THE SPIES WHO LOVE ME

Ruth Ann and Robert Lipic knew their children could make mistakes that would
last a lifetime, maybe even shorten a lifetime.

The Bloomington couple wanted to limit the risks to their three boys amid
the teenage temptations of drugs and alcohol. So when one of their teens
would go out, a parent sometimes followed. And when the boys were away,
their rooms, their dresser drawers, their hiding places were open to inspection.

For this the Lipics do not apologize. All three boys are now in their 20s,
and "we're proud of them," Ruth Ann Lipic said.

The Lipics are not alone. In a world that keeps finding new ways to make big
trouble more accessible to the young, many parents think they have to engage
in espionage to keep tabs on their kids.

The Lipics said they didn't obsess about spying. Once the boys proved worthy
of trust, they received it. As the Lipics see it, children aren't born
deserving trust; they earn it.

"This was so they could develop some credibility with us," Ruth Ann Lipic
explained. "Then we felt very comfortable."

As chairwoman of the Illinois chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, she
knows the stakes.

A 1998 report by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
showed that 63 percent of high school seniors reported having been drunk.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services' 1998 survey of seniors
indicated that 41.4 percent had used drugs in the last year, and federal
statistics also show that about a third of high school seniors consider
themselves smokers.

As for sex, surveys show that 56 percent of girls and 73 percent of boys
have engaged in sexual intercourse before age 18, according to the American
Academy of Pediatrics.

Add to all that the new element of trouble that can be found via Internet
sex merchants and chat-room stalkers, and the reason for parental anxiety is
clear.

What isn't as clear is the propriety of parents spying on their children.

Is it right to read children's diaries, search their rooms, tail them to
teen hangouts?

Conscientious parents can be found on both sides of the issue.

One camp believes that protection of a teen outweighs the right to privacy.
One north suburban mother went as far as collecting her sons' hair from a
barbershop for drug analysis.

She resorted to spying after her two teen sons grew increasingly
uncommunicative and aggressive, even punching holes in the walls. She
started following her boys when they went out, kept a journal of how they
behaved after being with certain friends and finally removed the door from
their room to deny them privacy. As for the hair, she put it into a
drug-detection kit she bought for $60 at a drugstore and mailed it off for
analysis.

The results: "We didn't find any of the hard stuff," meaning drugs such as
cocaine and heroin. But she knew they had used marijuana, and she also had
other evidence of alcohol use.

She said she was able to help control their activities by denying them use
of her car and greatly restricting their access to money. She even bought
generic clothing rather than items with trademarks that might have made the
clothing worth selling.

After a couple of rough years, with countless family battles and trips to
counselors, she thinks things have settled down. The boys have matured, but
she believes that if she had not gone out of her way to find out what they
were doing, they could have been lost to addiction. "There is no line I
won't cross," she said. When it comes to their health and potential for a
good life later, teen privacy does not rate among her priorities.

She has plenty of company. The owner of the Spy Shop Inc. on Chicago's Near
North Side estimates that 20 percent of his business in video-monitoring
equipment such as "nanny cams" is for families--not just parents wanting to
check on the baby-sitter but also for parents spying on their latchkey children.

Though video monitoring falls within a parent's legal rights, wiretaps are
illegal under federal and state eavesdropping statutes. If parents venture
into that territory, they are on shaky ground, though spokesman Bob Benjamin
of the Cook County state's attorney's office said parent-child eavesdropping
is a criminal area that really hasn't been tested.

More clear cut is home drug-testing, a market that is seeing steady growth.
Bill Minot, marketing director for drug-test manufacturer Psychemedics Corp.
of Cambridge, Mass., said his company began offering over-the-counter kits
for home use three years ago at the behest of parents. Though the bulk of
Psychemedics' business is workplace testing, the home market is growing
steadily, he added, and has increased significantly in the last six months,
though he would not disclose exact figures. The $60 kits require a simple
snippet of hair that is sent to the company for analysis. Results are
available in about a week, Minot said, adding that the kits are sold in
10,000 drugstores nationwide.

Minot suggests avoiding the espionage approach, however. "We recommend that
you talk with your child and let him know and show him the collection
device, so it becomes a deterrent," he said. "Get one and leave it on the
shelf."

Some parents even hire someone else to do the spying. Ed Bray, a private
investigator with Bray & Associates in Arlington Heights, said he has had
about 20 cases on the North Shore in which parents paid him to check up on kids.

The bulk of those cases were simply to check for teen parties while parents
were out of town, he explained, but once he staged a drug bust at a teen
party -- before the real thing could occur. "(Parents have) a kid who's
acting up," he said, "and they don't want the kid to have a (rap) sheet."

But espionage can be dangerous to parent-child relationships, cautions Fran
Stott, dean of academic programs at the Chicago-based Erikson Institute for
Advanced Study in Child Development.

"Spying is adversarial," she explained, and can undermine any foundation of
mutual trust a parent needs to build with a teenager. "Teenagers are really
primarily undertaking to establish their identity. Part of that is having to
make their own mistakes," she said. "It is very scary. I think as a parent,
we are very anxious not to let children make mistakes, and our anxiety only
causes more problems than it solves.

"Sometimes the more we don't know, the better off we are. That is not to say
there aren't times when teenagers are showing signs that we need to take
very seriously -- if there is evidence of drug use, of an eating disorder or
a drinking problem. If there is evidence of real psychological distress, it
is our job as parents to sort it out. I personally would try to do it in a
more straightforward way."

Severe distress will manifest itself in ways that don't require spying, she
said, such as drastic changes in moods and grades or associations with new
friends. Loving but firm confrontation is a better approach than spying,
said Stott, who has a 29-year-old son and three grown stepchildren. And if
parents see evidence of severe trouble, she added, "seek professional help.
Your goal is not to allay your own anxiety or vent your own anger; your goal
is to help your child, and that's always got to be the North Star."

Teens tend to agree with Stott.

"There are things (teenagers) need to experience on their own in their own
way," said Brittany Cable, 16, of Antioch, a junior at Antioch Community
High School. "It kind of helps you mature faster." She added of her parents,
"I think that if they need to find something out, they should just ask me
and I'll let them know. I consider myself a pretty truthful person. If they
were to confront me with a problem, I would most likely tell them."

She acknowledged that any hint of drug use is an open invitation for
parental invasion. But even at that, she said, confrontation is the better
option. "Even have them do a drug test," she said. "I wouldn't mind that at
all."

Deepa Rangachari, 18, a senior at Hinsdale Central High School, said of
spying by parents: "I think it would be insulting. I think that my parents
can trust me, that I'm independent enough and responsible enough to keep
myself out of trouble. . . . When things aren't going well between a parent
and child, this isn't something that's going to make things better. I would
try talking to the kid's friends if I knew them well, maybe ask them to keep
an eye out. But spying on your kid doesn't seem like it would improve the
situation at all."

Yvonne Webster of Oak Park, an immigrant from Belize and mother of four boys
aged 10 to 23, decided to talk with her children's friends.

"We heard rumors that gangs were infiltrating the high school," she said. "I
got very nervous when I heard things to that effect." Fearing that her two
older sons were not telling her all she needed to know, she talked with
their friends to find out what was going on at the school, Oak Park River
Forest High School. "They were just getting into shouting matches with
students," she said of her sons, "but that was it." She also searched the
boys' rooms and went through their pockets, but she never found any evidence
of a problem.

"They felt they were such adults," she said, explaining why they didn't
always confide in her. To her, spying was justified, though she has not seen
a need to use it with her younger sons. "Kids are so precious," she added,
"and we all need to be respectful of them, but when they enter high school
and see the problems they could be influenced by, we have to find ways to
protect them. If spying is the route we have to take, I don't want to be
condemned for that. I would do it again."

A child's safety should outweigh any qualms about espionage, according to
social worker Dave Clinton of Joliet Township High School's alternative
school for disturbed children. But he said this applies only if parents have
legitimate reasons to be concerned.

"You wonder what is in that dresser, in that diary," he said. "I say it is
not a good idea to invade that space. I say that's off limits unless there
is some clear provocation. Then I'm not snooping; I'm worried. Kids can
understand reasons, but not snooping."

That sentiment echoes the views of one of the most listened-to yet
controversial national voices on the subject, Laura Schlessinger, the Los
Angeles-based radio adviser, who said: "Parents are told by me that they are
to respect their children's nest and `stuff.' However, when a parent has
reason to believe that there might be a problem (sex, drugs, criminality,
for example), it is their obligation to use whatever means is at their
disposal to gain the information necessary to ultimately help and protect
their child. Children who are `off track' don't generally talk openly to
their parents out of guilt, shame, mental/emotional problems, foolishness, etc."

"If they aren't talking," said another mother, Carolyn Sehmer of
Lindenhurst, "you're uninformed unless you do a little detective work
yourself. I know there are a lot of bad parents who abuse parental power,
but I think there is a place for good investigative work with your kids.
Networking with other parents is the best way."

As a mother of five aged 13 to 19, she said, she has engaged more in soft
spying, such as straining to listen to phone calls until she is sure all is
well. But her best method, she said, is volunteering at Antioch High School,
where she has helped organize such events as post-prom parties. She has
found that simply by being at the school, she picks up good information on
the entire teen culture there.

Barbara Cavanagh, a Woodridge mother whose seven children range in age from
4 to 23, would agree that many children may not talk openly, but the idea of
spying makes her uncomfortable. She shares a view with the hair-gathering
mother, however: "Never trust a teenager." Rather than snooping, Cavanagh's
approach simply is to limit the opportunities for wrongdoing.

"Love them to death, but don't trust them," she said. "By saying I don't
trust them, it doesn't mean I don't respect their privacy. But things like
sleepovers in high school, no way! I just say no."

She added that a parent can't even trust other parents. "For the
bubbleheads, it's a lot easier to sit back and think everything is going to
be fine."

One north suburban father knew everything with his preteen son was not fine.
Officials at his son's junior high school said they suspected drug use
because of the boy's troublemaking.

The boy had been caught venturing out late at night and making prank phone
calls. To keep tabs on his son, the father tailed him when the boy went out,
searched his room for evidence of wrongdoing and put a piece of tape on the
door each night to detect whether the boy was venturing into the wee hours.

"I'd get up in the morning at 4 o'clock and he'd be gone," the father said.
"He was out walking around with his friends. . . . I had the police here
three times. (Kids) are so secretive. They live in their own little world."

The father took the boy to a hospital for drug testing, which came up
negative. In fact, the youth wasn't even taking the Ritalin he was supposed
to be using for attention deficit disorder.

The boy, now 14, is in a residential treatment facility for
behavior-disordered youths but returns home on weekends. And things are
going well, the boy said.

"They trust me now," he said. "I'm not getting into trouble as much. I talk
to them about stuff more."

And though the spying, particularly his father's following him to see who he
was associating with, bothered him, he said, he thinks now that perhaps it
was necessary to help bring a resolution to his behavioral problems.

"I'm sure I could have gotten in a lot more trouble if they didn't care," he
said of his parents.

But many of those sensitive to the subject of family espionage, even those
who resorted to spying, urged this bottom-line caution: Be careful. These
are humans, not hobbies.

And one last frightening thought: Kids can spy too.

YOU CAN DRIVE BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE

Let's say a mother is waiting for her 17-year-old daughter to get home with
the car. The girl already is an hour late, so the mother boots up the family
computer, gains access to an Internet-linked company's site and Aha! The
blip on the map shows the car sitting at a pizza place. This technology is
available now, and it could be the end of privacy as teenagers know it -- or
as anybody knows it. The system shows precisely what street a car is on, how
fast the vehicle is moving and in which direction. The system is marketed
for large-scale tracking oper-ations, such as company fleets and prisoners.

The technology uses GPS, or global positioning system, of 24 satellites
oper-ated by the U.S. Defense Department, the same system that has
revolutionized navigation. Anyone with an Internet-connected computer is
able to pinpoint anywhere on the planet the location of a vehicle, person or
simple object, provided it carries the locator device.

William B. Lockwood of Pro Tech Monitoring Inc. in Palm Harbor, Fla., and
Mark Nemcek of SPS Technologies in Ft. Lauderdale represent two companies
considering the family application.

Lockwood said: "I've done some preliminary looking at some of the statistics
around, for instance teenage driving. A very high percentage of fatalities
involve teen driving."

"We haven't really been active marketing that," Nemcek said of personal auto
tracking. "The consumer is dragging us into this."

Though the system can be had now for $700 to $800, Nemcek said, he expects
the cost for an individual setup to be about $500, with a monthly fee of $15
to $20, once the individual market really opens up.