If the child is a danger then you stop them
If you search repeatedly despite finding no dangers, that’s obsession
Man, I didn’t even get privacy on the toilet. If I was taking a shit, and dad wanted a shower, he’d just open the door and go take a shower.
Hope he enjoys the stinky shower xD
He never did, and he always blamed me for his inability to wait. Either I’d get in trouble for flushing and changing his water temperature, or I’d get in trouble for not flushing and stinking up the bathroom.
Should have put the lid down, shit on top of the lid, and then flushed. Might as well stink it up and fuck with the water temp at the same time if you’re getting in trouble no matter what.
Haha, nah, that would have resulted in actual murder. I became homeless voluntarily because I thought he was going to snap and kill me one day.
HUG. I’m so sorry you went through that kind of shit as a kid.
Never, as long as the junk in my room wasn’t leaking into the hallway, my parents were happy. Definitely no snooping. I had software on my kids devices when they were younger, but it just put blocks on what they could access, the only thing I “monitored” to any extent was time spent using the device.
Is this normal?
Depends on your history. A few children need this sort of scrutiny, most do not.
I knew someone who had a parent
- place a recording device in their room
- installed spyware on their computer
- read their diary
- made them sign behavior contracts (They were actually a good child)
You are safe to assume they had a difficult time adjusting as an adult.
So no, not normal.
place a recording device in their room
Jeez this is worse than anything I ever had.
I got lucky I guess.
(But I also didn’t do diary/journals, if I did, I’d only do it in ciphers, I like to play around with ciphers a lot when I was a kid)
They would have 100% gotten in trouble for using cyphers.
Lol I’m currently like experimenting with steganography.
Like a very simple example is say:
First letter of word is A-M = bit 0
First letter of word is N-Z = bit 1Then count syllabels:
Odd number of syllabels = bit 0
Even number of syllabels = bit 1So this simple method can encode 2 bits with one word.
So, write this ciphertext as a free verse poem.
Write something very innocuous like… say, about nature
You need 5 bits to denote a 32 character space, enough for the english a-z
So: 5 bits = 1 English letter
You’d need 18 “cipher words” (aka: the words in the “poem”) to denote 36 bits, enough to write a “fuckyou”, which costs 35 bits (cuz 5 bits x 7 letters = 35 bits)
Doubt parents will find out unless they work for the NSA.
I mean, no parent actually ban their kids from writing poetry, right? It looks education related after all.
That is pretty smart, but that parent would have founds poems suspicious. This is the same parent that said their kid had somehow convinced all their teachers to lie about them going to chess club to cover for her, because of course they were outside being up to no good.
That shit isn’t normal. I think parents doing minor poking around from time to time isn’t abnormal, especially if there is real concern about the child.
TMI but I have the experience of my parents finding out I was suicidal because they looked around. I wasn’t about to say anything to them about it. Or anyone else. I was a sad and angry teen. They looked out for me as best they could.
However, I never knew for certain that they had until I was much older. I suspected a couple times but they didn’t drop hints or outright say anything. Just adjusted how they were raising me.
I do think some snooping is normal, especially given how secretive teens become. But as with everything there a lines to be drawn.
100% agree. It’s easy to do it wrong.
Basically never. Once I was old enough to walk to and from school on my own, my parents basically left my shit alone. They’d do the “I’m knocking to let you know I’m at the door, but asserting my authority as a parent by coming in without waiting for a response” thing for a while. But once they caught me jorkin it at my laptop, that went away too.
It probably helped that I was a pretty boring kid. I didn’t have a ton of interest in smoking or drinking, so it’s not like I had a lot for them to take even if they did go through my shit. I think they found condoms once, but it’s because I left the box out, and it’s not like it was a surprise; they had already met my girlfriend. They tended to take the “we’d rather they do it here where they can at least be safe” approach to things.
Never. I’m old and have an adult child. I never looked through their things either.
CSB: I bought a pellet gun from a friend in my early teens. My mother found it while putting laundry away. She thought it was a real gun and was very concerned. She talked to me about it and was very relieved after.
Never. They’re parents, not the police. As a long as I stayed out of trouble, they respected my space. When I was young they’d go through stuff, but that was more for cleaning the room (when I refused to).
Parents now have to be more involved with the “online” space and aware who their children are in contact with. There’s certainly boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, the main thing is educating children about the dangers and go from there.
Parents now have to be more involved with the “online” space and aware who their children are in contact with
educating children about the dangers and go from there.
Good point, u/helpImTrappedOnline 👀
I never claimed my parents where good at the online part.
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I can now discern the specific family member and their exact location relative to me just from the sound of their footsteps. Years of practice.
the risk of getting caught kinda adds to the experience though
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Currently living with my parents, they don’t necessarily “search” my things. I’m pretty messy so their primary intent is just organize my stuff. They’re not “going through my things”
Constantly, until the day I moved out completely. Privacy only existed on paper. My room occasionally was searched while I was absent, and I only noticed because it was done sloppy (things were arranged differently). This was especially the case for all school related things, but included the occasional search for cigarettes and alcohol.
I’m really glad that the whole computer/ internet/ mobile phone/ social media thing started to happen while I was becoming an adult, and thus was on the brink of moving out. Maybe this helped me to spark a general interest in online privacy.
Sometimes at work we do have interns from a nearby school. They participate for two weeks, in order to prepare them for entering work force in a coulple of years, and to find out what these students are interested in. These students are around the age of 14 - 17 years old. To gain a school licence for our software we use at work, we make them to register with the software vendor to obtain such a temporary licence. This involves to register with the email adress they recieve from their school. Many of these interns struggle with that, because they cannot do this on their own, either, they don’t know how to, or, because access within their phones is restricted by parental controls. One intern told me, that their parents regularly search their phone - and the worst part ist, that this is seen as completely normal to them! They already have been conditioned to constant surveillance that it would be weird to them if they were left unattended regarding this matter.
If my parents would have had access to my online activities (if availiable back then), they certainly would have had a field day.
I jokingly used to say: If we [my parents and I] lived in the GDR [Eastern Germany before the fall of the Iron Curtain], we woudn’t just have had a car, but also a telephone. [The reason for this is that citizens who were actively involved in the suveillance of certain people, along with the spying of their neighbors and own families, were often members of the StaSi, and thus were rewarded for their loyality towards the party with a car whitout the long waiting time, and those who were within the party also would have had an own telephone at their homes as a reward for their loyal services.]
Never
When I was a teen in the 1980s, my mother would snoop through my room and my things most days, then make up stories and get mad at me. Which is why I left home at 15.
My mother would go through my things looking for reasons to get me in trouble. She’d go though my phone. It’s not normal. It’s not okay. Kids are entitled to privacy and all it did was make me better at hiding things, give me anxiety, and develop self-harm habits and an eating disorder.
Very rarely, if ever.
The only time it is justifiable is if it’s either pre-agreed or if there is a threat to the child.
If there is reason to think they are being groomed, or used in some way, then yes. E.g. a room search after getting information that they are holding drugs for a dealer. They should be treated like a police search. Only done when there is real reason, rather than just fishing.
If it’s pre-agreed that a device isn’t private, then the rules change slightly. A younger child’s phone or computer should be subject to respectful monitoring. It should also be part of an open and equitable discussion on boundaries and rules. Even here, the goal should be to protect the child from dangers, not to snoop on what they are chatting with friends about beyond that.
Privacy, is an important thing for children. It needs to be provided with guard rails initially, but should be respected as best you can.
