Queen of Swords

On another board I lurk on, a woman said, when speaking about her 13-year-old daughter,

Does this girl have nothing private from her mother? If she had a diary, would the mother feel compelled to read that? I know I would have been horribly embarassed if my mother looked through my diary when I was a teenager; I can't imagine a life where everything you have is laid bare for your parents' perusal.

On the other hand, I grew up in a completely different environment - no drugs, no weapons, no sex, etc. Maybe these are precautions parents have to take in this day and age. What do you all think?

By the way, someone else replied,

Yes, it's a real laughing matter when your parents don't draw a boundary between you and them. Ha ha.

seebs

Sounds like really bad parenting to me. If you can't tell something about where your kids are by knowing them, you aren't involved enough.

This woman is missing the forest for the trees. She is teaching her children that nothing is sacred, and that the desire to achieve good ends justifies any means.

What, I wonder, would she do if she found that one of her children was picking locks and reading another child's diary without permission, "to keep an eye on her"? I bet she'd ask "where did you learn to do that", and I bet she wouldn't understand or accept the answer when she heard it.

winstonjen

Invasion of privacy should be a criminal offense unless it is done with good reason, such as in the investigation of a crime.

Queen of Swords

Would it be OK to search your child's room if, for example, she came home very late one night? Or if she came home smelling of pot?

If my parents had done periodic searches of my room, I would have tried to outwit them by finding hiding places for things like the bad romantic poetry I wrote. This is not the kind of relationship I want to have with my parents.

winstonjen

I think it should be a last resort - asking and educating the child would be much better steps to take.

Grad Student Humanist

We may not agree with the tactics used by these parents, but it is certainly their right as long as the child lives in their home.

auto-da-fe

I agree with GSH. It is every parents right to raise their children as they see fit (barring mental, physical or sexual abuse). In today's world of drugs, gangs, sex at 12 and all the other crap kids have to put up with, the occasional search through your teenagers room can provide invaluable insight to the lives of your children.

For those who say that the parent should know the child well enough to not have to do this, I say that is a pipe dream. Who among us did not hide things from their parents? Some worse than others. If my mom had been more involved in my life, she would have been absoulutly SHOCKED at some of the crap I was doing. There is simply no way that a parent can know everything there is to know about their children, anymore than they can about their spouse. Occassional searches of a teenagers room is a good thing, it helps to keep the parents updated on what is really going on in the childs life that they may never know otherwise.

Of course, though, there has to be a line that you don't cross. Diaries and such extremely personal things shouldn't be abused and used as tools of deception. I don't think reading a diary is the same thing as going through a bookbag though. I also don't think that the kid should have an expectation of privacy when it comes to mundane things like a bookbag, or a sock drawer. An expectation of privacy is most certainly there for the diary though, and that is where the difference is. You cannot treat the parent/child relationship like it is a cop/perp relationship though, and I wonder if the person who talked about it being a criminal offense has any clue how hard it is to be a parent.

sweep

good point. That is exactly what happens. You sneak and spy; so do the kids. The kind of parenting described in the OP leads to lying and deceiving. Behaviour that involves the need to watch a childs every move reflects a sense of insecurity and could lead to other extreme measures, which create distance between parent and child. I would be interested to know how this parent, and other such parents, would react if they found something untoward, such as a gun or a bag of powder, for example.

The trouble is, a child is like a bar of wet soap. You squeeze it and it slips right out of your hands. The harder you squeeze the further it goes. To use an old cliche: 'If you love someone set them free'. I've seen it happen many times.

winstonjen wrote:
If you REALLY want to establish a close relationship, then you have to be honest, open, and willing to discuss the full range of behaviours with a fresh young mind. I know drugs, sex & violence-so the children in my life will be in the know-how when they encounter situations that some parents might freak out over. I am not going to blow my top if I find out, for example, that my niece has discovered ways to inhale glue or gas.

Perhaps some of you have had to deal with situations such as those I had just described. If so, does open communication really work. IF we inform kids prior to their exploits, does that mean they are less likely to endanger themselves?

Thesouphead

My parents used to go through my things. Just made me find ways to better hide the goodies. I became very good at it might I add.

Pyrrho

There have been drugs for many thousands of years. And children have been having sex for many thousands of years. And there has been peer pressure to do stupid things for many thousands of years. Now is no more different from other times than any other time was.

In my opinion, it is unwise to do as these people are doing, as it teaches their children not to respect people's privacy. It also teaches the children that their parents do not trust them at all. If they were raised better, they would probably be trustworthy, and no searches would be necessary. And, as several people have pointed out, such searches simply get the children to be better at hiding things. I was raised in a very strict way, but there were no random searches. If you treat people with dignity, they are more likely to behave in a dignified manner. If you treat people like they are guilty of a crime, they may decide that they may as well commit the crime, because they are being punished for it anyway.