Do you check the text messages on teenagers phone?

[MomToOne]

Can someone explain to me why you give your kids cell phones/ipods/ect if you are going to read all/every text anyway? What's the point? Don't you allow them any privacy? Didn't you raise them to make the right choices? I am not trying to start a debate or fight, I am just really curious to the reasons why.

Seriously, everyone raises their kids different and I am just wondering they different reasons, please don't shoot me! LOL

1. So my child can call or text ME in case of a problem. (Why she got her phone)

2. So my child can listen to music, and play games. (Why she got her iPod - her phone is not a smart phone)

Communicating with her friends is just something that came along with the phone and iPod, not why she was given them.

I am raising my daughter in a way I HOPE will teach her to make good choices. But really - how do any of us KNOW that what we've tried to teach them has gotten through? And my daughter is 13 - at that age, all the way into their 20s, their brains do not function the way adult brains do and they don't appreciate the long-term consequences of many decisions and have poor impulse control. So they make silly choices sometimes, despite all you've tried to teach them. Here are some articles explaining why: http://brainconnection.brainhq.com/decision-making-is-still-a-work-in-progress-for-teenagers/, http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/teenage-brain1.htm

 

[niffer5150]

Can someone explain to me why you give your kids cell phones/ipods/ect if you are going to read all/every text anyway? What's the point? Don't you allow them any privacy? Didn't you raise them to make the right choices? I am not trying to start a debate or fight, I am just really curious to the reasons why.

Seriously, everyone raises their kids different and I am just wondering they different reasons, please don't shoot me! LOL

my kid has a phone because the school doesn't have payphones. they are not allowed to use the office phone either. it's supposed to be a tool i can use to get ahold of her or so she can get ahold of me, not just a fun toy.

of course you try to raise your kid to make smart choices but kids are kids and most screw up every once in awhile. however, how can i parent if i'm totally oblivious to any danger they are in or any wrong doing? it's not like i'd know they was misbehaving if i never bother to check.

even if i 100% trusted MY kid, she's not texting herself. other people who don't care what their kids do let their kids have phones too. i've had to block numbers because someone wouldn't stop sending her porn, even after she asked them to stop over and over. my kid was just trying to ignore it because she didn't know a better way and was trying to deal with it herself. if i hadn't checked, there'd still be thousands of porn texts(in a 2 week span) to my kids phone. if a teacher were to see that on her phone, all heck would break loose and she'd probably end up suspended.

it's my JOB as a parent to be aware. i don't care about cussing. i don't care if she says mean things about me. i only care that the content is more or less age appropriate and with friends she knows in real life.

 

[SEA333]

Can someone explain to me why you give your kids cell phones/ipods/ect if you are going to read all/every text anyway? What's the point? Don't you allow them any privacy? Didn't you raise them to make the right choices? I am not trying to start a debate or fight, I am just really curious to the reasons why.

Seriously, everyone raises their kids different and I am just wondering they different reasons, please don't shoot me! LOL

My kid got a cell phone when he started walking home after school in 6th grade instead of going to a babysitter, so I could reach him. We don't have a landline. The texting and internet capabilities came along with the phone. It was cheaper to add a 3rd line for $20 a month and get a free smartphone than it was to buy a prepaid plan with a crappy phone. With the added phone features came added responsibility - for both DS and us as parents.

Its really not a complicated concept. And I don't think a single person said they read all/every text, so it really does sound like you are trying to be condescending.

 

[lisaross]

Op here. My son got his 1st phone when he started middle school - I wanted him to have it to call me because he was taking the school bus to and from school- so incase of a delay or something. All his friends had smartphones

In December the middle of 8 the grade I got him his iphone - I think they they need to "learn" social to do' and don't s - of course I think he's a great kid but he is only 14 so much new stuff in his life - girls a bit more freedom etc - all kids will lie and that's ok to a degree it's all a learning process and I just overlook some things and others I discuss when need be. My job as a parent is to parent and at 14 I realize I have to give him his freedom to grow but be there to remind him of consequences

 

[nluvwithdisney]

I think you are just asking for trouble when parents don't act like parents. It requires some involvement and engagement and resolve to raise a child. It doesn't mean having to be in the know of every last detail but too many parents regret letting their children run loose. That's when you hear that phrase... I didn't know they were doing that.

Of course, I speak as a person without children. My wife and I may not have given birth to any but we know there is effort involved to raise one.

 

[jennilynn510]

i check everything! Iphone, instagram, facebook, kik, twitter... you name it & im snooping thru it. told my kids when they pay their own bill they can have privacy

 

[EMode]

I think you are just asking for trouble when parents don't act like parents. It requires some involvement and engagement and resolve to raise a child. It doesn't mean having to be in the know of every last detail but too many parents regret letting their children run loose. That's when you hear that phrase... I didn't know they were doing that.

Of course, I speak as a person without children. My wife and I may not have given birth to any but we know there is effort involved to raise one.

Not reading your child's text does not equate to letting them run loose

 

[blessedby3]

I have a 15 yr old dd who I check on her phone frequently.
My two oldest kids (24, 18) I never had to do this. My 15 yr old doesn't make good choices. The "if you raise them right then you should be able to trust them" line isn't always true.
I feel like we have raised our kids "right". Taught them right from wrong, they have been in church and raised in a Christian home all their lives. They know what we expect, etc.
Our DD15 has ADHD and high impulsivity. She has been making bad choices with her phone (contacting strangers with Instagram, texting same strangers, lying to her parents constantly, etc.). She makes bad choices period even though she knows what is okay and not. We have confronted her about it and she continues to make the same bad choices. I think she lost the opportunity to have privacy a long time ago. It is not a "right" in our house. You have to be able to be trusted to have the privacy here. She can't be trusted and so we monitor her phone, internet, etc. DH even changed her password so she can't download apps. We got rid of her Instagram as well. We told her to stay off snap chat as we feel this is a very dangerous thing, and took that off her phone too.
She has lost her phone for now and hasn't had it for a couple of weeks. Don't know when she will get it back. DH says you wouldn't put a loaded gun in a childs hands, and her phone is like a loaded gun to her.
Each child is different and their phone and privacy level will be different. Its not an across the board answer to say "you should never check" or "you should always check"…or "if you raised them right you can trust them"…trust me-I am there now and its no fun!

 

[figment3258]

Yes I do I have a 11 dd who had iMessage on her iPod and she has a regular cell phone ( used for being dropped off at sports) and I do regular checks

 

[DumboDash2006]

Yes, I check her texts and Instagram often. Mostly every day but not always. I follow her on IG and made sure she is set to private etc. So far that's the only social media she uses, no interest in FB (cause that's for old people now lol) and she hasn't asked for Twitter. She wanted Snapchat but I said no.

 

[DumboDash2006]

Can someone explain to me why you give your kids cell phones/ipods/ect if you are going to read all/every text anyway? What's the point? Don't you allow them any privacy? Didn't you raise them to make the right choices? I am not trying to start a debate or fight, I am just really curious to the reasons why.

Seriously, everyone raises their kids different and I am just wondering they different reasons, please don't shoot me! LOL

My dd got a phone when she started middle school, mostly for health reasons. She has type 1 diabetes and her school has no nurse/nurses aide etc. In fact none of the buildings in our small six building district have them. In elementary school she had parapro that we trained to help along with secretaries. By middle school we didn't feel that was necessary or wanted by her (what middle schooler wants a parapro checking in with them several times a day or lurking at lunch?). So we trained the school staff on severe emergencies and she does the rest on her own, however often texts me for assistance on carb counts, blood sugar problems etc.

That said dd has ADHD. She's not nearly as impulsive as she used to be and is usually fairly responsible. However she is still a teenager and teenagers with and without cell phones sometimes make bad choices, even good, properly raised teens. So I check her phone sometimes. And she doesn't mind anymore. About a year ago she had a "boyfriend". Meaning a boy a grade above her at school that was in her class that she talked to at school and texted/talked on the phone with (she is not allowed to date). I checked her phone one morning and found he had been texting her inappropriate sexual questions and talking to her in a very rude manner the night before. We talked and she started crying saying she was upset by what he had said but didn't know what to do. I told her she wasn't going to be texting with him ever again. Then I told her it would probably be a good idea to tell him to take a hike. She agreed and gave me a hug and thanked me. She then texted him to tell him to tell him didn't want to speak to him anymore after the things he had said and to please not contact her again. We then blocked his number. A few days later she again thanked me for stepping in and gave me a huge hug.

So I'm glad I check her phone. She was annoyed by it when she first got her phone but then became used to it and after that said she doesn't mind a bit anymore lol.

 

[Mrs. Bradbury]

As a mom to 2 now-grown children and also a 16 year old, I have insight that I could not have had when my older two kids were in their tweens/teens, which is:

1) Kids are going to do what they are going to do.
2) Kids that have "the best raising possible" - i.e., religious training, family involvement, etc. do things that would shock and horrify their parents.
3) They all do it - never for one minute should anyone think their child is immune.

However, almost all kids come out of adolescence fairly unscathed.

Past a certain age, thinking that you have control of your child is false security.

Think back to your own childhood - whatever you did, most likely your kids are doing. And guess what? Your parents probably did the same. I remember nearly falling out of my chair when a elderly lady was recounting how her husband didn't like it when she would "drag race down Main St." with their infant daughter in the car (the infant daughter now old enough to be MY mother). When I knew her, she was a stereotypical blue-haired old lady.

 

[nluvwithdisney]

Not reading your child's text does not equate to letting them run loose

True. Lol. But acting oblivious to whatever they do does.

 

[luvsJack]

I think you are just asking for trouble when parents don't act like parents. It requires some involvement and engagement and resolve to raise a child. It doesn't mean having to be in the know of every last detail but too many parents regret letting their children run loose. That's when you hear that phrase... I didn't know they were doing that.

Of course, I speak as a person without children. My wife and I may not have given birth to any but we know there is effort involved to raise one.

Of course there is effort and of course you have to act like a parent and parent your teen. But reading all of their personal conversations is not the only way to parent.

Many parents managed to parent their children very well for many years without having access to their kids' private conversations.

The most important involvement and engagement is between the parent and the child NOT necessarily knowing what the child says to their friends.

 

[skylizard]

I'm just chiming in to say that you don't actually have to check their phone physically to see their messages (not to mention they could've deleted them). You can install a program like iexplorer on your computer. Everytime the phone gets backed up to itunes on your computer, iexplorer keeps a history of all those backups. It's a program meant to help manage transferring of your playslists/songs/video and backing them up, but it also keeps track of all the other media and data (texts,calls,contacts) on your phone.

ETA: So even if something has been deleted, iexplorer saves it as a "recovery" file just in case.

 

[Colleen27]

I had a similar incident with DD13 - don't assume you know the whole story and those parents were so wrong. My DD13 is not allowed to date until high school, but she had a "boyfriend" at school when she was 12. She never saw him outside of school, but it wasn't just texting, sitting together at lunch and holding hands - there was some other physical activity also. Nothing super awful, but nothing she should have been doing at 12. She hid it from me for months because she knew I wouldn't allow it. She eventually fessed up and told me about it, but it had gone much further than it should have. And the boy was playing her hard - already telling her he was going to marry her, and she believed every single word of it (I told you she was gullible!). Goodness only knows where that boy could have gotten her to go with more time. And yeah, I came down hard on her - primarily for breaking a very clear rule that I had a very good reason for having - and she was punished.

I'm sure that whole story was told to her friends as something like "My Mom punished me just because I said he was my boyfriend" - which is what would have then gone forward to their parents. Not exactly the truth.

I feel I absolutely did the right thing. Her class had their first pregnancy this year - an 8th grade boy got an 8th grade girl pregnant. Things ARE different than when I was a kid. In my school days, the big scandle was when a high school senior in my class got pregnant and had to get married - now it's 8th graders!

With my DD and her friends I have a pretty good sense of the truth. She goes to a very small school, 21 kids in the whole of middle school - not only do I know the friend who got in trouble and her parents, I also know the boyfriend and his parents, and I've spent enough days on lunch room/chaperon duty to have a working knowledge of the social goings-on when they think no one is paying attention. I didn't get the story from DD and her friend, I got it from the girl's parents when they were explaining why their DD couldn't text me if she needed a ride to an activity both girls are involved in.

We're also the "hang out house" in both of the older kids' social circles, which is a mixed blessing now that they're getting older... I hear everything. Some of it things I wish I hadn't (not so much from DD12's circle, but from DS16's), but as hard as it is not to go ballistic I think there is an advantage to knowing what the kids he hangs out with are up to so we can keep the lines of communication open and have discussions about the situations that are likely to come up. Neither of my kids are particularly sheltered or gullible, and so far neither have shown me any reason to worry about what they're getting into.

 

[100AcreWood]

Yes but not because I think my dd is doing anything wrong. I've had too many friends comment on their children receiving pictures that were inappropriate. Recently someone told me about a sweet 14 year old that was drawn into a texting relationship with an older boy who knew just what to say. If her mom hadn't read her texts who knows what could happen.

 

[Colleen27]

Think back to your own childhood - whatever you did, most likely your kids are doing. And guess what? Your parents probably did the same. I remember nearly falling out of my chair when a elderly lady was recounting how her husband didn't like it when she would "drag race down Main St." with their infant daughter in the car (the infant daughter now old enough to be MY mother). When I knew her, she was a stereotypical blue-haired old lady.

It amazes me how many parents are hell bent on preventing their kids from making the same bad choices they made when they were teens. I'm not talking about life-altering things like pregnancy or addiction, I'm talking about the everyday teenage mistakes that the vast majority make, learn from, and move on. Even if we could manage our teens' behaviour to that degree, what kind of generation would those young people who have never learned from a bad choice and never had to face the consequences of their own screw-ups grow up to be?

 

[maciec]

You better believe I am going to try my best to prevent my kids from making the same mistakes I made. My parents didn't check up on me one bit and boy did I take advantage of it. I can't tell you how many times I snuck out of the house, the drugs I did , the alcohol I drank, taking my brothers car when none of us had a license, smoking, the list could go on. My parents had no clue. I hid it very well from the age of 13-16 (those were my really bad years). Don't get me wrong, my parents were good parents, but they just let me "make my own mistakes". Mistakes that had I not made I would have a better job. I am NOT going to let my kids make those mistakes.

Had I gotten arrested my parents would have been the ones to say "my child would NEVER do that". OMG I pretty much did it all and they had no clue.

I am not a helicopter parent with my kids. We have very open conversations about everything. I do check my dd's (13) Instagram and her text messages. The rule is I can check whenever I/we want and we know all of her passwords. I'm not stupid and I know that there are going to be deleted text messages, but on the off shoot she forgets one day and is in the process of making a bad decision I can either stop it or talk her into realizing there are better ways to do things.

 

[EMode]

As a mom to 2 now-grown children and also a 16 year old, I have insight that I could not have had when my older two kids were in their tweens/teens, which is:

1) Kids are going to do what they are going to do.
2) Kids that have "the best raising possible" - i.e., religious training, family involvement, etc. do things that would shock and horrify their parents.
3) They all do it - never for one minute should anyone think their child is immune.

However, almost all kids come out of adolescence fairly unscathed.

Past a certain age, thinking that you have control of your child is false security.

Think back to your own childhood - whatever you did, most likely your kids are doing. And guess what? Your parents probably did the same. I remember nearly falling out of my chair when a elderly lady was recounting how her husband didn't like it when she would "drag race down Main St." with their infant daughter in the car (the infant daughter now old enough to be MY mother). When I knew her, she was a stereotypical blue-haired old lady.

True. Lol. But acting oblivious to whatever they do does.

Yes but I don't think anyone here has said they are oblivious. I have a 16, 13 and a 10 year old, I know more than they think I do. If I need to intervene I will but I'll also give them some freedom to make some mistakes. Like the other pp I quoted said almost all kids come out of adolescence unscathed