Your Mother IS Watching

I recently had a discussion with some friends (who don’t have children) about the electronic monitoring available now a days on your children. I was a little surprised at their response.

I was explaining to them how I can check my child’s grades daily. I can see what assignments were given and what score was received on each individual paper. I can see if they were absent from class.  I can set it up so that I can be notified via email if my child gets under a certain grade. I can also monitor his lunch account and see what he ate for lunch. Amazing huh!

My friend said, "well isn’t this a little much? To check daily? How does your child feel about this? Isn’t this invasion of privacy"?

So I took a few moments to think over these things, that honestly I have never really thought about and just considered it “the norm”.

Is it really an invasion of privacy? I am the parent/legal guardian, right! So don’t I deserve to be able to monitor my child? I have every right. Don’t I?

So the more I thought about this, it reminded me of what a school counselor once said to me about my daughter, when she was struggling thru school. He said “whose grades are they”? “Yours or Hers”? At that time, I did not agree with him, it actually pissed me off. My thought was what freakin help are YOU!!!
I do believe that parents need to take an active role in their childs life. At the very least to help guide them in areas they are not knowledgeable enough to make their own decisions yet.

I think with my control freak issues and the easy availability of being able to “check in” on your kid, have  allowed things to get a little out of control, on my part.

I have not ever asked my child how this makes him feel. I just thought I was doing the right thing in helping make sure he was on the right track.

I think after this recent revelation I will cut back a little (seriously, do you think I would not monitor at all????) and maybe not ask him daily about homework.

It is after all his life, his future, and he needs to be the one held accountable for his decisions made.

Harsh? Not really. It is something he will need to learn in life anyways, why not now?