PARENTS ASK: SHOULD I SPY?

Technology Brings New Urgency To Checking Up On Teens - And Makes It Easier
To Snoop

Maybe you want to respect your kids' privacy, but you worry about drinking.
Or drugs. Or Internet chat rooms where adults prey on teen-agers.

Maybe you worry because you know what you did as a teen-ager.

At some point in parenthood, you face the dilemma: Do you snoop?

Do you check coat pockets? Read diaries? Open drawers?

The dilemma's not new, but it's more complex today, as parents confront
issues nonexistent a generation ago. Consider school shootings committed by
boys whose parents seemed clueless about incriminating activities that led
up to the tragedies.

Or consider the Internet, which allows teens to research both book reports
and hard-core pornography.

New technology, meanwhile, makes it easier to keep tabs on offspring. Some
home drug-testing kits need only a hair sample. Entrepreneurs are marketing
global portable navigation systems to track your kids. And a genre of
software known as "spyware" lets you eavesdrop online, recording every
e-mail or instant message your child sends and receives. So does
responsible parenting in the new century require prying into your kids'
privacy?

Jennifer Polvere of Matthews believes it does. When she cleans her
16-year-old daughter's room, she reads notes she finds lying around. She
also has gone through her daughter's purse and school bag. When she sees
something she doesn't like, she confronts her daughter.

Polvere's snooping angers her daughter, Lindsey. "It looks like she doesn't
trust me, she doesn't let me have my own teen-age privacy, like she has to
know everything," she says.

But Polvere believes her actions are necessary. "These parents who don't
snoop, they're in denial and they don't want to know," she says.

Charlotte parent Nancy Edwards, on the other hand, says she'd never read
the e-mail or diaries of her two daughters. "It's an issue of trust," she says.

In families where parents have clearly communicated expectations, "then you
don't run into the need to spy and snoop as much," she says.

Edwards' 16-year-old daughter, Jennifer Zartman, thinks her own parents "do
an excellent job."

But she knows parents of peers who pry either too much or too little. The
ones whose parents should be worried often aren't concerned, she says. And
the ones who have no reason to worry are overly intrusive.

"Some parents are so naive," she says, "and some need to trust their kids a
little more."

Most experts agree that parents have a right - and responsibility - to know
where their children are and what they're doing as long as they live at home.

As long as kids are 12 or younger, the privacy issue isn't as contentious.
It's easy to consider that younger kids' entire lives are their parents'
business, says Steve Newman, prevention/wellness coordinator for
Mecklenburg County's Health Department.

The issue gets stickier, however, in the teen years, when children exert
their right to privacy as part of growing up and becoming independent.

A current public service announcement produced by Partnership for a
Drug-Free America endorses an in-your-face school of parenting.

The spot features a series of teens seemingly berating their parents:

"You invaded my privacy."

" My privacy."

" I hated it."

"I hated you."

"I thought you were the worst parents in the world."

But the spot ends with a kicker. A teen looks straight into the camera and
says: "Thanks."

"What we're trying to do is remind parents that we have a responsibility to
wade into that gray zone of what kids think of as privacy," says Tom
Hedrick, vice chairman of Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Hedrick believes many baby boomers - himself included - wanted to parent
differently than their parents did. They wanted to be less overbearing,
more of a friend to their kids.

"For many of us," he says, "I think we let the pendulum swing too far. I
think all of us are trying to find an appropriate middle ground."

Some circumstances warrant snooping, he says. If a child's demeanor changes
- - if he becomes moody, his grades fall or he's been caught engaging in
dangerous behavior, such as drug use, "then I would take more 'invasion of
privacy' actions with him," Hedrick says.

But make your intentions clear to your child, some experts say.

Newman says he'd tell his child up front that he's concerned about her
behavior, and "If I see your coat, I may see if there's anything in its
pockets. If I'm in your room and something looks suspicious, I'm going to
look at it."

When it comes to figuring the best way to monitor computer use, opinions
differ. Some advocate spy software, which allows you to read kids' e-mails
and learn whether they've used the computer to access violent or
adult-content Web sites.

Charlotte father Jamie Tyler, a network systems engineer, says such
precautions make sense. In his work, he's seen home computers that
contained files with pornographic photos and bomb-making instructions. The
files were created by children. Their parents had no idea they existed.

Tyler's oldest child is only 9, but when his children get old enough to do
instant messaging, he plans to install a monitoring program, with their
knowledge.

Others, however, believe most parents should be able to monitor a child's
computer use adequately if they understand the technology and monitor them
visually.

Says Hedrick: "If they're not giving you any excuse to snoop in their
e-mail, then I think you have to ask yourself, 'Am I doing this for them or
me?' Is it more your issue?"

Even though Hedrick advocates intruding on a child's privacy on some
occasions, he says it's not always justified.

"I'm uncomfortable with the idea that I have to have access to every piece
of my son's life. I think he has to make many of his own mistakes, the way
I did. But I think it's my job to help him avoid some of the more serious
mistakes."