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<p>No.</p>
<p>I have done it, but not on a regular basis. Only when I had cause to be concerned - when I saw a change in behavior, or when there was a new friend (or in D’s case a boy) in the picture that I’d never met. If things are going along normally, I don’t read them. </p>
<p>In my case, the first time I did it was after a caring parent told me a rumor they’d heard about one of my kids, and my kid denied it. Turns out the rumor was half-true, and I was able to step in and help resolve a situation before it degenerated further.</p>
<p>Most of the time I do what JHS suggests - look at the cellphone bill and see who my kids are talking to. My cellphone company has an online “phone book” feature. I took the “address book” info from my kids’ cell phones and entered it into my online billing feature, and now I the online bill shows the names of who the kids are talking to, instead of the phone numbers. If they’re just talking to their usual friends, I don’t snoop. Occasionally I’ll see a number of texts with someone who I’d prefer the kid not hang around with, and I will sneakily check those texts just to be sure there’s nothing “up.” </p>
<p>Occasionally this turns up disturbing info. In fact, I had a thread on CC about disturbing info I found by looking at D’s friend’s Facebook page, without her knowing. And therein lies the rub - if you find out info by sneaky methods, it can be very hard to do anything about it. </p>
<p>But on the whole, I’d say it’s not ok to read their texts and/or IMs, UNLESS your parental radar tells you there’s something fishy going on. And once they are in college, I wouldn’t do it unless I had a really STRONG feeling that something was VERY wrong (although their phone wouldn’t be home so I wouldn’t be able to check it anyway).</p>
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<p>Marian, you have got to get with it! :-)</p>
<p>I think reading text messages and e-mails just to know “what’s going on” crosses an important line.</p>
<p>My mom never did that to my knowledge. 95% of the time I have my phone on me anyways, so it would have been hard for her to do so.</p>
<p>My brother (more like Dad #2 <em>eye roll</em>) has though. And it completely destroyed any and all trust I have in him. He did it 4 years ago and I <em>still</em> don’t trust him because of it.</p>
<p>So hey, if you pay the bill then you can read your son’s/daughter’s messages as much as you want. But don’t get upset when they stop trusting and/or confiding in you as a result.</p>
<p>I guess my parents would have a pretty hard time doing this, since I almost never use a cellphone (only to call them, which is rare in itself). I don’t use my real name on Facebook, so good luck tracking that. And as for internet access, I’m the one with Wireshark (though I make it a point not to snoop on anyone other than myself), not them.</p>
<p>I guess I’d agree with some of the above posts that if your kid seems to be having huge problems, then invasion of privacy is alright. But if it’s just for personal amusement, then gravitysrainbow’s points apply.</p>
<p>gravity’s, Stephen, etc.: Don’t be so quick to judge. Threads like this give you an unmediated glimpse into parental psychology and concerns. So many people do some snooping because it’s not crazy. It may be questionable – it is questionable – but it’s not crazy.</p>
<p>Regarding Lafalum’s point about not being able to take action based on illicitly obtained information: This was practically a religious issue with me. I NEVER took action based on knowing something that my children hadn’t told me, and never confronted them with things I learned behind their backs. What I did was to pay closer attention to what they were telling me or doing, and to ask more penetrating questions. There was never anything really important that they were unwilling to tell me about with a little prodding and a clear indication that I wasn’t going to yell at them about it.</p>
<p>^^agree except in the case of a perceived suicide threat. And I agree with Zimmer07
It is a small miracle I made it through my own “invincible” years. It frightens me to even think what my friends and I would have done with a credit card which could be used internationally and internet access. Our parents preferred to turn a blind eye to what was going on just below the surface of our outwardly perfect little lives and were always seemingly shocked when one of us was arrested or hospitalized. And these were fairly sophisticated suburban parents who almost as a rite of passage arranged for their mid teen daughters to have a birth control prescription—though always for the sake of their complexions, not ever with the open acknowledgement that anyone was sexually active. My own adolescence definitely impacted my parenting style. I always tried to respect my kids’ privacy while insuring their safety and being very aware that reckless and thoughtless adolescent behavior can have sometimes serious or tragic long term consequences.</p>
<p>^^ I totally agree with alh. When I think of the things I did, in a time of much fewer electronics, I truly feared for my kids (especially my son). My snooping did head off a few potential disasters, and, yes, it did hurt my relationship with my kid and destroyed some trust. Frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of trust to be destroyed in a a few of those years.</p>
<p>Amen to Momofwildchild : “Frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of trust to be destroyed in a few of those years.”</p>
<p>It’s our job to be a parent, not a best friend to our teenager. Obviously it would be great to be both, but haha, I never got my hopes up! In spite of my kids’ perceived lack of privacy, I will say that snooping just to “see what was going on” was never my intent. I suspected alcohol because of an odd behavior when he brought something in the house, and that’s what led to the checking of the car (2 cases of beer in the trunk, sigh). I checked the texts b/c of the suicide and the fact that he wasn’t talking at all. In any case, I felt well within my rights as the payer of the bills as well as caring for my kid.</p>
<p>Son 1 is now away in his 2nd year at school and we have become friends - still the parent/child connection, but we talk as friends, hang out when we can as friends. Totally different from the high school years - getting closer and closer to the great relationship I have with my own parents now. I think he’s going to make it through the rest of his “invincible” years just fine without me. </p>
<p>PS. My reckoning of the “invincible” years is 15-22,with 16-18 being the worst - others may have it slightly different. And invincible in this case means anything from “everybody else does it” to “don’t worry, that will never happen to me.”</p>
<p>It depends…</p>
<p>I did some snooping in the early HS years because I thought I had reason to be concerned. I still think that at his age then and given what concerned me, it was an OK thing to have done. </p>
<p>S has known since kindergarten that there is a Mom Mafia out there that shares information. If I had encountered something that caused me to confront him, I would not have revealed my source and he would have assumed it could have come from the Mom Mafia–of which I was no longer a part.</p>
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During my early teens, a 13yr old acquaintance decided selling minor sexual favors to strange older men in the balcony of the local movie theatre a cool and clever way to supplement her allowance and provide an unmonitored income source with which to purchase drugs. This didn’t even register with the rest of us as requiring anything other than a “yuck” in response. It was well within the range of risky behaviors with which we were familiar. If she had had internet probably she would have been operating her own porn site or setting up some kind of ill-considered escort service. As it was she ended up raped while at a babysitting job. I suggest snooping a little earlier. JMHO</p>
<p>^^^ ouch!</p>
<p>JHS and I seem to be on the same wavelength about this. I agree that when we see/suspect something weird, using info we have gained to ask better questions or hear the understated comment in a conversation is very helpful. It can lead to much more productive conversations. If you can gently lead your teen to tell you what’s going on just by knowing what questions to ask (or NOT to ask), and knowing if an “offhand” comment is important or not.</p>
<p>^EEK, alh!</p>