Parenting or Spying: Who’s Watching The Kids?
If you electronically monitor every website your kids view, secretly read all their instant messages, filter their TV viewing, restrict their incoming and outgoing calls, and track their movements by GPS devices lurking in their backpacks and cell phones, are you parenting, or spying?
Spying, and proud of it, say parental proponents of stealth, who insist that protecting their children has no limits. “If I’m responsible for their actions, then I should be able to snoop,” says a mother in Tennessee. A Texas mom is point-blank: “I have made it perfectly clear there is no privacy in my house.”
And no difficulty violating it. Just a single piece of spy ware makes subterfuge simple, allowing parents to view everything their kid does online, including both sides of IM conversations. Parents who don’t like what they see can secretly shut down the kid’s computer by remote, then blame it on a mysterious network problem.
“I can see why some people worry that parents will become too controlling,” says a Texas father of five, “but I’ve found that technology actually lets you give kids more freedom.” By controlling what his kids do and see, he says, he hopes to “eliminate” the possibility that they’ll make bad decisions that could bring lasting harm.
Care or control? Insight or intrusion? The debate continues, especially in the increasingly popular grade-tracking programs that allow parents almost hourly access to their child’s progress in school, with the cooperation of teachers. Depending on the software, parents can check test and homework grades, disciplinary notices, attendance, missed assignments, and their child’s daily class ranking, on command.
A Georgia mother who used to incessantly check her child’s school progress by logging on each day at 6AM, has re-thought her dependence on electronically tracking every aspect of her daughter’s daily life. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”
Tell us what you think: Should parents use technology to monitor their kids? Is it parenting, spying, responsible, or something else?
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I know what it's like
My dad was one of the lunatic controllers. Former 20 year Marine, it was his belief that he deserved to know everything about his kids at all hours of the day. He installed spyware on my school laptop, put a GPS black box in my car, and checked that online grading system everyday. I was a good student, never skipped, rarely tardy. But teachers make mistakes too. I remember one time I came home from school to my father livid about me skipping a class which I knew i hadn’t. I had that day’s homework in my bag. Nonetheless he believed the technology over me (even though I was awarded perfect attendance the semester before) and grounded me on a false claim. I missed my senior homecoming and it wasn’t until the next Monday that I talked to my teacher and the attendance office, that he was contacted to assure him I was in class. Apparently I had come late with a pass from my previous teacher, but attendance had already been sent for the day, so i was listed as truant. I’ll be graduating from college soon and I relish the freedom of living on my own and monitoring my own schooling. To this day I rarely talk to my father about things in my life. In my opinion, he abused his privilege when I was young, and now he has to live with the consequence of knowing I don’t trust HIM.
Satina Hart | 1 year, 7 months ago
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This is wrong
I totally think this is spying – not parenting. This goes back to trusting your kids. If they find out you are spying they might not trust you. It’s not that hard to figure out if you are checking in on. It might be okay to a certain degree or certain age. The older the kid, the more trust you need to have. I personally hate it when my parents treat me like my younger brother. There’s an eight year age difference. You have to let us grow up.
Lauren Durand | 1 year, 7 months ago
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Parents have a right
I am a Texas mother of 4 children, and there is no way someone will tell me I have no right to “snoop” on what my kid’s are doing, seeing, or who they are associating with. For one thing, it is for their safety and for another they need the guidance of their parents. They are after all “children” and in today’s world there are all kinds of terrible things around the corner waiting for some innocent child to approach. I will do everything in my power to make sure m kids don’t become victims of that. If I have to “snoop” to do it then you can bet I will do it.
jenniferwilburn | 1 year, 7 months ago
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Parent's Job
I think it is a parent’s job to check up on their kids. My kids know that I will be checking up on their phones, computer time and anything else. We have talked a lot of the things that they should/should not be doing when no one is around to monitor their behavior.
Janet Floyd-Colburn | 1 year, 7 months ago
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Spying ... final comment
I compared the way I was supervised as I grew up with what has been suggested here. I came from a very large expanded family (several families living in the same house in the Bronx) in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else (even if they didn’t particularly like each other). They knew what I was doing even before I did it and I got apprehended and paid the price several times.
The big difference between then and now is the impersonal, unfeeling web. I have no problem with a parent being on top of things and monitoring what their offspring are doing. I did that through teacher conferences and listening to neighbors and, definitely, face to face discussion with my kids. In my opinion, parenting requires proximity, involvement and interaction between parent and youngster right from birth and up through that moment when those youngsters can fly by themselves. That involvement has to be based in trust, love and all the other positive things we want in our lives. What it boils down to is if a child feels betrayed, intruded upon, embarrassed, denigrated or, perhaps, mistrusted, then the battle is over before it starts.
I’m going to stick with person to person contact with my grandkids and leave the high tech surveillance to the CIA.
Pasquale Bottiglieri | 1 year, 7 months ago
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Be more of a parent than a spy!
What I think is from the perspective of being a kid. My parents are great. They trust me so I’m okay. I think being a friend means more than a spy/parent. If you’re a spy/parent, you obviously don’t trust your kids to they tell you what they’re doing! They probably lied to you or they are just too much of a “bad kid” to be trusted.
Just remember: their judgment relies on you so if you make mistakes then they’re more likely to make the same mistakes.
If you teach your kid what’s right and what’s wrong then you’re on the right track. Don’t let them run wild come home at 5 in the morning unless they’re at a friend’s house and keep checking up on them every 1-2 hours!
Well that what a kid thinks! What do you think?
jennifer patterson | 1 year, 7 months ago
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From a teenager's point of view
I am 14 years old and I believe that spying on your children is wrong. It’s not because I am a teen, it’s because I would feel like I’m not to be trusted. How can children believe they are trustworthy when their own parents don’t trust them?
My mother spies on me very often and it makes me feel like I am an awful person. I feel like I should be ashamed of myself when I have done nothing wrong. I feel like I don’t deserve to be trusted. I have a hard time making my own decisions because I know she’s probably watching. How can I become an independent and confident adult when I am unable to do almost anything without being spied on? I can’t have my mother take care of me forever.
I know this is not how all children feel. I am only one person. And I know parents have to be responsible and watch over their children, but I think spying on them 24/7 is going too far.
Melanie | 1 year, 7 months ago
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This is the kind of approach that causes teens to
If I was a child who was snooped on like this, I would have been so angry at them, I would have probably done everything they were against behind their back.
In the same sense that people don’t want to be slave to another, no one likes to be controlled and most will not let themselves be controlled if and when they don’t agree.
joe medeth | 1 year, 7 months ago
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Parents - don't spy
I’m telling you this because it might help you. Your kids might really hate you for installing spyware and reading their messaging. This sort of invasion could destroy your family forever. My parents did this sort of thing to me when I was young and it traumatized me so deeply that I lost my love for them and twenty years later it hasn’t returned. It’s very sad because I lost my family, but I have never been able to shrug that feeling of being violated. Let them live life with dignity and they will develop a strong sense of themselves, which they need for adult life.
Privacy Respected | 1 year, 5 months ago
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Nosey parent
I am one. I have not resorted to spy ware, but I monitor IM’s if I think there is something going on. They have to report in to me or their dad when they are out somewhere. I expect honest answers to questions. I expect respectable behavior when they are in public. I demand that they do their best in school.
When they live on their own and pay their own bills things will change. My husband and I have a hard and fast rule: our house, our rules – for as long as you live here. They have friends who are no longer welcome here and there are places they are not allowed to go to. They don’t like it but I will say they were honest with me when I had to ask some tough questions. (One family allowed underage drinking which my oldest gladly participated in.)
They don’t like all of our decisions, but it works for us. As they get older, they get more freedom until such a time they demonstrate they can’t be trusted. Oh yea, we are also those kind of parents who have told each of our girls that if caught drinking and driving, we will call the cops ourselves.
susie | 1 year, 4 months ago
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