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Published: October 10, 2007
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EmailWhen Alice Jamison was in high school, her mother committed what felt like an invasion of privacy: she picked up her daughter’s yearbook and began to read the personal messages that friends had scribbled on its pages. “I remember thinking it was nosy, that she shouldn’t have been looking at anything but the pictures,” said Jamison, now a Hampton resident and mother to Baylee, 6, and Olivia, 2. “Looking back, she probably was just curious about what was going on in my life.”
That’s the goal of any parent who “snoops,” whether it’s reading private diaries, opening notes, digging through underwear drawers or reading emails. But although spying is tempting – and, if a child seems to be in real danger, necessary – it shouldn’t be a parent’s first move, experts say.
“Parents need to trust kids, and kids want to be trusted,” said Sam Fabian, a parent educator at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.“Open and honest communication is always the best way to go. That means if something is worrying you, you ask the child about it straight up. You say, ‘This is why I’m concerned.’ And then you tell them what you’re going to do if that behavior continues, including monitoring them more closely.”
Snooping shouldn’t come as a surprise to a child, Fabian added. When her own 14-year-old son began emailing regularly with a girl he met at summer camp, for example, she told him she’d be checking those messages periodically. She explained it was her job to keep him safe and warned him about what she didn’t want to see, including vulgar language.“He didn’t mind, and I didn’t see anything that raised a red flag,” Fabian said. “Now I have no reason to check again unless I see a change in his behavior that worries me.”
Such “open door” policies are much better than secretive snooping, agreed Kristen Fowler, a licensed professional counselor and marriage and family therapist in Newport News. Computers should be in public areas – not in bedrooms – with limits on Web sites. Room doors should stay unlocked (after all, it isn’t the child’s house). Parents should know all computer and cell phone passwords.“This does not mean parents should invade their children’s privacy without cause, but have the option should the need arise,” Fowler said. “They send the message to their children that although they are not physically present for every interaction the child has, they are still present.”
Tricia Jewell of Newport News has followed that basic advice with her 17-year-old daughter, Em. Jewell has talked to Em about Internet sites she shouldn’t visit and installed computer protections. She only checks her daughter’s login history if she feels Em is falling behind on her schoolwork.Jewell said she would never read a diary unless she saw signs of trouble and couldn’t get answers through conversations. The same would go for a full-out search of Em’s room – she’d do it, Jewell said, but she’d be “crying and angry at the same time” (items left in plain view, in her opinion, are fair game for examination).
“Bottom line is, it goes back to communication and trust,” she said. “Teach your child right from wrong at an early age. Talk about the changes kids are going through and how friendships change through these turbulent years.”So far, the strategy has paid off; in fact, Em and a friend recently left a party voluntarily when the scene made them uncomfortable.
If parents fear a child is into dangerous or illegal behavior such as sexual promiscuity or drug abuse, snooping is an appropriate step if talking fails, Fabian said. At that point, they shouldn’t feel guilty and should be honest about what they’ve done. Major red flags include lying about plans, switching off the computer when an adult is nearby and sudden changes in grades, mood, friends or sleeping patterns.Even in those situations, though, the way a parent approaches a child can head off the need to snoop. Conversations shouldn’t happen when the parent has just discovered a problem and is very angry, Fabian said.
“Try to sit down at a calmer moment, when everyone has been home for a while, and say, ‘I want to ask you about some things,’” she said. “They may confess at that point. If they deny, you get very specific about behaviors you’re seeing that you want changed. And you follow your instincts.”Good communication from a child’s earliest years on is crucial. If kids get used to a parent being involved in their lives – meeting their friends and friends’ parents, knowing what’s happening at slumber parties, spending time at their school, keeping in touch with teachers and guidance counselors and the like – they’ll be much less resistant to open dialogue as teenagers.
That way, those yearbook messages shouldn’t be calling quite as loudly.
“I hope my girls will always talk to me,” Alice Jamison said, fending off their interruptions during a recent family lunch. “I know it’s easy to say this now, when they’re so young and they talk my ear off, but I hope I won’t need to snoop.”
