One of the ladies I work with has a daughter who is about to go into 10th grade, and a son that’s going to be a senior next year. She’s very involved in his life in particular, especially in regards to trying to get into college, applying for scholarships, making sure he ends up in the correct dorms, etc.
My question, though, involves her daughter. Today, she mentioned that she knows the password to and logged into her daughter’s Facebook profile. I literally said “WHAT? You’d better never tell her, or she’ll never trust you again,” and she clarified that it was a condition of her signing up that she be given the password. She says that she logs in sometimes to check on what she is doing. Once she got a call from her daughter who found out that she had logged in because a friend saw her online, called her to ask about her online status, and realized it was her mom.
Now this seems strange and invasive to me, but we’re also talking about the guy who was downloading porn by 8th grade and never really fully explained to his parents how to check his grades online, and whose parents couldn’t have named 3 teachers I had throughout my whole high school career. I would obviously never give my password to a site to a parent willingly.
So how does this look to you? Doper Parents, do you do similar things with your children, or am I just a jerk?
No kids here, but I can see already that the parent in question is going to be a real nightmare when her baby enters college.
The problem of parents interfering in their adult children’s college activities and classes is increasingly common, to my endless dismay. I have not yet had to deal with it, but some of my professor friends have.
While I generally hate the very idea of helicopter parents, social networking sites are treacherous places. Having what amounts to admin privileges is fine with me. A real helicopter parent would be editing the girl’s page for her and choosing her friends.
No, I don’t find it creepy at all. What you’ve described doesn’t really sound like helicopter parenting to me. What parent wouldn’t want to help their child get into college with good scholarships and in a good dorm?
To me the Facebook thing would be equivelent to the old days when parents would want to meet your friends and know where you’re going, etc. If a bulk of your friends are online, then this is the new “meet the friends”.
Agreed - and there’s an element of trust that goes both ways. We all expect system admins not to look at our emails unless they have a good reason to. Similarly, it would seem wierd to me if the mother was logging in habitually, just because she could.
However, as is already clear, the mother’s actions are already starting to have an impact on the daughter’s relationships with peers, however benign this might have been so far. So not creepy, no, but a mother who really needs to start to let go, however uncomfortable this may be for her. If she’s done her job right until now, she should be able to gradually put more and more trust in the kid.
My kids are now 24, 21, and 18, and I would never have dreamed of doing what that mom did. Not only demanding password access, but actually logging on as the kid? That’s just…creepy. And I’m flashing on the mom who created the fake boyfriend for her daughter’s “enemy” and then the fake BF broke up with the “enemy” girl and the girl committed suicide and the mom is now in prison.
So, no, you’re not weird. That’s strange and invasive.
Especially because, why couldn’t the mom just log on as herself and then request her daughter to add her as a Friend? That way she could still keep up to date but wouldn’t have to cross the “invasive” line. I’m not familiar with Facebook, but isn’t that how it works?
Social networking sites are only treacherous places if you behave like a stunningly naive five-year-old without even the most rudimentary Internet savvy. But if she’s old enough to be allowed to have a Facebook page, then she’s old enough to be trusted to handle it without making dates to meet strangers she meets online. Similarly to having a driver’s license–if she’s old enough to drive a car places by herself, then she’s old enough to do it without having to have Mom looking over her shoulder on every single trip.
I’m hearing other issues going on there, control issues.
I actually don’t know when, or if, all my children got onto social networking sites. By the time they were all about 12, they understood thoroughly the basic ground rules of Internet, and were allowed to surf what they wished, parental controls off. I’m pretty sure they all have Facebook pages now, because that seems to be the Done Thing, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of peering over their shoulders during their high school years and watching what they were surfing (except for inadvertently catching Bonzo downloading porn when he was 15, and that was only because I noticed that there were bestiality sex URLs in the History folder, and he was the most likely suspect, his dad being out of town.)
I’m not sure this falls into the definition of helicopter parenting. To me, helicopter parenting is getting involved in situations that the kid is old enough to work out for themselves…especially when the point of the parental involvement is to attempt to resolve the situation in a way that makes their little darlings the happiest.
For instance, wanting to meet the kid’s friends is normal parenting…getting involved in their conflicts is helicopter parenting. Wanting to know their grades is normal parenting. Even discussing grades with a teacher is normal parenting, if the kid’s in HS. Insisting that the HS teacher give the kid an A instead of a B, or calling their college professor to discuss grades is helecopter parenting. It’s involvement at a level that is inapropriate for the kid’s age.
By that definitiona I would say that checking the Facebook page of a 10th grader is not helicopter parenting, but it would be if the kid was in college.
I can’t really get behind the whole idea that minors have any expectation of privacy from their parents. (Barring medical issues between the minor and their doctor)
Oh, that’s a load of shit. Teach your kids to not be complete fucking idiots, and 99% of the time, they’ll be fine. Same as it ever was, same as it is now, same as it will ever be.
Wow. So every conversation you ever had with a friend, you’d have just as happily held it with your parents present? Including ones which may have had no great issue for you, but might have involved very personal issues which your friend was dealing with? These may well crop up in a Facebook inbox.
Wouldn’t the girl simply tell her friends that her mother had the password and to be careful what they send? Anyway, I bet the girl has an extra 3-mail account (or several) where all sorts of things can be said without Mummy knowing.
I didn’t say I would have liked it. I went to lengths to hide things from them, not always successfully. Just because I advocate a position doesn’t mean I neccessarily enjoy it.
In that case, the mother isn’t making silent observations in the way she thinks, but possibly affecting her child. In a “watch out, her mum is really strange” way.
Well, ok, not exactly. But cellphones/txt messaging, email, IM, etc allows the person - child or adult - an enormous amount of “freedom”. It’s a scary world out there.
Having access to passwords, imo, is essential when it comes to children. Those programs to monitor what the kids are doing online (the ones that provide snapshots and such) also come in handy - is this really much different than a parent calling to verify their child is at so&so’s house to verify their child is there?
With this, of course, comes a price. Are you an overbearing parent that distrusts everything your child does, or are you being one step ahead of the kid because you know what you (or your friends) used to do at their age???
As far as knowing login/passwords - Yes, I do. But I do not use it to be snoopy. I have it just incase I suspect something and with a family history of depression and suicide , I can check private email that would provide insight and allow me to intervene and get help. I would not abuse this trust that goes BOTH WAYS.
Heck, when I was growing up we had one telephone located in the kitchen that was next to the living room where my mom usually was - there was no such thing as complete privacy which probably helped me to keep out of some trouble.
Doesn’t matter - she’s not their mother. Besides, they need to learn that you never *really *know who you’re talking to online. Unless she actually *replied *as if she was her daughter, in which case I agree it would be over the line. But simply ignoring a message doesn’t sound like a big deal to me, and it sounds like there wasn’t even a message - sounds like the “Online Now” indicator was lit when a friend knew her daughter wasn’t actually online.
When my son started doing on-line stuff, it was an email account at age 9ish, and I did have the password, and I did tell him I might check up on him by logging in. (I never did, but I wanted to reserve that right should his behavior ever warrant it.) Now, at 15, I know his XBOX Live username, and I have one and sometimes check his just as a guest to see who else he’s interacting with, but I don’t know his password and don’t need too. I’m his Friend on Tribe, and I don’t think he has a MySpace (if he does, he’s not linked to anyone I know.)
I think it’s a good idea to monitor internet usage in steps, slowly backing off as they get older, just like I do their real life friendships. I’m not sure why the mother in question just doesn’t become a Friend at this point, but maybe she doesn’t really know how it works, or maybe her daughter posts Private blogs that she wants access to.
So while I don’t think she’s exactly over the line in this case, she’s toeing it a little, IMHO.
