Googling your colllege student's dates

Parent Cafe
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<p>Under the guise of trust, many parents are relegating their parental responsibility. My parents did investigate me by searching my room when I was a teen, and they found out I was smoking pot. There was a lot of fights(how dare you to search my room) and I did move out of the house over a short period. If they were able to google my then BF, maybe they would have found out that he had a record, which I had no idea until I was asked to go down to the police station for questioning. If they could have tied me to anything he was doing, it would have been on my record. I grew up in a perfectly normal suburban town. I was a top student heading off to college, had no idea that kids my age would do anything illegal. So yes, I would google my kids’ new BF and his family to make sure there is no red flag. If that’s helicoptering, so be it.</p>

<p>One thing I also tell my girls is that they wouldn’t just be marrying their SOs someday. They need to take his family and parents into consideration. Their SO is the byproduct of his family. D1 did ultimately break up with her first BF because she couldn’t relate to his family dynamic and she didn’t want to be caught in the middle of it. Whereas she is with someone whose family is warm and respectful of each other. He probably grew up with less material goods than D1, but his outlook in life is very similar to D1’s. Of course, this kind of information you couldn’t google.</p>

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<p>I guess I’m too Zen-ish to think googling my children’s relationships and their parents behavior is healthy. And it certainly isn’t an attempt on my part to shrug my parental responsibility. My own kids would most likely concur I was a “phantom” helicopter parent at times…(;</p>

<p>Have you ever read Steve Job’s bio? The people he encountered and the behavior he partook in along his journey to Apple were less than stellar at times but everyone shaped who he became. </p>

<p>That being said, certainly behavior of an acquaintance and said family that includes violent records is another matter. </p>

<p>The Internet as a parenting tool is unchartered territory and how parents utilize it will simple result is another adaptation of what is normal…</p>

<p>Such is life.</p>

<p>Caught between the old school/new school mindset, I find it all very intriguing especially as I welcome grandchildren and can watch it unfold before my eyes…</p>

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<p>There"s a lot of mixing together “my teenager” and “my college student” on this thread. A legal adult who is a college student is not the same person as a 14 year old. </p>

<p>I’m still interested in hearing an answer to the question: If you are googling your college age child’s friends and dates, where and when will you quit?</p>

<p>What if your daughter is dating at age 30? Will you still google her dates? When will you stop?</p>

<p>Would you stop if your college age child asks you to stop because he feels it is an invasion of privacy?</p>

<p>Would you read your child’s emails without permission?</p>

<p>Open his mail?</p>

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<p>east - you must view those things as inappropriate, or you wouldn’t be asking. You also seem to think that if a parent would google stuff about their kids then they would also read their kid’s emails or mail. I think that’s a great leap. I don’t think it is for anyone to judge. We all have different relationships with our kids. What may work for you may not be right for others. But nevertheless you seem to feel your way is superior. Why? I call my kids as my daughters, my students because they are not your daughters or your students. If I just said daughters, would you know that I am referring to my daughters, and not just girls in general? But does that mean I feel they belong to me? I don’t think so. You are trying too hard to nig pick.</p>

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<p>eastcoascrazy–I’d probably stop when they stopped dating :D.</p>

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<p>I don’t see how you can put “my D told me she’s dating a guy named x, I wonder what happens if I google him and follow the links” anywhere in the same category as opening your kid’s email or snail mail. what’s on the Internet is discoverable in a way a private email isn’t meant to be. I absolutely wouldn’t open email or snail mail. </p>

<p>But here is a related funny. D started dating a guy last year and must have told her twin brother (who was 1000 miles away as they attend different schools). He (my son) friended guy on FB even before my D got around to doing so. It was kind of cute, actually – “brother looking out for you.”</p>

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<p>“I’m still interested in hearing an answer to the question: If you are googling your college age child’s friends and dates, where and when will you quit”</p>

<p>My parents are divorced and my father has been dating a woman seriously and now lives with her. Of course I googled her, and her family business.</p>

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<p>"What if your daughter is dating at age 30? Will you still google her dates? When will you stop?</p>

<p>Would you stop if your college age child asks you to stop because he feels it is an invasion of privacy?"</p>

<p>Why would my child know one way or the other? What, are they snooping in my browser history?</p>

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<p>Eastcoastcrazy</p>

<p>I think that is is impossible to answer your questions because every person/situation is different. I’ve never googled my kids dates but if any of my kids were perpetually making very poor relationship choices, then I might be inclined to do that - if my child would be willing to listen to a warning (assuming I found something unsavory). </p>

<p>In my case, my kids have all made good choices to date, so I had no reason to worry (and I am already FB friends with them - their choice). Or course I might make a different choice if they were different. </p>

<p>Email? This in no way compares to googling a person on the internet as that info is freely available to anyone. To read another person’s email, you need their password info. I doubt that many parents have their children’s log-in info.</p>

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<p>Speaking of facebook friending, when my brother was 14 or 15, his first girlfriend friended me on facebook. Nobody in my family had met her or even know that he was dating. They didn’t have a relationship status saying that they were dating on facebook. I asked if he knew who she was and he said, “oh yeah, you should friend her back, she’s on the crew team.” I only found out they had been dating much later and that relationship didn’t even last very long. Still have never met her.</p>

<p>I had a high school friend whose parents read her diary. She knew they were doing it, so she started leaving them notes.</p>

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<p>Exactly. If I did some of the things mentioned in this thread, I would do so knowing that I couldn’t tell my daughter and that if I let something slip, she would regard it as a violation of personal boundaries. From the evidence of this thread, other kids accept it good naturedly.</p>

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<p>Google is public. I don’t see a problem with googling anyone. I google myself, my husband and my kids on a regular basis to make sure that nothing problematic is coming up. I once googled my daughter and found her phone number right there on page 1 of the search results – she had posted it in a comment on a friend’s Facebook and that kid’s whole Facebook was public. I let her know so she could remove it. </p>

<p>I think looking at publicly-available information is a whole different thing from looking at someone’s private email account.</p>

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<p>That tickled me-the concept of a kid snooping on his parent’s snooping.</p>

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<p>But the question wasn’t “would you google yourself or your family members?” It was “would you google your college student’s date?” …someone you don’t know, in order to find out more than what your student told you/knew.</p>

<p>I don’t think anyone’s debating the ethics of googling themselves.</p>

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<p>Googling somebody on the internet and getting public information about them is like reading a newspaper and find out something. Reading their email or snail mail and getting private information is like reading somebody’s diary. These are two totally different things. </p>

<p>Recently a friend of mine (an adult) mentioned that her new boyfriend’s daughter (a teen) had googled her and then commented to her father on what she had found (a not particularly flattering picture from work) - so it works both ways!</p>

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<p>“yes, I would google my kids’ new BF and his family to make sure there is no red flag.”</p>

<p>But what would you do with this “red flag” information when your children are legal adults? Do you insist they break up or you’ll disown them? Cut off their support for school? Keep it to yourself? Take the unsavory BF/GF aside and tell them that you know what they did and they should bow out? What? This is for anyone who looks for this kind of stuff, not just the poster who said it.</p>

<p>These are adults we’re talking about-if this is information you don’t share, just keep to yourself and worry-what good does it do? Or if you share it, perhaps through only a partial lens, you may cause a breakup over incomplete data. </p>

<p>And I hesitate to even go there, but looking to make sure extended FAMILIES are from the same “dynamic”? What makes a family of an SO ok or not ok? If my H and my parents were still living, they would have less than nothing in common, except that both had sets of 5 kids. Religion, education, jobs, marital history, ancestry, finances-all of it couldn’t be less similar. And yet, H and I have quite a bit in common. We compliment each other in ways that my ex, who came from a much “better” family ever did. Who’s to say, other than the couple themselves, what will work or not, regardless of “family dynamic”?</p>

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<p>Eastcoast,</p>

<p>Here are my answers to your questions:</p>

<p>I don’t google my D’s friends and dates.</p>

<p>I hope that I won’t start doing this when she is 30.</p>

<p>If I did decide to google her friends and dates at some point in the future, I would stop if she felt it was an invasion of her privacy.</p>

<p>I would not read my child’s emails without permission or open her mail.</p>

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<p>sseamom–I’d tell their siblings to look them up and have a chat with them :D. We have a pact that they have to listen to siblings about dating people that are not good for them :D. Haven’t had to test it yet but coming from siblings it’s easier to take…</p>

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<p>Thanks for the answers, everyone. I don’t think I have any feelings of judgement or superiority, and I don’t mean to imply that I do, so I apologize for giving off that vibe. I was really interested in where you draw the line on googling your adult kids’ dates.</p>

<p>To answer my own questions:</p>

<p>I’ve never googled my kids’ dates, their dates families, their friends, their friend’s families, their roomates, or their roomates families. We have had our kids google themselves, just so they learn to be aware of how much of their lives can be found by future employers.</p>

<p>I respect their requests when they’ve asked me to not post on their Facebook walls, or have asked me to not post embarrassing stuff about them on my wall.</p>

<p>I have never looked at their email, and don’t know their passwords.</p>

<p>I have opened their snail mail, but only after asking their permission… things that look like bills, parking tickets, etc… that need to be addressed before they return home.</p>

<p>I’ve never read anyone else’s diary, or looked through drawers. </p>

<p>Things I’ve stumbled across while cleaning, I pretend I haven’t seen. (condoms, for example)</p>

<p>However, I have pretty trustworthy kids who have never given us a reason to suspect them doing anything other than typical college age stuff. I might be googling friends if I had a kid who had been arrested or had a drug problem.</p>

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<p>And while I’m on it, regarding family dynamics-in my and H’s extended families, including in-laws of in-laws since we actually do socialize often-family dynamics include devout Catholics who oppose gay marriage, and gay young adults; agnostics, arch conservatives and “bleeding heart liberals”; former military and those who have actively protested the war; those married 30+ years and those who live together, have children and have no intention of marrying; successful in business and those who spent a bit of time in jail; those with advanced degrees and those who never graduated high school. Sometimes there’s a mix of the above all in the same family-SO, which “family dynamic” should I decide is ok for MY kids-and what if the “family” includes SEVERAL dynamics?</p>

<p>And how would FB or googling really tell anyone anything about what any of these people are really like-because I can tell you that in these cases, you wouldn’t get the true picture by snooping online.</p>