A Parents Right to Snoop

1 more thing while I'm in RANT mode. Or rather 1 more question...
I'm just curious as to if you had parents who went thru your things when you were a kid? Read ur letters, listened to your phone calls, eavesdropped on your company conversation. My parents didn't. They gave me my space and trusted that I wasnt up to something wrong and I wasn't. It used to baffle me when my friends would talk about their overbearing, nosey parents who thought they had the right to read their letters & listen to their calls. Still does really. I once had a friend whose mothers attitude was "youre underage and this is MY house so the only privacy you get is what I decide you should have". Do you think its right for parents to spy on their kids (going thru drawers and sh*t, listening to calls) and would you do this to your kid?

Grandparents were supposedly bad at this but my rents were good about it.

I think a parent needs to give their child a respectable amount of space but I don't think that "snooping" should be off-limits if they have reason to suspect something is going on.

femme fatale wrote:"youre underage and this is MY house so the only privacy you get is what I decide you should have".

And I would have to agree that this is the bottom line, but I think that parents who "spy" on their kids don't trust the influence or power of their parenting. My parents weren't physical snoops. They didn't go through my things just to see what was there. But they asked a lot of questions and wanted to know every detail.

I think a parent would have to have some kind of reasonable doubt about what was going on with their kid before they had grounds to do stuff like that, I'm with JB they need to ask questions, they do need to know the details of their kid's life, that is normal, but going through things, I think they'd have to have a specific reason for doing that.

Where my daughter is concerned, I give her her space. I allow her to write her notes, to have her phones calls, to hang out with her friends, etc., etc. When she's not around, I'm not going to go looking through her pockets, book-bag and dresser drawers just to see what's there. If, however, she does something to give me reason to suspect that she is doing something that she isn't supposed to, then I absolutely will do those things. I trust you until you screw up. Fortunately for her, she hasn't dropped the ball yet. Hopefully she won't.

My own parents weren't as lenient as I am. They didn't spy, per se, but like JB said, they did quiz me quite a bit.

femme fatale wrote:Do you think its right for parents to spy on their kids (going thru drawers and sh*t, listening to calls) and would you do this to your kid?

To answer your first question, I think if parents go through there children's thing and it's justified (if they think their kid is using drugs, etc.) then I think that's okay, but if it's an average kid who is being snooped on, I think that is just wrong. There's no need for a parent to be nosey in most cases - that kind of suffocation and lack of privacy isn't good for anyone.

To answer your second question, I doubt I would ever do that to my child (if I had one) unless I really thought it was necessary to his/her safety.

I basically grew up the same way. I was basically a good kid and my Mom knew that she could trust me and she gave me privacy and space to breathe.

If parents are gonna snoop and spy it should be because the kid is prone to acting out and breaking rules. Don't agree that parents have the right to snoop just because they have the right to know everything at all times. If that's the case then do you let them have doors on their bedroom?

I had plenty of privacy as a kid but also I never gave my mother reason to regret not having me under surveillance. Doesn’t mean she didn’t know where I was or who I was with. Same with my daughter. She had several friends whose parents were very strict and controlling and their kids rebelled. Mothers at 17 type rebellion.

I am going to have a lot of trouble not snooping on my son when he gets older. I guess my problem is that #1 I am nosey. #2, I have heard to many stories about parents who were totally blindsided by their kids using drugs or doing something illegal, and a little good ol' snooping may have turned them on to the truth before it was too late.

Of course if I found something, I would find other ways to confront him other than telling him I snooped.