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Am I the only person that has a real big problem with software like this?

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vlastimil:
In my opinion, it may be ok to monitor the child's location. The parent should explain to them that this is for their own safety.

Anything else and it is invasion of privacy. It does not matter that these are your own kids, they are still human beings and they should be able to have secrets.

And while the child-spying may work for a couple of years, it will eventually stop working. The kids will find out what is happening and will tell each other how to fool the system. They will develop methods to workaround the thing. They won't trust their parents anymore, who will live in a happy ignorance of what is really going on.

Parenting cannot be outsourced, if less time and energy is invested, the child will suffer. If a technology improves the situation for one party (the parent) and worsens it for the other party (the child), it will fail.

wraith808:
It's all fine and dandy to talk about "good parenting" and "proper supervision" and have lofty ideals, but the reality is that no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to live up to that 100% of the time. An app can help possibly catch a problematic situation when (not if) your attention lapses.
-Renegade (October 05, 2013, 10:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

This.  Experience will tell you... this.

Anything else and it is invasion of privacy. It does not matter that these are your own kids, they are still human beings and they should be able to have secrets.
-vlastimil (October 06, 2013, 03:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

Wrong answer.  At least to me.  Minimal stuff, yes.  But no, no secrets as long as they are in my care- mostly because until confronted with the situation, they don't know what to keep secret.  I know this from experience in my own childhood.  I kept things to myself because I thought they were my fault and my problem.  When my parents should have known.

Some measure of privacy, perhaps.  Minor stuff like I bought you a present, sure.  But you should be able to have a relationship with your child where secrets are unnecessary.  They are not a measure of being human.  Humans don't *have* to have secrets.  It's when you want to lie about something, or think that you're doing something wrong or that something is wrong that secrets come to the fore.  And in those cases are exactly when children need parents.

mouser:
I can see the grey lines for very young kids, but i have to agree with vlastimill -- a child should be able to have secrets -- to have a private diary, etc.

Wraith the cases you brought up, about things you kept to yourself because you thought they were your fault/problem.  That's something completely different. That's a case best avoided by having a close open relationship with parent who tries their best to understand the struggles of the child.

That is different from saying that one is going to secretly spy on all things a child says and does.  In order to grow and mature, even children need to be able to have private discussions with friends, etc. If when I was just entering my teenage years I had discovered that my parents were secretly listening to every conversation/communication i had, i would have gone ballistic.

I can't imagine the damage it would have done to my relationship with my parents.  That's something you really need to consider if you are secretly monitoring your child's activities.

Again, this is different from having an 8yr old child who you arent sure is mature enough for a cell phone, and making an clear agreement with them that you are going to be checking their internet browsing history in exchange for letting them have the phone.  That's not really spying, that's more like having a supervision agreement with someone who understands they are playing with a dangerous instrument and may not be ready for it.

My view is that when a child becomes old enough to object to you reading their emails and checking their browsing history, they are probably mature enough that you should let them have their privacy -- barring some serious evidence of danger.

wraith808:
I'll give a real-life example.  A friend of my son's has his own room in the basement.  The parents rarely go down there.  They don't keep track of what he does, after all, he's 16 right?  His girlfriend became more and more possessive.  Around them, she was great.  But more and more he started to get in over his head, and his parents knew nothing.

By the time they found out about it, she was coming over during the time when she was most likely to get pregnant to try to get pregnant.  After he decided to break up with her one time, she lured him down to the lake to try to have sex with him, and when he wouldn't broke his foot (and he lied to them about it).

Don't get me wrong- they have a pretty close knit family, and a very good family relationship.  But by the time this started happening, he didn't know how to tell them.  And the funny thing is that we had a good idea that things were off the rails.  Why?  Because, as some other parents put it, we're 'too involved in our children's lives', and my son had already told me about it, and that the situation was the reason that he didn't hang out with his friend at the time.

Like I said above, I don't spend the time to go through everything my children do like some.  But I am as involved as my responsibility for my children says that I should be.  Which it seems is a lot more than some think should be.  But it minimizes the chances that one day I'm going to have someone else tell me something that I should have known about my children.

And again, the most important part- I respect and listen to my children.  That seems to be a real fact that people ignore in this conversation.

Renegade:
It might be worth noting that not all kids are made from cookie-cutters, and they're not all the same. Some kids probably need more attention/monitoring than others.

(Cynical rant about state-sponsored schools being cookie-cutters omitted.)

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