Do You Know What Your Children Are Doing?

I know I have posted about this in the past, but I feel it is a very important subject, one that has a lot of controversy at times, however, it is one that needs to be on the minds of parents.

Do you know what your children are doing?

Do you really?

How do you know?

When your child takes the laptop, cell phone, iPod, iPad or whatever other electronic device they own, to their room, what are they doing behind closed doors?

Have you ever snooped on your child? I mean, have you read their texts, emails or looked at sites they have visited on the computer? Did you know there are actually programs that can help you track your child’s actions? We found and article on NYTimes about uKnowKids parental monitoring service, one of the programs you can use to comb through your child’s Facebook page and text messages. It will alert the parents when inappropriate language is being used. You can also go to the dashboard to see what your child is saying on Twitter, who he/she texts and what photos he/she is tagged in on Facebook. What if you don’t understand teenage slang? No worries because this program will translate for you!

If you did snoop or check in on your child, was it because you didn’t trust them, or because you simply wanted to assure yourself that they were behaving as they say they are?

If you haven’t, why haven’t you? Do you feel that you know your child well enough and you don’t think they would do anything “wrong”? Or do you feel that you are invading their privacy if you “snoop”?

Now, did your parents ever check in on you?

Mine did! While I thought it was totally ridiculous when I was growing up, I now find peace knowing that my parents cared enough about me to take the time to look into what I was doing with my time. They cared enough to make sure I wasn’t getting into trouble or being bothered by others.

Often times even when a child is having a problem, they don’t want to turn to their parents for fear that the parents might get upset with them. I would hate to have missed some sort of warning signs only to find out later that my child had a problem, and I wasn’t there to help.

What do you think about keeping track of your child’s actions online and through text?

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