How much privacy do you give them?

Wendy wrote:
We had a debacle two years ago when she got home from Nature's
Classroom. She had written a journal during that week and I asked
permission to read it. She erased some stuff first and I read the erased
stuff, too, even though it was clear to both of us that she didn't intend
me to read it. It wasn't HARD to read - the eraser didn't work that well
- but it did show me going over the line. I read it because I was
interested in her and what she was thinking and up to. Should I have? I
don't know - sometimes a kid gives you something like that KNOWING you'll
read it and that's their way of starting a conversation about it with you.

I think this issue is going to come up over and over again with this
kid. She's a Daddy's Girl and views me as her adversary, for one
thing. For another, I'm extroverted and she's introverted and from my
point of view she is very uncommunicative and hard to read. I need more
than the usual amount of clues to know what's going on with her.

-- Wendy

Your daughter sounds like what I was like when I was young.
Introverted, non-chatty, very private (still am!). It was very
difficult to open to anyone, even if I wanted to. I'd have the words on
the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't say them. I still don't understand
why--embarassment? fear of criticism? I did happen have parents who
were more negative than positive (no this, shouldn't that, do this or
else) and who never discussed their own personal feelings or lives. So
I don't really know if my hesitance to open up was a parental effect or
genetics. Probably a combination of both.

Unfortunately, I can't offer any good advice about how to get your
daughter to open up about personal things. She may just be that way and
remain that way for the rest of her life. On the other hand, perhaps
you could meet her on more neutral grounds, talking about things like
web development, and then inch your way to more personal things from
there. Also, if she is Daddy's girl, then perhaps your husband is the
best person to help monitor her life (if you two can come to an
agreement on that).

--
Jeannie
E-mail: jeannie at talisweb dot see oh em
Web: http://www.moonflour.com

x-no-archive:yes


Wendy wrote:

dragonlady wrote:
In article , Wendy
It turns out that one of the people on her buddy list is a grown man who
I've never met. He works with my husband, though, and apparently they
have geek conversations regarding web development. My husband claims it's
perfectly proper. I threw up my hands in disgust and left the room. If
I can't even disallow her having unfettered access to strange grown-up men
WHERE am I supposed to draw the line?

He isn't a strange man -- he's a colleague (and, presumably, friend) of
your husband's. You know exactly who he is.

I have always encouraged my kids to maintain friendships with adults
outside of our household. I'm not an idiot: until they were older, I
certainly would not have allowed them to spend hours in someone else's
house without another person present. But I think it's important for
kids to have adult mentors/friends who are NOT their parents.

Ah, another good point. I agree that having contacts in your chosen
fields of interest is great for a kid. I would love to not get all huffy
and throw her into a burkha and veil. I just feel a bit out of control
over what's going on in this arena.

I also know my husband is more on top of this subject than I am. But he's
also less cynical and paranoid than I am and that's not necessarily good,
especially since this daughter has him wrapped around her little finger.


Ah yes - fathers and their daughters. But in reality, he is going to
be the one to want to guard her from boys that she dates probably - at
least that's the way it often works - fathers know how they were when
they were kids and they want to lock their daughters in the closet far
away from boys.

I think since he's the computer person, he should be dealing with
this. There was, when I was working, a whole thing about whether
employees had a right to expect that their computer use and email
would be private. What is his position on that?

I might also have him (or her with him) do some research on people who
meet other people through the internet and the dangers in doing that.
They might as well be informed and know what it is that you are
worried about.

grandma Rosalie

Don't pry into her stuff unless you are prepared to deal with what you find.

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
Barbara Bomberger wrote:
I do not go through my kids rooms either, and have never read their
mail knowingly (ripped open a couple of envelopes from relatives
before I looked at the address). I have assured my son repeatedly
that his journal is private. I told him if he ever wanted to show me
he could. I have never looked at any of my kids lockers.

But WOULD you if he suddenly became sullen and uncommunicative and his
grades dropped and he looked wasted all the time? Would you pry to find
out what was wrong?

That's why I can't promise I'd never look at her emails or chat logs: if I
thought something were seriously wrong I'm not going to pretend I wouldn't
use every possible means to follow up on it. Not because of prurient
interest, but because it's my JOB to take care of her.

We had a debacle two years ago when she got home from Nature's
Classroom. She had written a journal during that week and I asked
permission to read it. She erased some stuff first and I read the erased
stuff, too, even though it was clear to both of us that she didn't intend
me to read it. It wasn't HARD to read - the eraser didn't work that well
- but it did show me going over the line. I read it because I was
interested in her and what she was thinking and up to. Should I have? I
don't know - sometimes a kid gives you something like that KNOWING you'll
read it and that's their way of starting a conversation about it with you.

I think this issue is going to come up over and over again with this
kid. She's a Daddy's Girl and views me as her adversary, for one
thing. For another, I'm extroverted and she's introverted and from my
point of view she is very uncommunicative and hard to read. I need more
than the usual amount of clues to know what's going on with her.

-- Wendy

"Sophie" wrote in message ...
If I had a thirteen year old, I would not allow him/her to have her own
laptop unless I had full access to it and all applications, *especially*
internet applications.

But then again, I don't think I'd allow *my* thirteen year old to have
their own computer in the first place. JMO.
--
JennP.

mom to Matthew 10/11/00
remove "no........spam" to reply



I'm with you. One computer for everyone in a place in the house where I can
see what he/she is doing.

Heck my kids won't even have TVs in their rooms, let alone computers.

I think the one computer in a household totally depends upon the
members of the household. I am a power user, and I'm on the computer
most days from about 9 am till 2 am, with breaks for childcare,
cooking, and other family responsibilities. When I'm working from
home, I can't 'share' the computer. I need the computer configured
*exactly* the way I have it, I need to be accessable to my coworkers
by email instantly, and I need to ensure that my work isn't tampered
with while I'm in the bathroom.

As I've said in a previous post, we have multiple computers in our
house, but they are all in one place, the office. We have a bank of
tables that hold the computers, the printer, the scanner, etc. But
only MY computer has internet access, and my computer is password
protected up the yazoo and nobody is getting on it without my
expressed permission.

That shouldn't mean that my kids can't do their homework or play
Freecell if they want to. They can do all those things with their
computers which are networked to the peripherals, but they can't surf
and chat. For us, this works well although my son would not be likely
to admit that off hand. He does admit that the limits keep him out of
trouble, since he has such impulse control issues. I have removed the
cable modem and now use DSL (which I hate) because I can control the
dialup password, whereas with the cable modem they could just unplug
my computer and plug it into their machines. I always have to be one
step ahead of these two.

We only have 2 televisions. One is in my room, which is padlocked when
I am not in it. It must be padlocked because there are dangerous
medications in our home that could potentially be abused. Lock boxes
can be picked... I went through 3 of them before I gave up and
padlocked my room. Because that TV is not accesible to my kids, they
rely on the TV in our family room. That TV is parental blocked during
daylight hours. It gets unblocked during Friends and The Simpsons
*only* if homework is completed.

We had a third tv, a 13 inch color job that I kept in my office, but
the kids kept stealing it and dragging it up to their rooms. One day I
got so ticked I cut off the plug. Now it sits in my office plugless,
but when I can trust that they are able to control their TV viewing,
I'll put another plug on it. Until then, it's a giant paperweight.

Marjorie, meanest mom in the lower 48.

On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 00:16:35 GMT, dragonlady
wrote:

In article , Wendy
wrote:

Barbara Bomberger wrote:

"I want to talk about privacy." She said, "Good, when are you going to
give me some?" Oops, that wasn't the way I wanted that direction to go.

Okay, how about starting with "well, lets show me you're old enough to
have earned some...and start the discussion from there.

This conversation is continuing in our home. This afternoon I used one of
the analogies someone else mentioned: she *does* get privacy. I no longer
attend her in the bath. When she was two I wouldn't have left her alone
there. That made sense to her. After this we sat down and went through
her buddy list on AIM.

All the people have odd names and there are often three or four names for
the same person. I'm keenly aware that I wouldn't know if she
were lying. Any ideas what to do with that with regards to followup?

None that strike me as honest or appropriate. Unless you see evidence
that your daughter is having some sort of problem, I wouldn't worry
about this too much.

I agree. I would spend my time and efforts on making sure that she
understands things like it isnt approipriate to give out personal
information to someone she meets online, that it isnt appropriate to
meet someone in person she meets online and so on. On another board,
a friend had a sixteen year old go to Victoira station and meet
someone she had never met beofre in real life...now that would be a
problem! And thats when you may have to step in.

It turns out that one of the people on her buddy list is a grown man who
I've never met. He works with my husband, though, and apparently they
have geek conversations regarding web development. My husband claims it's
perfectly proper. I threw up my hands in disgust and left the room. If
I can't even disallow her having unfettered access to strange grown-up men
WHERE am I supposed to draw the line?

He isn't a strange man -- he's a colleague (and, presumably, friend) of
your husband's. You know exactly who he is.

Again I agree. I see nothing wrong with a teen making firends with
grownups. My children all have good relationships with other grownups
of both genders. This is someone your husband appratanly spend s time
with and may even be a friends, as stated.

If youre having trouble with the gender roles, think about it in terms
of one of your PTA mothers talking online with a son the same age?

I would suggest that as long as you have access to who she gets mail
from (not the emails themselves) you have sufficient oversight at this
point, unless you suspect a problem.

I stilol think, though that it sounds like there are way to many hours
being spent online instead of in personal interactions if you original
message was accurate?

Barb

I have always encouraged my kids to maintain friendships with adults
outside of our household. I'm not an idiot: until they were older, I
certainly would not have allowed them to spend hours in someone else's
house without another person present. But I think it's important for
kids to have adult mentors/friends who are NOT their parents.

meh

On 6 Nov 2003 19:12:44 -0400, Wendy wrote:

Barbara Bomberger wrote:
I do not go through my kids rooms either, and have never read their
mail knowingly (ripped open a couple of envelopes from relatives
before I looked at the address). I have assured my son repeatedly
that his journal is private. I told him if he ever wanted to show me
he could. I have never looked at any of my kids lockers.

But WOULD you if he suddenly became sullen and uncommunicative and his
grades dropped and he looked wasted all the time? Would you pry to find
out what was wrong?

There would have to be alot of signals. And then I would be wary. I
would work at other ways. In answer to your question. But, sullen
and uncommunicative and grades dropping can all be normal teenage
behavior. And there a plenty of other signals with regards to drugs,
and suicide. My primary issue, again, is that i think real people
relationships are always better than online relationships, and the
time spent on the second should be limited.

Perhaps something like, Unless I believe you are in
trouble.......added to the privacy issues?

That's why I can't promise I'd never look at her emails or chat logs: if I
thought something were seriously wrong I'm not going to pretend I wouldn't
use every possible means to follow up on it. Not because of prurient
interest, but because it's my JOB to take care of her.
I agree. But make it clear to her that would only be the case if you
though she were in troube, not just because you and she had a "bad
hair day"

We had a debacle two years ago when she got home from Nature's
Classroom. She had written a journal during that week and I asked
permission to read it. She erased some stuff first and I read the erased
stuff, too, even though it was clear to both of us that she didn't intend
me to read it. It wasn't HARD to read - the eraser didn't work that well
- but it did show me going over the line. I read it because I was
interested in her and what she was thinking and up to. Should I have? I
don't know - sometimes a kid gives you something like that KNOWING you'll
read it and that's their way of starting a conversation about it with you.
Again, if my child gives me a journal or paper to read, I assume that
they want me to read it. I would never read without permission, and I
would never harrass said child to give me permission.

I think this issue is going to come up over and over again with this
kid. She's a Daddy's Girl and views me as her adversary, for one
thing. For another, I'm extroverted and she's introverted and from my
point of view she is very uncommunicative and hard to read. I need more
than the usual amount of clues to know what's going on with her.

-- Wendy

On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:49:58 GMT, "P. Tierney"
wrote:


"Barbara Bomberger" wrote:

First of all (this is after the fact, unfortunately,) I think allowing
a thirteen year old a laptop is a mistake. Very hard to monitor and
control.

I've not followed this thread so it was likely mentioned, but just
in case, I caught the above and wanted to add that several local
high school (Catholic, private) issue laptops to all students. I'm not
sure what Internet allowances they have, if any, but they all have
them, generally starting at age 14.
Perhaps I shoul rephrase, as my son will probably have one in a couple
years. I boject to a laptop with internet access that a child can use
in total privacy.

Barb

P. Tierney

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003 18:24:14 -0500, "dejablues"
wrote:

My kids are in Catholic school (Archdios\cese of Philadelphia), not high
school yet. Their cousins have moved to the local Catholic high school, and
while they are required to have a laptop in 9th grade (I think the parents
partially fund this, they aren't just given out) they connect to a school
network that is filtered and firewalled to block access to porn, chat, etc.,
same as our elementary school.

See, I dont require that on the internet, because he uses our
comptuer.

But if he had a laptop I would want this and more, and probably no
internet access of his own at home, at least for a year or so,

barb

"P. Tierney" wrote in message
news:amzqb.92383$mZ5.604646@attbi_s54...

"Barbara Bomberger" wrote:

First of all (this is after the fact, unfortunately,) I think allowing
a thirteen year old a laptop is a mistake. Very hard to monitor and
control.

I've not followed this thread so it was likely mentioned, but just
in case, I caught the above and wanted to add that several local
high school (Catholic, private) issue laptops to all students. I'm not
sure what Internet allowances they have, if any, but they all have
them, generally starting at age 14.


P. Tierney

In article , Wendy
wrote:

Marion Baumgarten wrote:
Wendy wrote:
In my convrsations with my daughter last night she told me who is on her
AIM buddy list and it was all the same answers I expected... until she
said, "friends of friends". Oops. She's just so confident that these are
real people that someone she knows knows that she can't even imagine that
she's at risk. I'm left having to find these people and call their
mothers (which I will do) to make sure they're really local kids.

That seems over the top to me. If she tells me KrazyKitty is Tina from
her English class, I'm going to believe her, unless I have reason to
suspect otherwise.

But the stories are jibing. The list she actually showed me today didn't
HAVE any of those "friends of friends" mentioned... but she quickly went
down the list saying, "That's Erica and that's Meghan and that's... Erica
again, and so's that... " Meanwhile, some of the screen names make sense
from what I know about the kids. But some don't.

And then there's the grown man. That didn't come out until this evening
when I actually went through the list with her. His screen name has
"Bill" in it and none of her schoolfriends are named Bill. If I hadn't
SPECIFICALLY ASKED who Bill was she wouldn't have said, "Oh, he's a grown
man I talk to on AIM."

Now what? (My husband says I'm paranoid, he's just a nice guy, one of his
best employees, who helps a kid out with her web development from time to
time and he doesn't like the way my mind is working on this one.) I just
don't know: I don't use AIM myself. My husband does, though, and I've
seen him get messages from 12 year old girls (friends of our daughter) and
I thought that was weird, too. Maybe it's the web equivalent of waving
"hi" as you walk down the street.

Wendy

Last year, I was mentoring a 14 yo who would only really spend time
talking to me using AIM. She and I spent hours on line together -- and
it was important time for her. For whatever reason, she was more
comfortable talking that way. But i had to have my kids set me up and
show me how to use it; since they did, I added some of their friends
(and mutual acquaintances of mine) to my list, and would occassionally
"drop in" to say "hi" to one of them.

They thought it was pretty funny to talk to an adult like that, and most
didn't spend much time on line with me -- but I think they might have if
we'd had a mutual interest (like developing web sites) to discuss.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article , Wendy wrote:

It turns out that one of the people on her buddy list is a grown man who
I've never met. He works with my husband, though, and apparently they
have geek conversations regarding web development. My husband claims it's
perfectly proper. I threw up my hands in disgust and left the room. If
I can't even disallow her having unfettered access to strange grown-up men
WHERE am I supposed to draw the line?

I think having a mentor relationship like this could be a very good
thing for your daughter. I personally would not be concerned if it is
someone your husband knows and trusts. But, as a compromise, how about
requiring that your daughter log all conversations with this individual
and giving you access to them for reassurance. If she is just having
geek conversations about web development, this probably won't feel like
an unreasonable breach of her privacy. (I don't know the technical details
of enforcing a rule like this, however. I mean, I know that it is possible
to log IM conversations, but it's probably easy to turn off, and I'm not
sure how you could tell if all conversations with an individual had been
logged.)

--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01, who don't have
internet access on their computers yet)