Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for – surprise surprise – depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
I love this post.
Too many parents wonder why their kids aren’t honest with them, and never realize their own non-receptive behavior and their failure to listen are the reasons why.
At one point or another, a child WILL keep a secret from you, but if it’s to a point where all their emotional feelings are being poured away from you as opposed to toward you, it’s probably because you haven’t been emotionally trustworthy or open.
Adultism 😦
not to mention, you then take away one of your child’s coping mechanisms. if your parents read your journal, you’re never writing in it again. if your parents monitor your conversations with friends, you won’t tell them when you’re depressed anymore. if you have a therapist that reports what you say to your parents, you won’t tell that therapist anything. now all those methods of venting, feeling better, self-soothing, sorting out your issues, and feeling safe are gone.
“i want information” is not synonymous with “i want my child to talk to me.” those are two separate goals, but i think parents conflate them – i want my child to talk to me, but since they won’t, i’m stealing information from them. no. you didn’t ever want them to talk to you. you wanted information. if you wanted them to talk to you, if that was your entire end goal, you would have approached things completely differently. stealing information from a child ensures they will never talk to you again. but if all you want is information, then you can take it however you want and call it a parenting success.
if what you wanted was a child who talks to you, you would apply the same principles you do to literally any other human interaction in your life, and cultivate a relationship and trust.
I had to stifle my horror and revulsion at my last job, when a conversation about removing the door from a child’s bedroom came up, and I was only one not in favor of it.
May be worth noting I was the only millennial in a conversation that was otherwise full of baby boomers.
Screens, Teens & Tweens – Article discusses ways to keep your kids safe and help them grow in holiness in a world full of screens. (Screen time, just to clarify is tv, movies, video games, tablets, computers and phones…anything with a screen.)
So I’ve been ruining my kids lives by saying “weird flex but ok” to everything and when I do it they scream no and tell me they’re running away and I made this lovely photo lemme get it
Ok so I need some help coming up with the absolute worst “to flex on” live memes ever to pretend I’m an even more really lame parent. they don’t have to make sense but they need to be absolutely awful yet believable enough that it isn’t obvious I’m intentionally trying to be more lame
Here’s the ones I came up with so far
“You ever just eat a well balanced diet and exercise daily to flex on heart disease?”
“You ever just boil chilies to flex on your eyes?”
“You ever just be cool to flex on your kids?”
“You ever just use sanitizer to flex on 99.9% of all bacteria and viruses?”
“You ever just turn all the lights and up the heater to flex on Dad?”
Catholic edition:
“You ever just like receive the sacraments frequently to flex on Satan?”
“You ever just like love your Mom to flex on Protestants?”
So I executed the first one in the kitchen then I dabbed and my son didn’t say anything he just set down his pomegranate and walked out the front door with no shoes on and now he’s walking down the street
I really think hospitals and doctors that work with pregnancy and pediatricians need to make more literature available for how to, ya know, work with kids? Because the more conversations we have about spanking (and how it’s ineffective and harmful and does more bad than good), the more I realize that a lot of people don’t know the alternatives. Or like, anything about child development or where misbehavior stems from.
So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:
1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care.
“Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”
“You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”
”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.”
2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it.
-Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?)
Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”
Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away.
3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls. “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.”
And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation.
But kids learn from every interaction they have, so adults need to make the effort to show all the love, and patience, and empathy, and thoughtfulness we want them to learn.
When it comes to sane parenting discussions about protecting your children’s innocence and educating them on sensitive topics, there is simply no better source than Auntie Leila at LMLD. Case in point. The comments are also good.
Principle: Children do not need private screens. (Or, really, screens at all.) Principle: Protecting our children’s innocence, and our parental rights to be their primary educators in areas like “sex ed,” will mean contradicting the world’s expectations, and this is going to be uncomfortable at best and harrowing at worst.
Because we are not super “plugged in” and don’t do live television, we’ve put off a whole bunch of issues – like inappropriate commercials, or watching the news. But even we are encountering situations where, in order to protect our children, we are going to have to set unpopular and perhaps “offensive” rules.
Examples: the much-older-than-they-are neighbor kid got a smart phone. When they last played together, all they wanted to do was sit down and watch videos on the phone. At family gatherings, much older cousins are playing games or watching videos on their phones and want our kids to participate – and our kids want to participate. Naturally!
I have no idea what’s the “right” or “polite” way to say no to the other kids. But say no I will, and with a clear conscience.
I tell my kids, “There are better things to do than look at screens when you’re playing with others,” and, “We don’t watch something Mommy and Daddy haven’t seen to make sure it’s worth watching.”
More than ever today, parents have a grave duty to protect their children from the perversities of the world. Sometimes that means opting out of things society takes for granted. Sometimes it means being “weird” or “rude.” That is a price we have to be willing to pay – or answer for it on judgment day.
There is nothing more important than protecting our children, preserving their innocence, guiding them towards authentic beauty. Nothing.
So we decided to buy a creepy doll and casually move it and place it around my house in ways my 13 year old son will notice and start to believe it’s haunted. He’s going to be the only victim because it’s a fellow trickster, and truly appreciates this sort of thing. The best part is the whole family is in on it I’ll keep you all updated.
For anyone who thinks I’m a horrible mean parent for this, trust me
He deserves this
OKAY SO WE FINALLY HAVE AN UPDATE.
So we’ve been moving it just slightly to wear he sort of questions his mind a little bit like “wait wasn’t that…” So I’ll have it facing forward on my desk and I’ll ask him to grab something off it and then when I ask him to put it back it’s facing the wall (my husband will move it quickly while everyone else stays in the living room). We’ve been doing stuff like this for WEEKS and honestly we thought maybe he didn’t realize notice. Well last night we figured it’s been going on long enough that maybe it’s time to be a bit more extreme. So I can in and set the doll on his brothers bed which is opposite of his. He was on his computer back facing and I came in to ask him about laundry. I left and shut the door and car back to talk about something else and pretended to be surprised by seeing the doll in his room, and knowing he has been the only one in here for the last few hours I asked,” why is my doll in your room! I told you it’s old and it’s really special to me, I’m getting tired of you guys messing with it”
Here’s the rest of the convo
Son: what!!! It wasn’t me I swear!! I swear! I SWEAR!
Me: no one else has been in this room, they’ve been in the living room for hours and I just saw the doll on my desk less than an hour ago. If you’re gonna play pranks that’s fine but do it with something that isn’t valuable or sentimental please. (I leave the room to my bedroom taking the doll with me and setting it on my desk)
Son: MOM. LISTEN I SWEAR IT WASNT ME! MOM. LOOK AT ME. MOM. I SWEAR!! (He’s standing in my doorway)
Me: If you didn’t move it, who did? Me??
Son: MOM. I SWEAR. I SWEAR!!! That doll is so creepy! ITS A DEMON DOLL MOM! MOM. LOOK AT IT. ITS A REAL DEMON DOLL WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET THAT?!!!
Me: I told you I bought it at goodwill because I had the same one as a kid. You know how I had to leave everything behind as a kid. It’s special to me.
Son: GOODWILL? Mom!!! THAT IS HOW YOU BUY DEMONS. ITS A DEMON.
Me: stop seriously I need to lay down and you need to put your clothes away
Son: MOM. I SWEAR. You told me that if anything wierd ever happened to me you would believe me! You said you wouldn’t be like the idiot parents in movies that don’t believe their kids when they see dead people or ghosts or whatever!!! This is like happening in real life!!!
Me: I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I’m just to tired for this. I need to get some rest we will talk about it later.
Son: MOM. I SWEAR.
Me: Ok ok I get it. Talk later?
Son: you’re being so weird I’m being totally serious mom
Me: I said I believe you now go do your laundry
Son: please get rid of the demon doll mom it’s going to kill you while your sleeping seriously
(Me shutting the door pushing him out)
Me: alright alright stop working yourself up. LAUNDRY.
“When a child is given to his parents, a crown is made for that child in Heaven, and woe to the parents who raise a child without consciousness of that eternal crown!” – Ven. Fulton J. Sheen
So we decided to buy a creepy doll and casually move it and place it around my house in ways my 13 year old son will notice and start to believe it’s haunted. He’s going to be the only victim because it’s a fellow trickster, and truly appreciates this sort of thing. The best part is the whole family is in on it I’ll keep you all updated.
For anyone who thinks I’m a horrible mean parent for this, trust me
He deserves this
Parenting goals. Thank you for teaching me how to be a good parent
Wide Spread Interests 