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they can have all the privacy they need when they MOVE out...
Keep em guessing! Then they never know. All kids have some screw up at some time. The more you idolize them, put them on a pedestal, he is in this and that the harder they will fall because they will.
A left out note found with some amount of snooping could very well put the brakes on a bigger problem down the road. Maybe they need an out and the old my parents will kill me works.
Trust me, no kid is perfect and all the pressures we put upon them today makes it all the harder. Follow your gut, if you need to checkup then do it. Do not feel guilty.
You are the parent not the friend.
I love this post! I cleaned my kids' rooms about twice per year. If I found things that were plain old "typical kid stuff" in there, I never said a word, not even if I didn't really approve, because yeah...kids will be kids. Rarely did I ever find things in there which warrented a discussion. In fact, most of my kids LOVED for me to do the haul-out, deep cleaning for them. It was like moving in to a NEW room.
My firstborn gave me many occasions to go through his room, and every time I did, I found things that I wish I hadn't found....but it also allowed me to deal with some potentially SERIOUS problems before they got completely out of hand. On the other hand, that child had absolutely no respect for anyone else's privacy either....and in this house, that works both ways. I can't tell you how many times things would come up missing from everyone else's bedrooms (including mine and hubby's), and DS would deny having any knowledge of them....and yet, you could always find the missing items in HIS room! Of course, he had no idea how they GOT there, but hey?
My kids know I'm not going to snoop (am worried about them), unless they give me a reason to...and like I said, around here, my occasional deep cleaning/arranging/organizing/painting/new furniture surprises, are always a welcome surprise and received with much appreciation!
I can't tell you how many times things would come up missing from everyone else's bedrooms (including mine and hubby's), and DS would deny having any knowledge of them....and yet, you could always find the missing items in HIS room! Of course, he had no idea how they GOT there, but hey?
Glad to know I didn't have the only house where inanimate objects levitated.
Glad to know I didn't have the only house where inanimate objects levitated.
LOL....yes, and it was always just as believable as the chocolate cake on the face denial! Oh ...okay, I beLIEVE you...someone PLANTED that stuff in your room to get YOU in trouble...gotcha
I grew up in a house where my room would be searched on a pretty regular basis. I was getting straight A's, was involved in sports, worked a part time job, and had good friends. I didn't really have time to get into trouble. I never had anything to hide either. The "inspections" on my room were always by surprise and my dad would make me stand in the doorway and watch while he would tear my room apart looking for ANYTHING that could possibly be bad. I hated it more than anything. It showed that even though I did my best to be a good kid, nothing would prove to him that I was trustworthy. That caused me to shut down and stop telling him things about my day.
Eventually, I got so tired of this that I sewed a pocket into the backside of my curtains and would put stuff in there to hide it from him. It was never anything bad. It was usually a note from a friend or something similar. I just had to have some feeling of control. It was also my way of rebelling against his inspections. He never found my stash, but after I moved out my mom called me and told me she was redecorating my room and found a strange pocket in my curtains. She laughed and said "don't worry. I won't tell your dad."
To this day I get upset when I think about how much more open I would have been with him if he would have given me some privacy.
I love this post! I cleaned my kids' rooms about twice per year. If I found things that were plain old "typical kid stuff" in there, I never said a word, not even if I didn't really approve, because yeah...kids will be kids. Rarely did I ever find things in there which warrented a discussion. In fact, most of my kids LOVED for me to do the haul-out, deep cleaning for them. It was like moving in to a NEW room.
My firstborn gave me many occasions to go through his room, and every time I did, I found things that I wish I hadn't found....but it also allowed me to deal with some potentially SERIOUS problems before they got completely out of hand. On the other hand, that child had absolutely no respect for anyone else's privacy either....and in this house, that works both ways. I can't tell you how many times things would come up missing from everyone else's bedrooms (including mine and hubby's), and DS would deny having any knowledge of them....and yet, you could always find the missing items in HIS room! Of course, he had no idea how they GOT there, but hey?
My kids know I'm not going to snoop (am worried about them), unless they give me a reason to...and like I said, around here, my occasional deep cleaning/arranging/organizing/painting/new furniture surprises, are always a welcome surprise and received with much appreciation!
I have to spread rep - but yes, kids often "give" their parents an opportunity to check up when they don't clean their rooms and the parent must.
It's like one man told me at work -- "trust but verify" and he never thinks his sons (African-American but that's besides the point) would have a gun in their room but he makes sure they don't. He says that you read too much where the parents claim they didn't know something was going on, so even though he thinks he doesn't need to check, he just does for that reason.
I also don't believe my kids would steal, but just in case, I will know if there are iPods in my house that weren't purchased, and I'll know about any guns in my home.
And my kids know it's not snooping. It's my house, I pay the bills, I own all the rooms, I own the computer, I own them. I probably won't read their emails or go through all their things but I will if I ever have reason to do so. If they start acting disturbed or depressed, if I were to suspect bullying, or if they start hanging out with strange kids then I certainly will start checking up on some things.
As long as they act normal, happy, and I know where they always are, then I'm too busy.
I have to spread rep - but yes, kids often "give" their parents an opportunity to check up when they don't clean their rooms and the parent must.
It's like one man told me at work -- "trust but verify" and he never thinks his sons (African-American but that's besides the point) would have a gun in their room but he makes sure they don't. He says that you read too much where the parents claim they didn't know something was going on, so even though he thinks he doesn't need to check, he just does for that reason.
I also don't believe my kids would steal, but just in case, I will know if there are iPods in my house that weren't purchased, and I'll know about any guns in my home.
And my kids know it's not snooping. It's my house, I pay the bills, I own all the rooms, I own the computer, I own them. I probably won't read their emails or go through all their things but I will if I ever have reason to do so. If they start acting disturbed or depressed, if I were to suspect bullying, or if they start hanging out with strange kids then I certainly will start checking up on some things.
As long as they act normal, happy, and I know where they always are, then I'm too busy.
But why not have an open enough relationship where you can go to THEM and ask them whats going on. Surely enough if it was bad enough they would open up.
Say your kid is being bullied at school and then you go in their room and snoop and find it out and then say something about it. Not only is your kid being bullied NOW they are also going to be stressed out about you going through their room.
NOW, even if my mom wanted to find out something it'd STILL be easy to go to me instead of snoop through my stuff because letting it all out and venting is done talking face to face and or over the phone and there is no way to record that.
Back in the early days of e-mail, my family had one e-mail account for everyone. We had an e-mail program that automatically opened the first new message when you clicked "get new mail". Sometimes this was a message for one of my kids, so I did sometimes read some of their e-mail that way. I did not, however, deliberately read anything, nor did I go into "sent messages" to see what they were sending.
But I digress. I don't feel snooping is good, but I do agree with paying attention. Driving carpools is a great way to get information. On rare occasions, I would ask, "what did 'Laura' mean by . . . ", etc, but mostly I just listened.
I did go into my kids' rooms to distribute their clothes, etc, and on rare occasions, to clean. Sometimes I did find stuff that way. Even when my DD was 22 and living at home, I found an empty Nuva-Ring package under her bed! To this day, I don't think she knows.
My younger daughter, however, seems to have a touch of being a pathological liar in her. Many times the older one will tell me something about the younger that I am quite surprised to hear, yet I would not have stopped her from doing if she had told me. Plus, I have found her out a few times, like when we visited her at college to see her play in the orchestra. I asked her if she had bought us tickets and she said "yes", then we had to buy them at the door b/c she hadn't bought them.
Fortunetely texting was before my boys time. thank god, because I'll be damned if I am going to read these childish texts. LOL
But no, snooping through their things, going through the dresser drawers, no, it just isn't right. I didn't even put their clothes away, they were washed folded and I would leave them on their beds and they were to put their own clothes away.
You have to remember when you were a teen and wouldn't like it if your parents went in your room to snoop. It is a feeling of violation.
I love these discussions, have just raised two teen girls.
I caution against that "I trust my child and he tells me everything" mentality. Because I talked to my girls all the time, I usually knew the dirt on all the other girls at school. Most often, the ones doing drugs and alcohol, btw, were the star athletes and the populars with good grades. Their parents had no clue that their kids were going to school drunk, they "trusted" them because they were getting good grades, were popular, and involved in school activities.
Oh, and my younger teen? She was an example of how far "having talks" and being "trusing," really goes. Now she would talk about stuff people were doing at school, and how stupid it was. And how she didn't understand how anyone could drink, etc.
Well.. fast forward to when we were moving, and I had to pick up a pile of papers out of her room. In the papers was a letter to a friend that she had rewritten. Imagine my shock when I realized that she was doing all of those things she told me were "stupid." And her friends that I thought were upstanding citizens, were the ones that introduced her to the substances.
The best way to parent is "Trust but verify." It's the only way. Used to be that kids had their friends call at home, on the home phone. You knew who was calling, and had actual contact with other parents, and tabs on your kid. Now.. if your kid has a cell phone, you have no idea who they're involved with, or what they're doing. The make plans all the time without your knowledge.
You pay for the phone, you have a right to look at the messages. Also the same with the computer. I regularly sat down with her and we went thru her Facebook, etc. so she could show me who was who.
Trust by verify. the most accomplished kids are school are the drunks and stoners. Always.
But why not have an open enough relationship where you can go to THEM and ask them whats going on. Surely enough if it was bad enough they would open up.
Say your kid is being bullied at school and then you go in their room and snoop and find it out and then say something about it. Not only is your kid being bullied NOW they are also going to be stressed out about you going through their room.
NOW, even if my mom wanted to find out something it'd STILL be easy to go to me instead of snoop through my stuff because letting it all out and venting is done talking face to face and or over the phone and there is no way to record that.
I have a pretty open relationship with my kids. I'm so open with them, they know I reserve the right to examine any part of my home if I so choose. They know ahead of time I can find anything they may have downloaded on the computer - inadvertantly or otherwise. Like the anarchists cookbook -- I saw it had been on my computer and I very openly questioned it.
A kid seriously being bullied may try to cover up, may try to hide what is going on. Not so long ago a girl committed suicide over some myspace stuff that had been going on for a while. I think parents owe it to their kids to know what's going on in their own house.
And in the case of the Columbine killers, those kids were making bombs and plans to kill the entire school - right under their parents' noses but the parents apparently never noticed a thing, not even the bomb ingredients in their own home.
How often do we read of some middle school kid taking a gun to school and the parent(s) claim they had no idea their child had a gun.
That doesn't mean I will go looking around for no reason, if everythings seems on the up and up, no one is overly moody or dramatic, no one comes home drunk, no one is isolating him or herself, friends don't look like gang members about to do some driveby shooting - I likely won't bother.
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Oh ...okay, I beLIEVE you...someone PLANTED that stuff in your room to get YOU in trouble...gotcha
