Reading your kid's journal

[Em_in_FL]

Well then I think it’s just a difference in parenting techniques.

I’m not my JOB to save the souls of my children.

Now, let me rephrase that before you dive down my throat.

It’s my JOB to educate, encourage, and instill good faith and good morals in my children so that they, THEMSELVES, are responsible for their own souls. I want to instill the OWNERSHIP so that they are motivated internally rather than by domineering parenting.

It’s a slightly different technique with the same final goal.

Unless you read other types of parenting books, you may not fully understand my point. That’s fine and I don’t have the time or patience to fully argue something that I read out of someone else’s book. But, my point is, there are other techniques. I know Dr. Ray is highly respected as a Catholic psychologist… that’s wonderful if his ideas are making a positive difference in many family’s lives. There are just different ideas out there as well.

Some other books I’ve read and enjoy are:
Parenting Effectiveness Training by Dr. Thomas Gordon
Raising your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Have a good night…

 

[former_Catholic]

I read my son’s journal and found out that he had snuck out of the house and drank. I confronted him and he’s mad at me for “invading his privacy”. He’s 16 and never given me any problems before. I have two older kids that have given me a run for my money. Was i wrong to snoop?

He betrayed your trust.
You betrayed his trust.
I’d say you’re even.
I’d suggest sitting down with him and starting the discussion right there.

But he’s oh so angry?
Well, you’re also oh so angry! Be angry right back:
So how does it feel when someone betrays your trust, my 16 year old son? How does it feel? I want you to truly feel and experience just how extremely angry you are when somebody betrays YOUR trust so that you can fully appreciate just what that feels like to me that you betrayed MINE.

A 16 year old kid doesn’t run the risk of being sued for everything he owns and losing the roof over his head if his mother cleans his room and inadvertently reads his journal…
However, his parents run the risk of being sued for everything they own and losing the roof over everybody’s head over paying medical bills if he is out there drinking and driving around town with friends and gets in an accident that injures somebody…even if only just himself

So how are we going to re-establish trust here? Let’s hear your ideas on the subject.

I think I’d start there.

 

[twopekinguys]

As has been stated, the kid broke the trust by 1. Sneaking out. 2. Drinking alcohol. 3. Lying (Not telling what you did until confronted is lying)

Mom looked through his “journal”, that 1. Is in her home 2. Probably bought (along with everything else)

I would rather have him mad at me for reading his journal, than getting a call at 2 am from the coroner’s office. (I work in law enforcement, and know how difficult that call is to make.)

He’ll get over being mad, but he wouldn’t be able to get over being dead.

I have made my kid on many occasion by “snooping” in the ways that I have (BTW, I never mentioned video), but he is alive and well, respectful, has a good job, and a good head on his shoulders.

I wasn’t his “friend”, I was/am his “parent”.

I remember being a teenager, and how awful my parents were by keeping tabs on me, but one thing they said has really stuck with me. “You better move out now, while you still know everything.”

I didn’t realize until I was several years older that I didn’t know everything that I thought I did when I was 16.

I still say, your house, your rules. If he doesn’t like it…Tough!!

 

[Kit15]

It is the child who broke the trust by secretly drinking under age not the parent.

The child, who has a breakable trust of his own, will not see things the same way. Denying the possibility that his own teenage trust was not also broken, immature as it may be, does not change what he may or may not feel for himself.

Even if he is mature enough to admit his fault, he is most likely still going to view the situation as a mutual breaking of trust at best. Obviously he was not aware that his journal was fair game to his parents. He may never drink underage again but he’ll probably also see to it that the next journal he keeps (if he keeps one at all) will be much harder for the parent to find.

That being said I really like Former Catholic’s post.

I’m not going to say that reading a kid’s journal is absolutely wrong though. But I think it should be done sparingly if you have no reason to suspect anything. If you do have something bugging you then I personally would have no qualms about reading it. It’s an emergency.

BUT I also think telling the child you read it is a gross tactical error unless he was already well aware that his journal was fair game. A journal is usually a personal venting space. As a teen I’d use my journal as a means to let things out of my system so I didn’t have to keep bottling things up. While I had very little to hide, I would be absolutely mortified if I know they read what I wrote in a state of heightened puberty-induced emotion. nothing offensive but it wasn’t my best side coming out in those writings. Looking back on them I’m kinda embarrassed I ever wrote those words…so whiny sounding.

Then again…if I knew my journal was fair game I probably wouldn’t have one at all…but that’s me.

If my parents ever read my journals to this day I have absolutely no knowledge of it. As long as they didn’t tell me they were reading it, they had a journal to read.

 

[oxymom]

An update. My husband and I just returned from dinner with our son. We had a great conversation. We talked about his trip tomorrow. I know we are going to work through this because he knows that we love him. It’s just going to take some time. Thanks for the great discussion. This was my first time to visit this site and it was very interesting and enlightening. The advice seemed skewed as to whether you had older kids or not. Maybe just my own bias showing.

 

[Lutheranteach]

and what would we say if it were the boy who read the mother’s journal and found out she was considering an affair or mentioned how she needed to find a new Dr. so she could get a painkiller addiction satisfied?

 

[surfinpure]

and what would we say if it were the boy who read the mother’s journal and found out she was considering an affair or mentioned how she needed to find a new Dr. so she could get a painkiller addiction satisfied?

Shame on him for not doing a better job of raising his mother? Wait…:ehh:

 

[Lutheranteach]

Shame on him for not doing a better job of raising his mother? Wait…:ehh:

Or, how dare he read his mother’s private thoughts!

 

[surfinpure]

Or, how dare he read his mother’s private thoughts!

Um, children don’t have a responsibility to protect their parents. They also don’t have the same rights as parents in the parents’ household.

 

[Norseman82]

There is a saying: “The inmates do not run the asylum”.

 

[LilyM]

He’s tried being sneaky, but he ain’t beat his old man yet.

You do know that you’re kidding yourself here - if he HAS beat you you’ll almost certainly never get to know about it!

 

[Catholic90]

startribune.com/local/98472329.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

The parents of these teens would probably have liked to have known.

Who is running the show in your house? You, the parent, or the teens? (“You” here is not aimed at the OP, but rather at those who are so adamantly against looking in the journal).

My kids do not journal, per se, but they all have Facebook, which I have passwords for, and they all have cell phones with texting which I pay for, so therefore, I can ask to look at their phones at any time.

If they do not like it, there is the door. Don’t let it hit them on the way out. Otherwise, if they decide they like their iPhones, unlimited texting, free Internet access, a car, and other perks, then I get to look as I demand. My house, my rules. Again, if they do not like it, they know they are free to move out anytime.

None has taken me up on that offer! Imagine that!

I worry less about kids “respecting” me than about raising good, solid, honest, God-fearing, law abiding citizens. They can have privacy when they go to the bathroom; otherwise, the house they live in is mine. The rules are mine.

I’ve had no problems with any of them getting into drugs, alcohol, or tobacco. I’ve got a nose that can detect the smallest amount of smoke, and DH was an alcoholic, so I am very familiar with alcohol and its signs. It would take a lot to get anything by me.

Bottom line, I would rather have them pissed off at me for reading their personal things than having them dead on a street, like the boys in the article.

 

[SalesianSDB]

Additionally, growing up, my parents gave me a lot of freedom and trust. I could have snuck out or done whatever I wanted and they may not have known, but I always behaved and used my own judgement to keep myself out of situations that could have resulted in something bad (ex: underage drinking, etc). .

Don Bosco ran a school for poor boys in Italy during their industrial revolution. From what I have read, and from the films a Salesian sister and my peer ministry teacher showed me, Don Bosco was very trusting of his boys and the youth.

To him, if he couldn’t trust them, a man who loved them like a father, how could anyone els trust them. “It is not enough that they are loved, but they must know they are loved,” he would often say. And to the Don, part of this knowing they are loved is knowing that they are trusted. This reminds me of two events that happened to Don Bosco:

He visited a young man in prison and saw how these boys were treated. So he went to the governor to ask for permission to take them out for a day so they could get fresh air. The governor at first said no, but then he said, “If one of them escapes, YOU must take their place in prison.” He said, “Ok.” As it turned out, when they returned to the prison, two of them weren’t there. He said, “Give it a minute.” A few moments later, they ran into the prison. They told Don Bosco that since he trusted them so much they wouldn’t let him down.

The second account was of one of Don Bosco’s pupils who was involved in a robbery and the accomplice killed the man they robbed. Instead of running, Don Bosco’s pupil stayed there and got the police. He was arrested. The governor told the boy that he could be free if he took some papers (fliers that incited rebellion) and hid them in Don Bosco’s printing press where the priest would teach the boys the skill of printing so they could get a job. This way the governor will order a search of Don Bosco’s Oratory (a school, home, church, and playground all in one) and find these papers inciting rebellion and have Don Bosco arrested and close down the Oratory. The boy at first agreed. But when he arrived at the oratory and Don Bosco welcomed him back even after what he had done, he trusted this boy, that the boy couldn’t go through with it and didn’t do it (risking going to back to jail).

It is all about trust. And by looking through his diary, you invaded that trust and his privacy.

Remember the three tenets of Don Bosco’s philosophy: Reason, Religion, and Loving Kindness.

Always ask yourself, like I do:
WWDBD?
(What Would Don Bosco Do?)

“It is not enough that they are loved, but they must know that they are loved.”
“It is enough that you are young for me to love you!”
-Don Bosco

 

[LilyM]

There is a saying: “The inmates do not run the asylum”.

Gee, and I thought this kid lived in a home, not an institution (and moreover an institution one is placed in only after one has proven to be mentally ill, and severely at that!)

Remember a 16-year-old is nearly an adult. They are old enough to drive, have sex (at least with other minors), own and use a gun. They are old enough in some places to get married without parental consent, drink, smoke and even join the army.

There is a sliding scale of independence and maturity as a child approaches adulthood that is appropriately dealt with by a sliding scale of autonomy. You can’t exert the same type and level of parental control on a 16 year old as a 10 year old - not unless you expect them to be as unable to cope with the outside world when they leave in a year or two as a 10-year-old is.

My parents were parents - good, loving, quite strict - but they gave us at least some degree of the privacy and autonomy which every late-teenage child needs. They weren’t acting like jailers or nuthouse warders, and accordingly we didn’t act like criminals or lunatics.

 

[Dymphna78]

I’m disturbed by the number of posters who believe children and teenagers do not have rights (to privacy, knowledge of the rules etc) because they’re living under your roof, eating your food, wearing your clothes, sucking up your money, and “they’re kids” as though “kid” is code for “nothing but an extension of ME that had better think and be exactly as I say or else” and not “fellow human being with inherent dignity and worth”.

All the people I’ve known in real life who believed their children and teens had no rights to anything until they moved out of the house also believed “clumps of cells” had no rights to anything until they moved out of the womb. I’m shocked and saddened to see that view here. Not that all the people advocating zero privacy beyond preservation of modesty - what does that even mean? You turn off the hidden cameras when they use the bathroom? - view their children as less than human, but the arguments are largely the same. As my father used to say, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it.”

You don’t own your children. They aren’t your possessions. They’re PEOPLE. People you need to guide and teach and protect and discipline, yes, but ones who are as deserving of trust, respect, and explanations as anyone else.

Em, you sound like an awesome parent.

 

[Kat127]

startribune.com/local/98472329.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

The parents of these teens would probably have liked to have known.

Who is running the show in your house? You, the parent, or the teens? (“You” here is not aimed at the OP, but rather at those who are so adamantly against looking in the journal).

My kids do not journal, per se, but they all have Facebook, which I have passwords for, and they all have cell phones with texting which I pay for, so therefore, I can ask to look at their phones at any time.

If they do not like it, there is the door. Don’t let it hit them on the way out. Otherwise, if they decide they like their iPhones, unlimited texting, free Internet access, a car, and other perks, then I get to look as I demand. My house, my rules. Again, if they do not like it, they know they are free to move out anytime.

None has taken me up on that offer! Imagine that!

I worry less about kids “respecting” me than about raising good, solid, honest, God-fearing, law abiding citizens. They can have privacy when they go to the bathroom; otherwise, the house they live in is mine. The rules are mine.

I’ve had no problems with any of them getting into drugs, alcohol, or tobacco. I’ve got a nose that can detect the smallest amount of smoke, and DH was an alcoholic, so I am very familiar with alcohol and its signs. It would take a lot to get anything by me.

Bottom line, I would rather have them pissed off at me for reading their personal things than having them dead on a street, like the boys in the article.

I think the two groups are talking past each other here. I hear that you are saying “your house, your rules” I understand your intentions are noble - you want to protect your kids.

But I don’t think you are hearing me. I’m not objecting to the “My house, my rules” but as another poster has already pointed out those rules need to be known BEFOREHAND. Making them up as you go…is your god-given right as a parent. So is being a tyrant.

I think the anti-snooping side is harping on the “trust” issue because we understand if your kid feels betrayed they will be less likely to go to you when they have a problem. I think it is a bit naive to think your children are incapable of pulling a fast one on you. Teenagers can be the stupidest people on the planet, they can also be very clever.

 

[Scoobyshme]

So it’s reasonable to tear down that trust even more?

No one is suggesting that the child didn’t make a major mistake… nor is anyone suggesting the child shouldn’t be punished severely.

NO ONE should trust a child, especially teens! Are you crazy?! Their minds have not developed yet to the point where they can make right decisions all the time. Some may not reach that point until their early 20’s, some never.

 It is the CHILD's responsibility to build trust, not the parent.  The CHILD must build trust by being trustworthy.  And how will the parent know?  Mind reading? LOL   

 The leading cause of death of children in our day is suicide. Truly.  What if the parent read that the child was contemplating suicide, AFTER the child had committed suicide?  How would the parent feel then about "trust?"  I can see it now, "Oh, if only I had been less trusting and snooped into what he/she was doing, I could have prevented this tragedy!"

 

[Advocatus_Fidei]

and what would we say if it were the boy who read the mother’s journal and found out she was considering an affair or mentioned how she needed to find a new Dr. so she could get a painkiller addiction satisfied?

Parent and child are not equal, a parent reading a child’s journal and a child reading a parents journal are therefore not the same, the parent has the authority to know ALL of her child’s business the child has no authority period.

 

[Jay82]

Don Bosco ran a school for poor boys in Italy during their industrial revolution. From what I have read, and from the films a Salesian sister and my peer ministry teacher showed me, Don Bosco was very trusting of his boys and the youth.

To him, if he couldn’t trust them, a man who loved them like a father, how could anyone els trust them. “It is not enough that they are loved, but they must know they are loved,” he would often say. And to the Don, part of this knowing they are loved is knowing that they are trusted. This reminds me of two events that happened to Don Bosco:

He visited a young man in prison and saw how these boys were treated. So he went to the governor to ask for permission to take them out for a day so they could get fresh air. The governor at first said no, but then he said, “If one of them escapes, YOU must take their place in prison.” He said, “Ok.” As it turned out, when they returned to the prison, two of them weren’t there. He said, “Give it a minute.” A few moments later, they ran into the prison. They told Don Bosco that since he trusted them so much they wouldn’t let him down.

The second account was of one of Don Bosco’s pupils who was involved in a robbery and the accomplice killed the man they robbed. Instead of running, Don Bosco’s pupil stayed there and got the police. He was arrested. The governor told the boy that he could be free if he took some papers (fliers that incited rebellion) and hid them in Don Bosco’s printing press where the priest would teach the boys the skill of printing so they could get a job. This way the governor will order a search of Don Bosco’s Oratory (a school, home, church, and playground all in one) and find these papers inciting rebellion and have Don Bosco arrested and close down the Oratory. The boy at first agreed. But when he arrived at the oratory and Don Bosco welcomed him back even after what he had done, he trusted this boy, that the boy couldn’t go through with it and didn’t do it (risking going to back to jail).

It is all about trust. And by looking through his diary, you invaded that trust and his privacy.

Remember the three tenets of Don Bosco’s philosophy: Reason, Religion, and Loving Kindness.

Always ask yourself, like I do:
WWDBD?
(What Would Don Bosco Do?)

“It is not enough that they are loved, but they must know that they are loved.”
“It is enough that you are young for me to love you!”
-Don Bosco

Nice post. There is a Don Bosco Prep Catholic school not too far from where I grew up. I didn’t go there, but I believe it is a very good school.

 

[Em_in_FL]

NO ONE should trust a child, especially teens! Are you crazy?! Their minds have not developed yet to the point where they can make right decisions all the time. Some may not reach that point until their early 20’s, some never.

 It is the CHILD's responsibility to build trust, not the parent.  The CHILD must build trust by being trustworthy.  And how will the parent know?  Mind reading? LOL   

 The leading cause of death of children in our day is suicide. Truly.  What if the parent read that the child was contemplating suicide, AFTER the child had committed suicide?  How would the parent feel then about "trust?"  I can see it now, "Oh, if only I had been less trusting and snooped into what he/she was doing, I could have prevented this tragedy!"

While I appreciate the name-calling (yeah, sure - some call me crazy ), I’m not an idiot, and you have clearly misunderstood my point.

I have in no way suggested that any parent should inherently trust a teenager.
I have suggested that if the rules of the house are not openly discussed and communicated, then implied rules (such as an allowance for having private journals) should be respected.
If a parent has suspicions about a child’s behavior, then communication should be the first and foremost step. You’re right, suicide issues are huge during the teenage years. I firmly believe in having loving, open, trusting relationships with children so that parents can be the FIRST ones to recognize that things aren’t right. Often, more domineering parenting techniques tend to make the child want to shy away from being open with their parents… that’s the last thing you want to have happen with a depressive/suicidal teen!