too easily. I as a teen made the right decision on my own. That is what we want our teens to do! Figure stuff out on their own! I didn’t need my mom freaking out because I smoked! It was better I came to that conclusion on my own!

I rolled with friends that were into more serious stuff than I was. I tried to help them by watching out for them and keeping them from hurting themselves or others. That is what friends do. If you expect your teen to sit around with their friends and read the Bible, you are probably setting yourself up for being dissapointed. Just saying. Teens are more likely to make that call to their parent to come pick them up if they know their parent is not going to FREAK out and go off the deep end about it. I am not saying not to punish them, just do it reasonably. If my sons called me to come pick them up drunk from a friend’s house, I would do it. I wouldn’t yell. I would just say they are no longer allowed at that friend’s house unless I can confirm the parents will be there. Then probably ground them. That fits the crime. I would not jump to: I am going to listen to all your phone calls, read every email, read every note, open your mail, etc. That is just going to make him rebel and probably get worse.

Dolly, your friend’s parents owe you no privacy. We are talking about our own kids, you are discussing perceived sleights visited upon you by someone else. Obviously they had something to be worried about with their daughter, or maybe they were just control freaks. Either way, it is still their right to be so until your friend turned 18 (or 19, in NE). Whether or not you were affected is irrelevant, except philosophically.

Was your husband’s mother paying his tuition? Then she had every right to see his grades. In any case, if he’s older, the letter may have been addressed to his mom, anyway. The laws protecting student grades are only a few years old. (FERPA was passed in 2004)

Wrong. The grades were not addressed to her. I obviously checked that before I got so outraged about it. Oh yeah and thanks for ignoring what I said. I clearly stated earlier when I brought up about his mom opening his grades that he would have been happy to show them to her if she asked. It would not have hurt her to wait until he gets home, let him look at them first, then ask to see them. He would have immediately handed them over. The woman was just a control freak. I think she was hoping his grades slipped so she could stop him from seeing me since it was around when we were dating. Too bad so sad old lady! All him and I did when we hung out was study in my room. So no grade slippage for us.

She had zero right morally or legally to open his mail that day.

LOL Dolly, the reason nobody cares is because that was a long time ago! Ever hear of letting things go? If I held every grudge over something that happened when I was a teen, I would have died years ago! Ever heard of forgiveness blessing the forgiver most?

Do you really want to know what I was doing when I was a teen? Really? Or do you just want me to know what you were doing?

Let’s see, I graduated high school in three years with one of the highest GPAs, had many jobs to earn spending/college money, helped raise my younger siblings (including homeschooling the youngest when she was 4), did lots of chores, went to university at 16 (took 21 credits in 1st semester) and did well. Volunteered at the local elementary school and received a Citizen of the Year award. Was a prude, but tried to be a good friend to whoever needed one. No hanky-panky with the opposite (or same) sex. Never disrespected anyone else’s parents. Bla, bla, bla.

That said, my mom used to open my grade card every time. I hated it. She knew I hated it. But I GOT OVER IT. Big deal!

Student grades did not have privacy protection until FERPA was signed. She could have called the school and asked, and whether he was 20 or not, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit.

Can I borrow that, Rich? That’s a great sentiment.

go Rich!

Off topic, what I find weird is having to sign absence notes and permission slips for my 18 year old for school. The compulsory education laws and all the other laws have a strange disjuncture here.

nanny cams in the bedroom? you really wanna watch your kid jack off?
also, something tells me whoever sent you these ‘tips’ knows exactly what kind of a blog you run, and how much of a kick we would all get out of reading it! ; )

“I have a feeling you are not very familiar with my blog.”
Time for a picture of Wil Wheaton collating!

Nanny cam in the bedroom? SERIOUSLY??? Sorry but any parent who spies on their teen in the bedroom is just plain creepy. Since when we do we protect our kids from pedophiles by acting like pedophiles?

If your teen has broken a law (illegal drugs, stealing, etc.) then spying is warranted. Otherwise, don’t do it.

Teenagers have friends. These friends will visit your home, use the bathroom and change clothes in the bedroom. Who knows, maybe your teen has a friend with a Mom like me.

If anyone spies on my daughter in the bathroom, or changing her clothes, I will call the police. If that person has a video of my daughter, they are guilty of child pornography.

You wouldn’t want to be one of those sex offenders, now would you? Didn’t think so. Turn off those damn camera, and get rid of that freaking nanny cam. Unless you want to go to jail. If your teen has my friend for a daughter, I’ll make it happen.