{"id":10115,"date":"2016-01-02T02:46:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T02:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/01\/02\/should-parents-read-their-daughters-texts-or\/"},"modified":"2016-01-02T02:46:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T02:46:34","slug":"should-parents-read-their-daughters-texts-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/01\/02\/should-parents-read-their-daughters-texts-or\/","title":{"rendered":"“Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

daeranilen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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daeranilen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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daeranilen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Earlier today,\u00a0I served as the \u201cyoung woman\u2019s voice\u201d in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of,\u00a0\u201cShould parents read their daughter\u2019s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I reached for the microphone next. I said, \u201cAs far as reading your child\u2019s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.<\/p>\n

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child\u2019s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, \u201cThis is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,\u201d it was like I\u2019d delivered a revelation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me \u201cnot to joke about things like that.\u201d I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn\u2019t want to go to college. I ended up\u00a0seeing a therapist for – surprise surprise – depression.<\/p>\n

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards\u00a0I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, \u201cYou know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

TL;DR: When you invade your child\u2019s privacy, you communicate three things:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. You do not respect their rights as an individual.<\/li>\n
  2. You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.<\/li>\n
  3. You probably haven\u2019t been listening to them.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Information about almost every issue\u00a0that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and\u00a0listening to<\/em> your child.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Part of me is really excited to see that\u00a0the original post\u00a0got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes<\/em>, and part of me is really saddened that\u00a0something so negative has resonated with so many people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    daeranilen: daeranilen: daeranilen: Earlier today,\u00a0I served as the \u201cyoung woman\u2019s voice\u201d in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of,\u00a0\u201cShould parents read their daughter\u2019s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?\u201d I was surprised when the … Continue reading “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[618],"class_list":["post-10115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-important","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}