Parenting is HARD. Being a teenager SUCKS.

One of the rudest awakenings a young parent experiences is the day when, after years of saying, "Ill never do [that] to my child,"--you do. Because it's necessary.

Let's face it: We are all at risk over the Internet, and it pays to be aware, from an early age, what things to avoid in order not to get into trouble.

We had similar experinces. The 2 daughters are good to go and we rarely check up on either of them, and one not at all since she is off to college and we trusted her enough to get her a laptop that was all hers to do as she pleased. Now she is on her own and I trust her to make all the right decisions, she usually does. The youngest, daughter the same, we check on things every now and then and have never had any worries, so far so good. Most of what she does is stupid teen stuff, chat the same, nothing to get worried about.

The son, now that is another situation all together. :headshake He will be 18 and out of the house by the time he is 18 1/2, but until then he will be monitored. And oh btw, when he tries to BS us about what he is doing when it is something we disapprove of, we show him copies of his email or what ever. I have their MySpace access codes as well as livejournal. Once they are out and on their own, they are on their own. Until then...

Seriously, dude, you make me sick.

Spying on ALL his email, ALL his sites, ALL his passwords even?

I'd be outta the house the day I turned 18.

Merc does have a right to do that but if an authoritarian parenting style with 16+ year olds will result in many backlashes. I would personally avoid this type of parenting at this age unless it is absolutely necessary.

My parents trust me but I also have proved to be trusted, I can't say that about all my peers.

You'd have been out long before that. But why don't you want your parents to know what is in your email? What is it about you that you are hiding from them? Why would you not want your parents to know what sites you visit? I mean seriously? They must trust you so that you should not be afraid of them seeing anything you do on the internet, right?

Well how about that. All behavior has consequences.

The biggest flaw I see in your argument is that you seem to fail to see that even your behavior will result in consequences. Parenting is a two way street. Your behavior will affect their behavior which will affect yours which goes back and forth.

I am NOT telling you how to raise your kids but I have seen enough to know what MAY happen. If you have your kids on too short of a leash, they will be more likely to rebel or not know what to do when they are out of the house. If you don't have a leash the same thing will happen. My expierences have favored the middle ground for teenagers.

Well the mistake in your argument is that you don't understand that the I am trying to have consequence in their behavior. That is what parenting is all about.

The second mistake is that you have no idea what kind of "leash" we have our kids on. There has never been a discussion to date of anything outside of internet monitoring. Again, you like most of the people on here imagine something else.

Right. My wife's father use to call this the box theory. Good behavior, larger box. Poor behavior, smaller box. It actually works very well, rewarding good behavior, and punishing bad behavior. Pretty simple actually.

I wasn't trying to accuse of anything but that is what I got from your posts. You attacked Ibram without knowing anything about him so of course I will think that it seems you only see a one way street. I am sorry if I was wrong but that is how you came off whether my assumption was wrong or right.

I say parents should be kept on a tight leash. You never know when mom or dad will act up or wonder off in the market.

I think he made the same mistake. The subject has never veered from Kids and the Internet. How I have raised my kids is not the issue. Somehow the subject, as most in any thread morphed. It morphed to parenting and the role and responsibilities of the parent, with kids and the internet. How I have raised the kids has never once come up in any of these discussions except in the context of the internet. Assumptions have been made, most likely by myself as well. I should not have done so.

Funny you would say that. We had to put my mother, now 87 or something like that, in an assisted living home. Like kids, she is back on the leash.

birth, SEX, death. So the cycle goes.

I still don't see an end to this. Lemme know when Merc decides to grow up.

I think kids do have rights, no matter what their age. The most important right they have is to privacy. They also have a right to be trusted unless they prove themselves untrustworthy. They have a right to be proud of themselves because they've developed cognitively enough to know right from wrong.

Everyone has rights.