Teen help Please....

[fiveisabunch]

Mind you my oldest daughter turned 13 last week.. Last night everyone went to bed,( we have a cordless phone with answering maching built in) I noticed the light was on in use. I had thought maybe the it was off the hook somewhere. Needless to say I had picke dit up and my daughter was on it. I over heard a few things and she was speaking to a boy. When I said who are you talkin to they both hung up the phone. I asked my daughter to comne down and asked her a few questions. Then I had pressed redial and called this boy back. He was 16 come to find out and lived quite a distance away. Anyway she had lied, I am going to speak to her today but need some advice here (christian) How should I approach this, its all new to me. I dont want to be nasty to where she then just does whatever she wants anyway. Some Help please...

 

[Catherineanne]

Mind you my oldest daughter turned 13 last week.. Last night everyone went to bed,( we have a cordless phone with answering maching built in) I noticed the light was on in use. I had thought maybe the it was off the hook somewhere. Needless to say I had picke dit up and my daughter was on it. I over heard a few things and she was speaking to a boy. When I said who are you talkin to they both hung up the phone. I asked my daughter to comne down and asked her a few questions. Then I had pressed redial and called this boy back. He was 16 come to find out and lived quite a distance away. Anyway she had lied, I am going to speak to her today but need some advice here (christian) How should I approach this, its all new to me. I dont want to be nasty to where she then just does whatever she wants anyway. Some Help please...

Is your daughter forbidden from using the phone? Is she not allowed to speak to boys of 16? How did she find this boy?

I think in this situation with my daughter I would have put the phone down straight away, rather than listening to or interrupting a private conversation, and I would then have said something like, 'Is there something you would like to tell me?' I certainly would not have called the number.

As I see it, our role as parents to teenage children is to teach them about self respect, and about safe boundaries. We cannot do this unless we offer them respect, and we honour their boundaries. No reading diaries, no listening to phone calls, however inadvertantly, no forcing of confidences, and most certainly no hypervigilance in relation to the telephone. I am sure you know that we all talk rubbish on the phone sometimes; it can be a way of letting off steam, and probably means nothing.

This seems to call for a good heart to heart between you and your daughter, to set some ground rules for living. She is entitled to her privacy, and you are entitled to know if she has a boyfriend, and to know something about him. If this is some lad she has found on the internet, then clearly you can do something about that, but the chances are it is all very innocent. The point is to talk, and keep talking, rather than pushing her away.

I wish you well.

 

[fiveisabunch]

I understand what your saying and thank you. Well yes she was grounded from the phone, and yes this was someone she had met online in which she lied about and told him she was 16 also. I caught a piece of the convo to notice it was a older boy she had been speaking with. and I right away called her downstairs. I spoke to her today and did have heart to heart. This was all new to me so I might have reacted a lil upset but i did say i was sorry. Just wasnt sure how to handle the situation considering it was the first time.

 

[Catherineanne]

I understand what your saying and thank you. Well yes she was grounded from the phone, and yes this was someone she had met online in which she lied about and told him she was 16 also. I caught a piece of the convo to notice it was a older boy she had been speaking with. and I right away called her downstairs. I spoke to her today and did have heart to heart. This was all new to me so I might have reacted a lil upset but i did say i was sorry. Just wasnt sure how to handle the situation considering it was the first time.

Fair enough. That changes the matter.

If you ground her from using the phone, then she must respect that. On the other hand, she is 13, and perhaps finds grounding rather too hard to deal with.

I don't blame you for finding this a hard thing to deal with - it must have been difficult. You need to keep talking with her, I would say, and set some very clear rules about what you will and what you will not accept.

My d knows that I will never, under any circumstances, accept her lying to me. As long as she tells me the truth, we can work through whatever the problem is, but the moment she starts to lie, everything goes out of the window, because without truth, there is no meaning to life whatever.

The reason I am so hard on this point is because her dad is an alcoholic and a pathological liar, and we have both suffered from it. So my bottom line is very clear; truth at all times.

You will have different rules, of course, and if she has been banned from the phone already, then clearly there have already been challenges.

Your job is to help her to grow into a responsible adult, so maybe consider what you would want from her when she is 25, and help her to achieve moving towards that behaviour now. That might be an easier task than trying to work out how to deal with a 13 year old.

I wish you well.

 

[HeKnowsMyName]

IMO (and that of a parenting advice columnist) you have every right to listen in to her conversations, read her diary, check up on her etc. You are the parent and are there to protect. My DD (9) was writing back and forth in church with an older girl friend. I read what they wrote to make sure this 'friend' wasn't a bad influence on my child. As a parent I have a right to know these things and you do too.

I just recently read a book by Rebecca Hagelin called 30 Ways to Save Your Famly in 30 Days. It has excellent teen parenting advice and lots of resources. I got mine on half.com for a fraction of the price. She also gives out her email address in there and I can PM you with that if you want it. She encourages you to ask her questions or give her examples of your parenting skills.

 

[Catherineanne]

IMO (and that of a parenting advice columnist) you have every right to listen in to her conversations, read her diary, check up on her etc. You are the parent and are there to protect.

This is not protection, it is crossing personal boundaries.

And any reputable psychologist will tell you that if you constantly ignore personal boundaries when a child is growing up, they will not be able to protect themselves properly when they are an adult.

Which will leave them open to abuses of every kind.

I don't know who that advice columnist was, but s/he is plain and simply wrong. Parents do not have the right to read personal diaries, or listen into private conversations. Such behaviour is not protection, but invasion of personal space, and it is abusive.

If a child is passing notes with another child, and you want to know what they say, then ASK. Most children will be happy to show you. If you force them, then all they learn is to hide better next time. What you do not achieve by that is the establishment of trust, but its destruction.

 

[fiveisabunch]

i kinda understand what you both are saying, on one hand do I want to invade her privacy well no, but who is to say when I ask she tells me the truth anway but by me not checking or even asking she went behind my back and did that anyway. Could have I done things differently sure we are not perfect and I understand that. I do rely on what god says, I PRAY for my children and also "if you teach them the way they should go they will never depart" or come back. I am constantly praying protection for my children, I have to rely on God to be there when Im not. I think at this point from the advice I need to pray and ask god for help, but also to constantly talk and reassure that I will always be here no matter what and I hope she makes the right CHOICES with whatever she does. Thank you again all for the comments.

God Bless

 

[jgonz]

I Firmly believe that as a parent, our primary job is to protect and train our children.

Checking up on them, reading diaries (if you think there are grounds to do so), etc. is Not wrong~ especially if you think something is going on. I think in our society today, WAY too many parents take their hands off as soon as child turns 13 and then can't figure out why their child becomes rebellious, gets into drugs/drinking, lying, etc.

Maybe you could sit down with your DD and make rules for the house. Write them down, and both of you sign them. You need to also agree on what the punishments will be for each item that she doesn't follow. I know several families that use this method (especially for children who weren't raised Christian or with set discipline when growing up) and this works well for them.

In my house, we are very strict (but very loving at the same time). We talk Constantly (not just about discplinary stuff, but Everything). Rules of the house are rules that we've had forever, so we're not suddenly changing things on them just because they're teens. They know that it's our job to help them be the Godly people that they should be until they're out of the house. We often discuss how to handle different situations, or how something might have been handled better.

Some think we're too strict, but we haven't had any rebellion or snotty attitudes, no defiance or other "typical" teenage behavior. We expect them to treat us with respect, and in turn we treat them with respect. They're learning how to function in a family, at different ages. Of course the oldest ones have more leniency than the younger ones, but they still have to run everything by us and ask permission to be out later than their curfews.

I don't know, maybe my situation is different because we have 8 children in our house, from ages 25 down to 14 months old... but the younger ones Watch the older ones and the older ones know they have a responsibility to the younger ones...

 

[Robinsegg]

My oldest will turn 9 next week . . . so I'm *not* a parent of a teen. However, the way these things work (so far) in our house is we address things as we see them come up. Therefore, if a similar situation occurred here, I would talk to my dd, and say "This is a new situation, so we're going to give you new instructions".

Then, we lay down boundaries for what's acceptable and what's not. We also give possible consequences for crossing those boundaries, so she knows in advance what she's choosing.

In our home, lying is an offense whose consequence is lack of trust. I check up on *everything* she does and says for a certain period of time. Yes, this frustrates her. But it also drives home the point that someone who lies cannot be trusted and that if she wants to be trusted, she must tell the truth.

Rachel

 

[HeKnowsMyName]

We've been through the lying phase as well Rachel. For several months afterward I found myself not being able to trust DD and I explained to her in each situation why I didn't and that I wanted to but she had to prove herself to me.

Recently she wore a bracelet that I didn't buy for her. I asked her where she got it from (thinking that one of her friends at school gave it to her - I was going to make her give it back if that was the case). She didn't want to tell me but she knew better than to lie. (Let me just tell you, at this point I was thinking she might have stolen it from a store or something - this is what lying does to parents.) Come to find out, she found it on the playground at school about a month before (school was already out) and didn't tell me. We had a discussion that she should have turned it into the office instead of keeping it.

About checking (spying) on your kids, neither way is particularily right. Parents are going to have different viewpoints. We'll just have to agree to disagree. This is my point of view.

Doing research that you need to do to keep your child safe is good parenting. If you have concerns about what he/she might be getting into, trusting them and thinking they would never lie to you is not the best option again, this is my opinion. Kids lie. Teens lie. My DH is our 'youth pastor' and a teacher at the high school (actually he has a new position now) and he could tell you horror stories about parents trusting their kids to tell the truth. Now if you are spying just to be nosey, that's another story. That's violating privacy rights.

It's not my job to earn the trust of my children. It's supposed to be the other way around. How my kids turn out is my responsibility and nobody elses. So yes I have a RIGHT and OBLIGATION to know what my children are doing on the internet, who their friends are, who they are communicating with on the phone, who is communicating with them by mail, what homework they have, what are they watching on tv, what activities are they involved in, curfew decisions, choosing their friends, dating decisions, clothing decisions, etc.

There are so many dangers in cyberspace that children are unaware of or think they are invincible to, having the mentality it won't happen to them. I always let my children know they can talk to me about anything -- but there are some things I might need to discover myself for their safety. As long as they live under my roof -- it is my right. Privacy is merely a perception. If you are unaware of the exact problems your child is facing, how can you ever give the right advice? Wouldn't it be more awful to find out you can't trust your kids AFTER something bad happens?

I have one chld that is very naive and trusting. It's my job to see that she isn't taken advantage of or that she doesn't get herself in bad situations and if I have to snoop, so be it. My other child is very mischievous and while he's still a preschooler, I can see the future and see that I will be doing much checking up on him. This is my way of parenting. It won't work for everyone.

I think what really worries me is that the 13 year old child of the OP has met someone online and gave him (or either got his) her phone number. She told him she was 16. He told her he was 16. We know she is actually 13 but what actual age is he? He could be 40 for all we know! The internet is a great thing but it is also a dangerous thing. Most teenagers don't have the knowledge to know that you should NEVER give out personal info on the internet. They need to be taught internet safety as well as know that their parents can/will check up on them if needed.

 

[myanchor]

Okay, I can speak from experience. I have a 22 year old son. We trusted him and later he owned up to a lot more than we figured on. I did have enough street smarts to put monitoring software on the computer and caught and blocked many filthy sites and had frequent talks with him. I have an 18 year old daughter. She also tried to get away with a lot of stuff, but I was more savvy, and kept her from some things. She still managed to do some drugs and alcohol, but her 'friends' that were bad influences on her we did manage to get her away from in time. I even got to the point where I had to put a telephone monitor. In that way I was able to watch out for her one night when a girl who was one of her 'friends' made plans with her to leave church, go meet some boys, do some coke, and have sex. I called her frequently that evening and watched her while she was in the parking lot. I also freaked her out when I told her of the people she was meeting after the service when the other girl's mom picked her up. It freaked her out and she said I didn't know you were that careful of me. I said, yeah, you never know where I might show up, eh?

I as the parent have absolute responsibility as she and I both found out when she shoplifted and I got to pay court costs, fines and payback with a penalty the store she stole from. And she didn't even keep the merchandise.

So yes, find out what your child is doing, and monitor them, if they are trustworthy, you can relax somewhat, but if they are not use every weapon in you armory to keep them safe. No matter who disapproves.

My 9 year old is very good at letting me know things, but I still watch.

 

[tiffyof6ntwins]

My 11 yr old has been caught with my cell phone before talking on it after bed time, hours after. the friends mom was one who doesnt care what her kids do so when i caught my daughter on the phone it didnt shock me her friend didnt get in trouble. ( i mind you this was around midnight) everyone else was in bed and sound asleep as i was heading to bed and was going to plug my Cell phone in when i discovered it was gone. when i caught her with it i took it from her and hung it up, told her because she broke the bedtime rules and was on the phone without permission she wasnt going to use the phone or the computer for 3 days, and would be in bed half an hour early for those three days. She never once complained those 3 days and never once touched any of our phones without being asked to or permission.