Spying or Responsible Parenting?

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So, all you people in favor of parental monitoring, do you believe the Duggar parents are within their rights to spy on all their adult daughters’ phone and Skype conversations, even after they get engaged?

Do you support the fact that my mother took back the phone she had lent me in a fit of spite, even though there were FERPA-protected conversations between me and my colleagues on it that she didn’t give me the opportunity to delete?
 
Andrea_Day said:
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.
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No, no they wouldn’t. :rolleyes:

Internet usage cannot be harmful? Tell that to the parents of children and teens who are abducted and or lured & sold into sexual slavery in every state in the U.S.
 
pianistclare said:
No, no they wouldn’t. :rolleyes:

Internet usage cannot be harmful? Tell that to the parents of children and teens who are abducted and or lured & sold into sexual slavery in every state in the U.S.
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That’s why you have sit-downs with your kids about responsible internet use rather than just scrolling through their history. Teach a man to fish…
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
That’s why you have sit-downs with your kids about responsible internet use rather than just scrolling through their history. Teach a man to fish…
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One has to do BOTH.
My office is regularly met with parents, crying over what their children have gotten into, and have lamented that they let the kids unfettered access to everything and anything, including internet, cash, and time all alone.

Sounds all well and good and into people’s “rights” but in fact, it opens the door to all kinds of bad influence, whether you all want to believe it or not.

It happens, And it’s the wise parent who talks to their kids, and monitors their kids.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
So, all you people in favor of parental monitoring, do you believe the Duggar parents are within their rights to spy on all their adult daughters’ phone and Skype conversations, even after they get engaged?

Do you support the fact that my mother took back the phone she had lent me in a fit of spite, even though there were FERPA-protected conversations between me and my colleagues on it that she didn’t give me the opportunity to delete?
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I side with Dr. Ray Guarendi on this and especially in light of my friend’s present heart breaking trial with his daughter:
Every computer must have a monitor - a really, really good one. Otherwise the computer is useless. What kind of monitor do I recommend? A parent - a really, really good one. Otherwise the computer is more than useless; it is treacherous.
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He additionally gives some basic things to do to include:


  1. *]Get the best filter possible
    *]Password protect the computer
    *]Enforce time limits
    *]Keep the computer in a well travelled, observable family place
    *]Dramatically limit, if not prohibit, communication in chat rooms, personal blogs and instant messaging

    Further, and based on my friend’s experience with his adult daughter, I would not use legal age as a gauge or trust completely the individual. As a parent, you know or should know best your child’s maturity level. Forcing restrictions as above has a secondary effect of actually encouraging the child to talk face to face with local friends and family as opposed to isolating herself in a fantasy land found on the Internet whose cast of characters range from angels of light to the darkest of beings.
 
The internet does not turn people into lesbians. That is ridiculous.

I also found the church through online theological research.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
So, all you people in favor of parental monitoring, do you believe the Duggar parents are within their rights to spy on all their adult daughters’ phone and Skype conversations, even after they get engaged?

Do you support the fact that my mother took back the phone she had lent me in a fit of spite, even though there were FERPA-protected conversations between me and my colleagues on it that she didn’t give me the opportunity to delete?
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I am not in favor of parents monitoring their adult children at all. I think it entirely inappropriate. But legally I think Michelle and Jim Bob have the right to set terms about how their adult daughters may use the devices they (Mr. and Mrs.) own and what devices may be used on their property. The Duggars have no moral or legal right to look through the conversations which take place on the devices owned by their adult daughters without permission.

I am very sorry that happened. I do not support that at all. I don’t think it was legal for her to read those conversations. If that happened to me, I would talk to a lawyer about it, and make sure future confidential conversations occurred on password protected devices I owned or online accounts I owned.
 
Again, most of us are talking about children, and others are talking about issues with parents overstepping once they are adults. Two totally different issues.
 
pianistclare said:
Again, most of us are talking about children, and others are talking about issues with parents overstepping once they are adults. Two totally different issues.
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I wouldn’t treat my 17 year old dramatically different than my 18 year old.
 
If my kids are goofing off in the bathroom, I may not barge in, but you bet I’m going to do what I can to get them out. We don’t have enough bathrooms in the house for anybody to be lollygagging, for whatever reason! 😛

And wow, there’s a wide space between unlimited complete freedom and totalitarian police state. How about some common sense?
 
Acolyte said:
Forcing restrictions as above has a secondary effect of actually encouraging the child to talk face to face with local friends and family as opposed to isolating herself in a fantasy land found on the Internet whose cast of characters range from angels of light to the darkest of beings.
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The internet is not a fantasy land–there are fantasy lands within the internet. Likewise, there are fantasy lands to be found offline. The conversation we’re having here is real, not fantasy. Good and bad people exist online because good and bad people exist offline. Encouraging teens to spend time with family and friends is awesome. Most teens connect with family and local friends online. But **it is problematic to restrict a teen to communication with a certain group, if the teen experiences conflict or distance from everyone in that group. Teens need friends and peers THEY relate well to desperately. **
 
I think Jim Bob Dugger is a prime example of how and why people who claim extreme authority over other adults shouldn’t be trusted.
 
Acolyte said:
I side with Dr. Ray Guarendi on this and especially in light of my friend’s present heart breaking trial with his daughter:

He additionally gives some basic things to do to include:


  1. *]Get the best filter possible
    *]Password protect the computer
    *]Enforce time limits
    *]Keep the computer in a well travelled, observable family place
    *]Dramatically limit, if not prohibit, communication in chat rooms, personal blogs and instant messaging

    Further, and based on my friend’s experience with his adult daughter, I would not use legal age as a gauge or trust completely the individual. As a parent, you know or should know best your child’s maturity level. Forcing restrictions as above has a secondary effect of actually encouraging the child to talk face to face with local friends and family as opposed to isolating herself in a fantasy land found on the Internet whose cast of characters range from angels of light to the darkest of beings.
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  1. It’s difficult to balance I suppose, but doesn’t the above just make these things into “forbidden fruit”? These will be the first things they do in a friend’s computer or even once they had to college away from parental limits.

    Additionally, is the suggestion here that these things are blocked/filtered as best they can up to adulthood? Or that filters/monitoring gradually loosened as the child matures? If the former, is there a concern that in early adulthood they may discard the values you tried to instill in favor of whatever new tantalizing thing they now have unfettered access to?
 
pianistclare said:
Internet usage cannot be harmful? Tell that to the parents of children and teens who are abducted and or lured & sold into sexual slavery in every state in the U.S.
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I never said internet usage cannot be harmful.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
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.
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Read again. She said twice now that she is speaking about a minor child.
 
It seems the parents here of middle school and older children refer to this as monitoring.

The young people call it spying.

There was also a comment on how monitoring lturns kids into porn crazed maniacs when they move out.

It was also said to leave kids alone when self pleasuring in the bathroom, because of privacy-'when in reality perhaps a question of" are you ok "through the door would end that

It is amusing to me how gifted some people are at spinning the english language with extremes. I am impressed!😛

On another note. As parents to we are instructed to remove or reduce occasion of sin for our children that are still on our care, and you can’t spin that.
 
I think part of it is that the younger adults here were teenagers a lot more recently. Remnants of “you’ll understand when you get older/more mature)” that did not pan out.

Some extremes in this thread, but one big thing I noticed the first few months of college was a number of students essentially jettison the rules they were raised under once the parents were gone.
 
Andrea_Day said:
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?
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No. You’re talking apples and oranges.

Bodily integrity and bodily privacy is a human right. A father has the duty to know where his minor daughter is and who she is with, because he can be held legally responsible for her actions. He does not have the right to spy on his daughter in the bathroom!

Unrestricted private internet access is not a human right. A free phone that is no one’s business but yours is not a human right, either, and that goes whether it is a cellular phone or a land line.

If someone wants to provide you with a free phone or free internet access on the condition that they get as much access to it as you do, you take the terms or else you leave them and earn your own.

If someone gives you communication devices and falsely implies that you may use them with an expectation of privacy that they aren’t really providing, that is deceitful. Although a judge may give permission for the police to violate what would normally be your right to privacy for a just reason, it takes that level of evidence of wrong-doing to violate your privacy without your knowledge. (An example that would apply for an adult would be if other adults in their home had reason to believe that the person was planning to harm himself or others. In that case, though, it wouldn’t matter who owned the phone.)
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
Exactly: everyone knows that lesbianism is caused by bicycles 😃
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Wrong again! Women who wear pants brought on thousands of overnight conversions to lady loving.

Anyway-- first point, don’t drag millennials into this. The very youngest millenials are now adults themselves. Not to assume anything about the grammatical prowess of the average Tumblr user, the person who wrote this doesn’t strike me as millennial.

So much middle-ground wisdom here. Andrea Day said it best, though. The very best thing we can do is parent in such a way that prevents the vacuum that the Internet so often fills. Like so many others, I was a victim of the worst the internet had to offer, but that was a direct result of the gaps in my life left by emotionally and physically absent parents. I was not monitored, but if I had been monitored and locked out of everything, it would not have changed the wounds I was looking to heal in poor sources. When my parents DID find out about my online relationship with a man 4 years older than me (15 and 19), nothing changed. They did not ask themselves why their teenager was hungry for the love of an invisible stranger. They did not turn off their televisions and engage in my life. It’s just not as simple as nipping harmful exploration in the bud. It’s about making sure that you are providing the love that makes it clear, even to a teenager, the what lurks in the dark places of the internet is the opposite of good.

That being said, I’m going to be THE BIGGEST CREEPER until they’ve graduated from high school.
 
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