Spying or Responsible Parenting?

[Bookcat]

Amen.

And importantly, if “parents said no” is what keeps your teens away from porn (or anything else), guess what your teen will be doing when they move out.

Hopefully by then the will have grown in virtue and above all continue in that living relationship with He who is true life! Such rules can help form virtue and self control and teach what matters and what is harmful.

 

[Andrea_Day]

Parents have the legal right to use monitoring software in their home. I think it is extremely wrong for parents to monitor their kids without sharing up front monitoring will happen. It could easily destroy your relationship if your teen realizes you are spying on them in a sphere they understood to be private.

That said, I have strong personal objection to parents using internet monitoring for reasons other than their child’s safety or in order to make sure their teen is obeying the law. Refusing to grant your teen basic privacy and freedom will cause resentment and may well lead to your teen finding ways around your restrictions. If you ban things without providing logical reasons, your teen WILL engage in those behaviors when they move out, and keep an open eye to how they may get around the ban while still at home.

Furthermore, something I wish more parents realized is that when teens engage in forbidden, dangerous or sinful internet behavior it is often to meet a certain need they are not getting met offline. If you are proactive about meeting your teens’ needs offline, they are going to be MUCH more co-operative about you monitoring their internet/phone activity.

Are you providing daily opportunities for your social teens to connect with their peers? Are you being proactive about reassuring your teen you will love and support them no matter what, even if they are gay, transgender, converting to another faith, etc.? Are you helping your teen find healthy outlets for anger and sadness? Are you willing to involve professionals or third parties if conflict with you is the source of anger or sadness for your teen? Does your teen have access to a health care professional they can ask anything to confidentially, without you sitting in the exam room with them? Are you teaching your teen about sexuality and puberty when they start experiencing it? Do you give your teens opportunities to talk openly with you that will not result in punishment, yelling, etc.? Do you provide ways for your teens to ask you questions anonymously or not face to face? If the answer to these questions is no, your teen will likely go to the internet instead of you. If you fail to meet a need and block your teen from other avenues they could use to meet the need (including internet access), there will likely be damage to your relationship as well as to your child. Your teen will start attempting to meet the need you’ve denied them when they move out and tyranny while they were a minor will cause you to lose the privilege of being a part of your adult child’s exploration of said area.

Internet addiction is another reason teens engage in forbidden, dangerous or sinful internet behavior, though addictions are often formed because teens are trying to meet a need unmet in their offline life.

I am speaking here from personal experience and the experiences of my friends.

 

[redbetta]

All I know is that in the case of my friend, it was his lack of policing that resulted in his family being divided and the resultant cross thrust upon all within it. He never knew that his daughter was SSA until a few days after she ran away from his home. He found out when he finally had a look at one of her online journals. What hurts him even more is that he was fully aware that she had had such a journal. In fact, he had opened up his Internet filter to allow it through due to her request over a year ago. He had confidence that there was nothing to worry about assuming as he had that his girl was strong in the faith. Sadly, he failed to check in every now and again. Had he done so, he would have seen the slow and steady decline over the past year or so in his daughter’s mental and emotional health. In person, she managed to hide her shift in morality and faith really well…

I’m not sure if this is the case, but, maybe there was some failure to establish trust between parents and the daughter. Often, when children will turn to the Internet when they feel like their parents cannot understand their problem or bringing it up would cause a negative response. Maybe the problem was that they did not assure her that they could come to her with anything and that they can work through it together and they would support her. Then again, maybe they did try to establish that trust and it still failed in the end. This is just the possibility I’ve thought about when reading this.

 

[redbetta]

Parents have the legal right to use monitoring software in their home. I think it is extremely wrong for parents to monitor their kids without sharing up front monitoring will happen. It could easily destroy your relationship if your teen realizes you are spying on them in a sphere they understood to be private.

That said, I have strong personal objection to parents using internet monitoring for reasons other than their child’s safety or in order to make sure their teen is obeying the law. Refusing to grant your teen basic privacy and freedom will cause resentment and may well lead to your teen finding ways around your restrictions. If you ban things without providing logical reasons, your teen WILL engage in those behaviors when they move out, and keep an open eye to how they may get around the ban while still at home.

Furthermore, something I wish more parents realized is that when teens engage in forbidden, dangerous or sinful internet behavior it is often to meet a certain need they are not getting met offline. If you are proactive about meeting your teens’ needs offline, they are going to be MUCH more co-operative about you monitoring their internet/phone activity.

Are you providing daily opportunities for your social teens to connect with their peers? Are you being proactive about reassuring your teen you will love and support them no matter what, even if they are gay, transgender, converting to another faith, etc.? Are you helping your teen find healthy outlets for anger and sadness? Are you willing to involve professionals or third parties if conflict with you is the source of anger or sadness for your teen? Does your teen have access to a health care professional they can ask anything to confidentially, without you sitting in the exam room with them? Are you teaching your teen about sexuality and puberty when they start experiencing it? Do you give your teens opportunities to talk openly with you that will not result in punishment, yelling, etc.? Do you provide ways for your teens to ask you questions anonymously or not face to face? If the answer to these questions is no, your teen will likely go to the internet instead of you. If you fail to meet a need and block your teen from other avenues they could use to meet the need (including internet access), there will likely be damage to your relationship as well as to your child. Your teen will start attempting to meet the need you’ve denied them when they move out and tyranny while they were a minor will cause you to lose the privilege of being a part of your adult child’s exploration of said area.

Internet addiction is another reason teens engage in forbidden, dangerous or sinful internet behavior, though addictions are often formed because teens are trying to meet a need unmet in their offline life.

I am speaking here from personal experience and the experiences of my friends.

I wish I saw this post before I replied to that other one. You’ve made a lot of good points and explained one more eloquently than I could ever had. Brilliant. I just smiled for the first time today.

 

[redbetta]

One thing that I think whenever there is a debate on how much privacy teens and young adult children should have is that there is no one size fits all approach. For teens, some are more impressionable than others and some are naturally more skeptical and cautious and may be allowed more freedom. Also, I’ve had some peers who’ve converted during their teenage years or immediately upon adulthood whose primary source of information on Catholicism was the Internet. If their parents had been aggressively monitoring them, that might have happened.

 

[Andrea_Day]

I wish I saw this post before I replied to that other one. You’ve made a lot of good points and explained one more eloquently than I could ever had. Brilliant. I just smiled for the first time today.

Why thank you!

 

[Andrea_Day]

One thing that I think whenever there is a debate on how much privacy teens and young adult children should have is that there is no one size fits all approach. For teens, some are more impressionable than others and some are naturally more skeptical and cautious and may be allowed more freedom. Also, I’ve had some peers who’ve converted during their teenage years or immediately upon adulthood whose primary source of information on Catholicism was the Internet. If their parents had been aggressively monitoring them, that might have happened.

Good point!

 

[EasterJoy]

This applies to a great many things. The decisions one makes add a young adult aren’t drastically different than one would make at 15-16.

We told our children when they are ten and even when they were younger that they wouldn’t act as a decent 18 year old man when they were 18 unless they started the practice of acting like men when they were 10.

There isn’t a maturity fairy who just comes along and gives you the capacities of an adult. You have to have mature behavior as a goal, you have to practice, you have to work at it. If you start before you reach maturity, then by the time you are old enough to act maturely, you’ll actually be able to do it.

Having said that, it is no good expecting old heads on young shoulders. Boys can practice acting like men, but that doesn’t make them men. They still have to actually grow up. They have to experience the changes of adolescence and incorporate them into their own hearts and wills. That can’t be made to happen before it happens.

Even more to the point, inappropriate sexual experiences, alcohol use and the like have a greater adverse effect when a person starts those things at a younger age, before the brain is more fully formed. There really is a good reason to keep children innocent, since it does allow them to grow up stronger, more normally, and with less psychic damage, even in a world in which their innocence is almost certain to be violated eventually, whether they like it or not.

 

[Andrea_Day]

I’m not sure if this is the case, but, maybe there was some failure to establish trust between parents and the daughter. Often, when children will turn to the Internet when they feel like their parents cannot understand their problem or bringing it up would cause a negative response. Maybe the problem was that they did not assure her that they could come to her with anything and that they can work through it together and they would support her. Then again, maybe they did try to establish that trust and it still failed in the end. This is just the possibility I’ve thought about when reading this.

I second this.

 

[AnneElizabeth]

I read most of the thread, but not all…

What went through my mind as I read the thread title was this:

Do onto others as you would like others to do onto you.

AND…

“The ends don’t justify the means”

AND…

Matthew 20- 25But Jesus called them aside and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them. 26It shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,…

So, why doesn’t that work here? Why is it ok to do this- that is, to spy- the ends do justify the means, and its ok to lord it over your child and make them do what you say just because you said so, or it does not really matter if you do something you would not like to have done to you? (spying)… Does one believe that because they are a parent, Jesus’s teachings are no good anymore? That you can go against your so called faith in order to “parent a child correctly”? What does this say about your actual faith?

I don’t want to sound like some pious head in the clouds religious, but it just bugs me to pieces because is that what “The Faith” is really supposed to be about? That is, you get to say you believe it and live it and claim you are a follower, but when it comes down to things like this, *then you do what you feel is best? * … Ok, so you say you practice this thing called faith, but then when it comes to these sorts of things, you throw it out and grab your own rules or say to yourself Jesus’s teachings don’t apply in this situation because its my child? Even at that, in doing this, JUST WHAT are you teaching your child about your “faith”? !!! Its not really the Faith that Jesus taught if you are spying on your child.

Don’t think your child can’t see the dichotomy in this either. In fact, I suspect its MUCH MORE the reason why they left the faith than some demon or ‘bad’ influence they came across. We must truly trust and live it, otherwise we make it bad in the eyes of others, and they discard even the idea of Jesus or Christianity, easily.

I also believe that if things have escalated so badly that you feel the need to spy on your children, then the situation is much worse than you think it is and spying will do nothing to remedy the situation.- that spying is not going to help the situation.

 

[BioNerd]

Strictly speaking, if the parent is paying for the home then what goes on in any room of the house is the parent’s business. For modesty’s sake, an individual should be left to his or her own while using the facilities, however, that does not mean that the individual is guaranteed a right to be left completely alone especially if there is some reason given that something contrary to the principles of the owners is going on within.

Either way, access and use of the phone is not the same as access and use of a restroom in terms of modesty.

No way, so you actually believe it IS okay to barge in on them in the restroom if you SUSPECT they are masturbating? Wow. And I thought MY parents were going overboard on the monitoring/spying! I was a 21 year old senior in college and my parents still wanted my passwords and codes to social media and my phone. All this lead to was getting a second private phone for social use and the one they gave me for their “monitoring” use. I took it as them being the ones to pay to get access to my privacy. It also made me into an almost expert liar ( I can make up any medical emergency on the spot to get out of speeding tickets, so that’s a plus), more secretive, didn’t help their cause when it came to keeping us Catholic, and eventually realizing that struggling financially and eating ramen every day was wayyyyyyyyyyyy more worth it than living through that type of authoritarian parenting. So for the sake of my mental and emotional health, I moved in with my boyfriend for my last years of pharmacy school and it has been the best decision I have ever made.

 

[Andrea_Day]

All I know is that in the case of my friend, it was his lack of policing that resulted in his family being divided and the resultant cross thrust upon all within it. He never knew that his daughter was SSA until a few days after she ran away from his home. He found out when he finally had a look at one of her online journals. What hurts him even more is that he was fully aware that she had had such a journal. In fact, he had opened up his Internet filter to allow it through due to her request over a year ago. He had confidence that there was nothing to worry about assuming as he had that his girl was strong in the faith. Sadly, he failed to check in every now and again. Had he done so, he would have seen the slow and steady decline over the past year or so in his daughter’s mental and emotional health. In person, she managed to hide her shift in morality and faith really well…

Unfortunately, in a case I am intimately aware of with a good friend, his home schooled adult daughter, while living at his home was not monitored. Her rebellion was investigating the LGBT movement. As a result of his lack of monitoring she was allowed to become swayed by the lies of that movement unchecked. She is now a militant lesbian who is actively leading others in his parish into the ‘lifestyle’. Nothing more terrifying than Catholic spirituality? I believe that the ‘rainbow love’ might just be a contender…

You give me the impression that you have a lot of disgust or hatred for those in the LGBT movement by the way you are talking about them. I am not heterosexual myself and this makes me very sad. I shall say a prayer for you.

The situation with your friend and his adult daughter sounds very painful, and I am sorry to hear they are going through that. But it seems clear to me there is more to the story than what you have shared. You have not told the daughter’s perspective. The fact that an adult daughter is being required to ask permission from her father to have an online journal is concerning. If the adult daughter left her father’s home, that would constitute moving out, not running away. The process of realizing you experience SSA can be terrifying and wondering who will reject you because of it can be heartbreaking. I would hardly call investigating the LGBT movement rebellion. She surely was simply looking for people to tell her they loved her and supported her, people who would do so even if her father and her father’s friends, forsook her. She may have decided to live contrary to Church teaching even if her father had stepped in, or especially if her father had stepped in. Choosing to live by the Church’s teachings is a very scary, lonely looking and difficult path, especially for those with SSA. It’s not something anyone should be forced into. It sounds like this young lady had strong roots in the Church. Trust that God is working in her life, inviting her back. Pray for her, show her God’s love when you are able to interact, but don’t judge her or disrespect her. I shall say a prayer also for your friend and his daughter.

 

[Andrea_Day]

No way, so you actually believe it IS okay to barge in on them in the restroom if you SUSPECT they are masturbating? Wow. And I thought MY parents were going overboard on the monitoring/spying! I was a 21 year old senior in college and my parents still wanted my passwords and codes to social media and my phone. All this lead to was getting a second private phone for social use and the one they gave me for their “monitoring” use. I took it as them being the ones to pay to get access to my privacy. It also made me into an almost expert liar ( I can make up any medical emergency on the spot to get out of speeding tickets, so that’s a plus), more secretive, didn’t help their cause when it came to keeping us Catholic, and eventually realizing that struggling financially and eating ramen every day was wayyyyyyyyyyyy more worth it than living through that type of authoritarian parenting. So for the sake of my mental and emotional health, I moved in with my boyfriend for my last years of pharmacy school and it has been the best decision I have ever made.

Sorry to hear about the struggles with your parents. Glad things are working out for you now! Way to go getting through pharmacy school!

 

[pianistclare]

Not sure how we went from monitoring devices to watching kids in the bathroom!
that bit was added and NOT by the OP.

Lets not project.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

It’s not the child that we don’t trust. It’s the demons that we don’t trust. Our battles are against powers and principalities. As a spiritual warrior and good parent, I shall monitor and guard and do what I must to avoid the corruption of my child’s innocence. If the child loses his innocence thanks to some other peers, I have already done what I could.

If the child is a legal adult, then it’s not up to you to protect their innocence. They’ll either have lost it by then, or figured out how to protect it themselves.

 

[Andrea_Day]

Not sure how we went from monitoring devices to watching kids in the bathroom!
that bit was added and NOT by the OP.

Lets not project.

Whether we should spy on teens in the bathroom, bedroom or online is answered by the same larger question: what is the balance between a child’s privacy rights, ownership rights and the parent’s right to look out for their child’s welfare?

 

[Acolyte]

If the child is a legal adult, then it’s not up to you to protect their innocence. They’ll either have lost it by then, or figured out how to protect it themselves.

“The legal age is meaningless. What matters is the child’s social and moral age.” - Raymond N. Guarendi, PhD

 

[Andrea_Day]

“The legal age is meaningless. What matters is the child’s social and moral age.” - Raymond N. Guarendi, PhD

That is utter nonsense. Helping you child reach maturity is important, of course. Yet legal age is paramount to legal rights, including privacy rights and the right to move out of a parent’s home.

 

[pianistclare]

Whether we should spy on teens in the bathroom, bedroom or online is answered by the same larger question: what is the balance between a child’s privacy rights, ownership rights and the parent’s right to look out for their child’s welfare?

No, safety issues are not the same as personal space issues.

 

[Andrea_Day]

No, safety issues are not the same as personal space issues.

I never said they were.

Parents barging into the bathroom on the suspicion of masturbation probably would cite spiritual safety concerns. And certainly there are parents who use internet monitoring in ways that have nothing to do with safety.