Helicopter Parents - is this creepy?

In My Humble Opinion
101

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]

I wonder, if I was to access the web-based email of participants in this thread, how many would accept my defence for doing so, that they only have an ‘illusion of privacy’ anyway, and therefore I wasn’t doing anything unreasonable? My earlier comments along these lines haven’t been about what’s theoretically possible, but what constitutes reasonable behaviour.
[/QUOTE]

Well if you were my dad and we had discussed that then I would be okay with it. But alas you are not my father, nor am I your father. It would be very wrong for me to hack into your mail. But that being said, it is an illusion of privacy. I can do a search online for just about anyone. Unless you are 100% off the grid anything you post online could potentially be found and exposed.

My sense I get from your posts is that this issue strikes very close to home for you and your position is very personal. There are degrees of intrusion and trust. Your position that there should be 100% trust between a parent and a minor child is as far out there as 100% invasion of a parent into a childs life. There are degrees and a wide range between those two positions.

Do you not concede that what has been outlined here by many parents (myself, Bricker, Dinsdale, Whynot, etc.) are very reasonable expectations of a loving and trusting parent for their child? As those children get older and exhibit more maturity that this degree of trust goes up.

102

[QUOTE=garygnu]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Well put.

Any of those places scare the crap out of me.

103

[QUOTE=Hakuna Matata]
My sense I get from your posts is that this issue strikes very close to home for you and your position is very personal. There are degrees of intrusion and trust. Your position that there should be 100% trust between a parent and a minor child is as far out there as 100% invasion of a parent into a childs life. There are degrees and a wide range between those two positions.

Do you not concede that what has been outlined here by many parents (myself, Bricker, Dinsdale, Whynot, etc.) are very reasonable expectations of a loving and trusting parent for their child? As those children get older and exhibit more maturity that this degree of trust goes up.
[/QUOTE]

I wasn’t intending to go outright for a ‘100% trust’ stance, although I do understand how the way this discussion has developed I could be seen to be arguing that. Of course I acknowledge that there’s degrees of trust, and that age and maturity are factors. Note that I did change my mind substantially regarding the OP somewhere back on page 1!

As for the issue striking close to home, I’ve had to think hard about why it does. I think it’s this: through the nature of my work, I often end up in the role of confidant to individual pupils. (I’m frequently teaching them on a one-to-one basis to start with.) I’ll hear things which are closer to what they’d be saying to their friends than to parents (and sometimes things they don’t feel able to say to either), and often these are things parents would not want to hear. Yes, I have to be careful that this doesn’t take on a conspiratorial teacher-v-parent nature, but the only reason I hear such things at all is because of the trust they have that I will respect the private nature of such conversations.*

These types of conversations, or ones actually between friends in this case, are perhaps what I had in the back of my mind when becoming so concerned with the privacy of third parties in the OP’s situation.

  • Revelations of abuse or neglect are a definite exception to this privacy - but the child has to be informed that this is the case, in such situations.
104

[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest]
Any of those places scare the crap out of me.
[/QUOTE]

What’s so safe about this place, then? I trust you’ve read the TMI Thread, and you know the people here have the capacity to be just as fucked up as anyone else on or off the internet.

I disagree in this case. Kids know the internet. They don’t know everything about it, but I’ll take a bunch of teenagers over a bunch of 45-year-old any day when it comes to knowing what’s going on on the other side of a keyboard, and I’ll use Shirley’s quote above as a data point. Scary? Treacherous? Nonsense. Again, raise your kids to not be idiots and they’ll be fine.

105

[QUOTE=Manda JO]

I will also say that even the most level-headed kid is capable of stunning moments of misjudgment–it really is a frontal lobe thing–and so all parents ought to strive to keep two things: one, a trusting relationship so that if the kid is really in trouble (I think my friend has alcohol posioning, can we get a ride to the hospital?) they feel comfortable calling, and 2) a way to get to information if you decide something Very Serious (like suicidal depression or sexual abuse) may be going on so you need to check. Somehow, as personal space and boundaries are negotiated (and it is a constant process of negotiation, not a matter of coming to a final resolution), these two things need to be maintained. The actual details will vary according to what seems best for the kids and parents involved.
[/QUOTE]

This is a good explanation of why we have the policy in our house that we have the passwords to all accounts. Issues arose that demanded more than benign neglect, and in the process of addressing those issues, we evolved this policy.

106

If I was concerned I would probably have set up my own facebook profile and insisted my kids set me up as their “friend” so that I could see what was on their pages.

My folks put the computer in a public place in the house and basically just let us get on with it, with the caveat that someone was usually walking past you every 3 minutes.

As a teenager I was much more about the all-night partying with real people and the possibility of actual sex, drugs and rock n’ roll rather than virtual relationships on the internet. YMMV.

Mind you, I’ve been reading and posting on the Dope since I was about 17, so I’ve been exposed to my on fair share of internet filth, and I may have been severely warped as a result. :stuck_out_tongue:

107

[QUOTE=Belrix]
We did fine without these, they’ll (my step-daughter & my younger kids) be fine without them, too.
[/QUOTE]
Denying kids growing up today access to computer assisted social networking is akin to your parents never allowing you to leave the house.

The only reason you’ve “done fine” is because none of the other kids (now adults) had these things either, so you are familiar with how the social habitat of the current adult world functions based on your shared experience. Your kids might turn out better off for not being exposed to the celebration of the lowest common denominator that is teh innarnets and not having an embarrassing and difficult to eradicate digital trail leading from their childhood… but I wouldn’t count on it.

108

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
You’re kidding, right?

A stunningly naive five-year-old? So the teenagers who’ve been fooled by adults online are just plain stupid, huh?
[/QUOTE]
Please find a cite that anyone has been attacked in any way through falsification on Facebook. I’d be fascinated to hear about that. Facebook is structured in a way that makes such a scenario extremely unlikely - people are near-universally only friends with people they know in real life. Have you ever even been on Facebook, or are you just pulling this implication that facebook is dangerious out of your ass, assuming that its the same as an AOL chatroom?
[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
We all know all you have to do is tell junior that he can’t haul all of his friends around in his car and he’ll do it. He won’t have alcohol in the car, he won’t speed, he will be a responsible little soldier because he has a driver’s license.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t get this belief that “anything which is outlawed is inherently fascinating.” There’s another condition, too - it has to be interesting on its own, for other reasons. Meeting strangers on the internet and friending them on facebook isn’t really wild fun.
[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
When kids do things they’re not supposed to do (guns at school, drinking & driving, meeting strangers on the internet and disappearing, etc) and it makes the news there’s usually a hand-wringing post about “Where were the parents!??” yet a parent who is actively trying to BE a parent is criticized.
[/QUOTE]
The problem here is that you imply that knowing the facebook password is the only way to “actively try to BE a parent.” That’s obviously incorrect - educating your kids on the risks of random strangers, for instance. The invasion into the private personal life of the child and, more importantly, the personal lives of other children would seem to stunt the social and emotional growth of the kid, keeping them locked under surveillance and, as a result, never free to really express their true thoughts to friends.

109

[QUOTE=chaoticbear]

So how does this look to you? Doper Parents, do you do similar things with your children, or am I just a jerk?
[/QUOTE]

Good for her! She’s being a very active parent, and doing exactly what she should be doing.

110

[QUOTE=WoodenTaco]
Please find a cite that anyone has been attacked in any way through falsification on Facebook. I’d be fascinated to hear about that. Facebook is structured in a way that makes such a scenario extremely unlikely - people are near-universally only friends with people they know in real life. Have you ever even been on Facebook, or are you just pulling this implication that facebook is dangerious out of your ass, assuming that its the same as an AOL chatroom?
[/QUOTE]

Wow, you’re a snarky one aren’t you? Is there a reason you’re taking my words in response to another person and acting as if I personally called your mother a bitch?

First, I never said someone had been attacked from falsification FaceBook so please spare me your triumphant “Cite?” request. I have been on Facebook so no, Snookums, I didn’t pull that out of my ass. Yes, Facebook does a decent job of trying to protect underage kids but nothing is foolproof.

In the two hours since you’ve posted this my 27 year old friend who is here with me started a FaceBook account with a made up name but used her own pictures. She searched for the high school she went to and friended about 10 girls and sent them a message saying she 16 and going to go to their school next year and just wanted to make a few friends over the summer. Three of them have confirmed her as a friend. Wow, she must be a superior criminal mind to break through Facebook’s protection of underage users. Thank goodness other adults won’t think of this!

Besides, do you think that “scary people” on the internet are the only things to worry about? Like someone mentioned earlier, kids do post pictures of drinking, drugs, and other things parents don’t want their kids doing. Being able to “see” who your kid is communicating with is not Nazi Germany.

[QUOTE=WoodenTaco]
I don’t get this belief that “anything which is outlawed is inherently fascinating.” There’s another condition, too - it has to be interesting on its own, for other reasons. Meeting strangers on the internet and friending them on facebook isn’t really wild fun.
[/QUOTE]

What on earth are you yammering about? My example about the car is that kids are given a bit of freedom (car) and told the conditions of said freedom (no drinking, no speeding, etc) and they push those limits or break them altogether. Should the parent not even try to enforce the rules? Teenagers are not kids anymore, but not adults. They need to understand limits and rules and receive punishment when they are broken. That was just an example, I didn’t think anyone would need that explained and would twist that to me saying that outlawed things are fascinating. Damn.

[QUOTE=WoodenTaco]
The problem here is that you imply that knowing the facebook password is the only way to “actively try to BE a parent.” That’s obviously incorrect - educating your kids on the risks of random strangers, for instance. The invasion into the private personal life of the child and, more importantly, the personal lives of other children would seem to stunt the social and emotional growth of the kid, keeping them locked under surveillance and, as a result, never free to really express their true thoughts to friends.
[/QUOTE]

Wrong again. I did NOT imply that was the ONLY way to be a parent. Perhaps you should work on reading the words that are there and not try to run them through the twisto-machine in your head. Letting your child know you withhold the right to monitor their online usage is ONE way to be an active parent. Again, I didn’t think there was anyone reading who needed that explained to them so I didn’t spell that out EXACTLY before.

Locked under surveillance? holy crap, I hope you’re joking. Are employers who block certain websites keeping poor you locked under surveillance? Parents are generally trying to bring their children up the best they can using whatever tools each individual child may need. We know NOTHING about this kid and her background, for all we know she’s had issues with online activities. Maybe not. It’s also amusing to me that just because the woman HAS the password that she’s being painted as someone who is reading every word and looking at every situation hoping to be able to twist and imaginary moustache with glee. Mommy knowing your password isn’t going to really an evil thing and I think she’ll survive.

Now, my apologies to anyone else reading this strongly worded response. Apparently being hostile is how WoodenTaco communicates, so I felt it best to respond in kind.

111

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
I wasn’t intending to go outright for a ‘100% trust’ stance, although I do understand how the way this discussion has developed I could be seen to be arguing that. Of course I acknowledge that there’s degrees of trust, and that age and maturity are factors. Note that I did change my mind substantially regarding the OP somewhere back on page 1!

As for the issue striking close to home, I’ve had to think hard about why it does. I think it’s this: through the nature of my work, I often end up in the role of confidant to individual pupils. (I’m frequently teaching them on a one-to-one basis to start with.) I’ll hear things which are closer to what they’d be saying to their friends than to parents (and sometimes things they don’t feel able to say to either), and often these are things parents would not want to hear. Yes, I have to be careful that this doesn’t take on a conspiratorial teacher-v-parent nature, but the only reason I hear such things at all is because of the trust they have that I will respect the private nature of such conversations.*

These types of conversations, or ones actually between friends in this case, are perhaps what I had in the back of my mind when becoming so concerned with the privacy of third parties in the OP’s situation.
.
[/QUOTE]

Okay that makes sense. So I gather you are a teacher or a counselor of some sort? I can see many kids not being comfortable discussing many aspects of their lives with their parents. I am hoping to avoid that with my own daughter as we have tried to keep very open the lines of communications between her and us, and even her friends and us. Of course this also has created potentially surreal moments like when the three of them are in the back seat asking me questions about the urinal in the mens bathroom! But I want my daughter to feel that she can come to me with ANY question. When I said trust was earned, I mean that as a two way street. I have to earn her trust that I am not going to go postal or judgemental if she confides in me.

It is my hope to avoid her feeling she needs to have secrets from me, but I am confidant if she does choose to have secrets that I have raised her in such a way that I am comfortable with her choices. But at age 12 I, (and so far she seems to be okay with it too) am also very comfortable with the limitations on her. It helps that I am better at computers then she is and here is to hoping I can stay ahead of the curve!

112

Preface: I haven’t read most of this thread. Sorry.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
Wow, you’re a snarky one aren’t you? Is there a reason you’re taking my words in response to another person and acting as if I personally called your mother a bitch?
[/quote]

I’ll deal with the general tone of the message here.
Wow. I’m assuming this is all because I said the words “pulled out of your ass,” for which I apologize. Apart from that, I’m not sure where the snark is. I don’t think you’re a blathering idiot (as you seem to think I am, for whatever reason) and didn’t exactly go nuts on you. Maybe you are fixin’ for a cigarette, maybe you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, maybe you are particularly sensitive to the accusation of ass-pulling. Maybe there’s something I did in some other thread that inspired a vendetta. In any case, I’m not the one flinging out ad-homs like the “twisto-machine in your head.” I think your viciousness is unwarranted and not helpful. It’s really not a big deal, though. I can live it, I just think you should know my intention wasn’t to be hostile.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
First, I never said someone had been attacked from falsification FaceBook so please spare me your triumphant “Cite?” request.
[/quote]

Okay, forgive me for understanding “teenagers who’ve been fooled by adults” to mean that. I think it’s a fair interpretation, but whatever - you seem to agree that facebook is pretty secure.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
In the two hours since you’ve posted this my 27 year old friend who is here with me started a FaceBook account with a made up name but used her own pictures. She searched for the high school she went to and friended about 10 girls and sent them a message saying she 16 and going to go to their school next year and just wanted to make a few friends over the summer. Three of them have confirmed her as a friend. Wow, she must be a superior criminal mind to break through Facebook’s protection of underage users. Thank goodness other adults won’t think of this!
[/quote]
I don’t think this is an effective test of the security. Friend status alone isn’t particularly powerful. She’s probably on limited status, but even then I’d be absolutely shocked if she was able to meet with any of these kids outside of facebook’s world, which is where most of the dangers lie.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
Besides, do you think that “scary people” on the internet are the only things to worry about?
[/quote]
This, I guess, is where you and I disagree most. I really do think scary people are the main worry on social network sites, but I think that facebook’s culture and structure help stop them from doing damage. This is the only problem you mentioned in the post I replied to.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
Like someone mentioned earlier, kids do post pictures of drinking, drugs, and other things parents don’t want their kids doing. Being able to “see” who your kid is communicating with is not Nazi Germany.
[/quote]
Those aren’t problems caused by facebook, obviously, and I think there are other ways to deal with them than having access to the kid’s password. Is checking facebook pictures for beer cans really a good way to keep your kid from drinking? I don’t know about that. When it risks the privacy of a fair number of people, I think parents should choose alternative methods which are likely to be just as successful.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
What on earth are you yammering about? My example about the car is that kids are given a bit of freedom (car) and told the conditions of said freedom (no drinking, no speeding, etc) and they push those limits or break them altogether. Should the parent not even try to enforce the rules? Teenagers are not kids anymore, but not adults. They need to understand limits and rules and receive punishment when they are broken. That was just an example, I didn’t think anyone would need that explained and would twist that to me saying that outlawed things are fascinating. Damn.
[/quote]

My yammering has to do with the argument that kids push limits. Obviously it was just an example, but I don’t think its a huge stretch to re-state it as “outlawed things fascinate kids.” Maybe you don’t like my ascription of a motivation for kids pushing limits. That’s cool. The point, though, remains the same: kids won’t push those limits if they don’t have something to gain pushing them. Meeting your friend in a shady parking lot doesn’t seem to meet that criterion.

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
Wrong again. I did NOT imply that was the ONLY way to be a parent. Perhaps you should work on reading the words that are there and not try to run them through the twisto-machine in your head. Letting your child know you withhold the right to monitor their online usage is ONE way to be an active parent. Again, I didn’t think there was anyone reading who needed that explained to them so I didn’t spell that out EXACTLY before.
[/quote]
'kay. Glad we agree that there are other methods. Given that, we obviously need to compare parenting methods. My point was that you can ‘actively be a parent’ without getting access to their password. If we agree there - and if we agree that you can be equally successful that way - then I’m not sure I understand your original comment, which was that “When bad stuff happens, parents get blamed for not being proactive enough.” How does that justify accessing a kid’s account?

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
Locked under surveillance? holy crap, I hope you’re joking. Are employers who block certain websites keeping poor you locked under surveillance?
[/quote]
No. They are, however, if they are able to look through your access history and private communications, like facebook access allows. How is that not surveillance?

[QUOTE=Sleeps With Butterflies]
It’s also amusing to me that just because the woman HAS the password that she’s being painted as someone who is reading every word and looking at every situation hoping to be able to twist and imaginary moustache with glee. Mommy knowing your password isn’t going to really an evil thing and I think she’ll survive.
[/quote]
Given that other parenting solutions are available, I think it is the burden of her defenders to explain why it is NECESSARY that she have the password. That’s the main point I’m making - when alternative solutions exist that don’t compromise privacy, why not choose them? Even if the damage from that loss of privacy is slight, why do that damage at all?

113

[QUOTE=Hakuna Matata]
Okay that makes sense. So I gather you are a teacher or a counselor of some sort?
[/quote]

Violin teacher.

This is an excellent aim - but on the other hand, don’t feel that you’ve failed if this doesn’t turn out to always be the case. Sometimes the children who need somebody else to talk to are those most sensitive to other’s feelings. They try to prevent encumbering their parents and friends with all their problems, especially those for which there is no easy solution, either deliberately or unwittingly wanting to protect them from the heavy emotional toll this can take.

114

[QUOTE=WoodenTaco]

Those aren’t problems caused by facebook, obviously, and I think there are other ways to deal with them than having access to the kid’s password. Is checking facebook pictures for beer cans really a good way to keep your kid from drinking? I don’t know about that. When it risks the privacy of a fair number of people, I think parents should choose alternative methods which are likely to be just as successful.
[/QUOTE]

No, its one of several ways to know if they, or their friends, HAVE been drinking. Another tool in the toolbox. And I don’t think underage drinking is “the most horrible thing in the world” - but I do think excessive underaged drinking needs to be stopped because I’ve met sixteen year old alcoholics and addicts. So often the parents of young addicts are so confused, they thought things were normal until the shit hit the fan. They simply weren’t aware of what was happening in their kids lives. These are often well intentioned parents (like my own, I have an alcoholic sister who started drinking as a teen) who want to give their kids independence and freedom - and perhaps give them a little too much.

There are other tools - many of them better, but parenting MAY require the whole set. That set may include reserving the right to see what is on their computer and their computer accounts. That set may include reserving the right to search their rooms. In fact, as a parent, I think both those rights should be RESERVED by parents, though like other parents in this thread, not generally used unless you need to remind them you can or feel a need to. Hopefully, you won’t need to. Hopefully your kids will remain responsible individuals and you’ll keep the lines of communication open. Because it breaks a parents heart when they HAVE to check a kids room for drugs.

If the woman in the OP is reliving her teenage years through her daughter’s facebook account - that’s creepy. If she is occasionally logging into the girl’s accounts to check up on her - that’s parenting. It may be a higher level of oversight than the daughter needs - but we don’t know that, its possible that the girl has wandered in stumbling drunk a few times in the past year or Mom is trying to forbid a relationship with an inappropriate guy or…

115

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
This is an excellent aim - but on the other hand, don’t feel that you’ve failed if this doesn’t turn out to always be the case. Sometimes the children who need somebody else to talk to are those most sensitive to other’s feelings. They try to prevent encumbering their parents and friends with all their problems, especially those for which there is no easy solution, either deliberately or unwittingly wanting to protect them from the heavy emotional toll this can take.
[/QUOTE]

That’s a really, fantastically good point. I’ve tried to account for this by noting which adults in my son’s life he’s most likely to talk to, and having a conversation with each giving them my permission to talk to him freely and not tell me about it, if they think that confidentiality is in his best interest. Several of my friends who are parents have extended the same privilege back to me, for which I’m grateful. It’s much nicer to listen to a kid with my full attention than to be wondering if this is something I should be telling their parent.

My son is absolutely one of those “good, sensitive kids” who doesn’t want to “burden me”, but his idea of “burden” is ridiculously small sometimes - he once told me he didn’t want to go on a field trip which he desperately did want to go on, simply because he deemed the $40 price tag too high to worry me with! Luckily, his teacher figured out what was going on at the last minute, and the night before the trip, called me at home to offer a scholarship for him to go. (Which I didn’t actually need, but it let him off the hook emotionally, and later I wrote an $80 check for the field trip scholarship fund.)

116

Just had to add, last night as I was heading to bed I saw I went to my nearly 17 y-o’s room to say goodnight, and she was on the computer. She asked me “What are some groups and movies I like?” (We have quite similar tast in tunes.) I asked what she was doing, and she said she was setting up a facebook account.

I asked her to see what picture she attached, and when she tried to go to it her computer froze up (old box). So I jokingly said, “Don’t worry. I’ll just set up my own facebook site and visit yours and become your friend.”

I wanted to let you know her response, which was pretty close to, “That is so lame, when people’s parents join their facebook as friends!”

We left it at that. :smiley:

117

My feelings on this are somewhat mixed. On one hand, I can see being irritated with my mom for making that a requirement. It would, in my opinion, show that she didn’t trust me to handle myself properly. On the other hand, she is a minor.

In my opinion, helping with paperwork and process type things (such as applying to college) isn’t helicopter parenting. However, almost any interference in personal matters (not including situations were actual danger is present) after the age of about 16 counts as helicopter parenting. I recall being quite unimpressed my senior year in high school when a couple of my friends broke up, and his mother came into school and tried to demand that his locker and any of his classes that he shared with his ex-girlfriend be changed. In the middle of the semester. His mom was kind of a nut job anyways, and he kinda has a series of mommy issues too (his next girlfriend bore a remarkable resemblance to his mom).

In any case, once the kid hits about 16 (aka, able to drive), parents should really start ceding most responsibilities the child will need to deal with as an adult, and treating them accordingly.

118

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
My son is absolutely one of those “good, sensitive kids” who doesn’t want to “burden me”, but his idea of “burden” is ridiculously small sometimes - he once told me he didn’t want to go on a field trip which he desperately did want to go on, simply because he deemed the $40 price tag too high to worry me with!
[/QUOTE]

Hah, yes, and conversely they worry themselves to death about telling me that they need to miss one rehearsal, or something!