Do you know who your kids are talking to or texting on their cell phones?
Do you worry about your child sexting or being cyper bullied?
Do you worry about who is calling or texting your children?
If given the opportunity, would you use spyware to monitor your child's cell phone use?
Did you know that this is illegal?
Even if you are paying the bill for the phone, in our state, you have to tell your child if you install spyware on their phone.
I have a problem with this...
If I am paying the bill, my child should have no say-so as to what I install on their phone! If I want to be able to know who and how my child is communicating with others, I feel I should not have to tell them or ask their permission. I guess it's the teacher in me...
I am an alternative school teacher. I deal with students that have little or no parenting. They are students that are allowed to do whatever they want with few or little consequences. As I heard this on the last news tonight, I was totally appalled!
It brought back this memory...
We had a student a few months ago who was being bullied by another student through texting. She gave us permission to look at her phone to read the text messages between the two girls. As we looked at the text messages, we stumbled upon some sextexting the girl was doing with her boyfriend!
Just so you know, naked pictures where the LAST thing we wanted to see!! But there they were...
Pictures of him, pictures of her!
We knew the young man. He was 19. The young girl was 14.
As a mother I was appalled. The girls mother had no idea. The young man was a convicted sex offender!
If we had not stumbled on this sexting, the mother never would have known! It's illegal to use a spyware on your child's phone (that you pay for!).
This spyware can be abused...
A mother put spyware on her 3 year old phone and listened in as the child talked with her ex-husband.
This is pushing the intented use of the spyware. But if she is paying the bill, the phone is in her name, doesn't she have the right to listen in to her child's conversations?
Don't you have the right to listen in or see what your child is doing on a phone that is in your name?
Should we as parents only go by what our children say they are doing on the phone?
What are your feelings.....
wonderful post!
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marti
Ugh, I don't get it. I really don't. My daughter has been using myspace since she was 13, facebook only for the past year, but has had a phone since she was 14. We had RULES and we stuck with them. I had and still have ALL her passwords, and she knows that if I NEED to check something I will. We monitored where she was going and what she was doing so closely, and with the phone? By the time she was really using it, she was 16 and we're close enough that she showed me the first picture text she got, which wasn't naked thank God, but pretty dang close. I've never felt the need to do the whole spyware thing because we're tight, she tells me everything (and yes, I do mean everything, for better or worse) but I think we started on the right foot. For absent parents, spyware will never make a difference because they just don't CARE what their kids are doing. I do however feel that parents should have the RIGHT to put whatever the hell they want to on a phone they bought and are paying for. I don't care who it belongs to. If you want me to tell the kid, sure, I'll tell them. It's going on the phone or I get the phone back. Period. End of story. Crazy what people can do and then wonder why kids are outta control. Ugh.
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ReplyDeleteUmmm - don't even get me started! What does a 13 year old need with a phone and texting and all of that? Since when are parents not allowed to "parent"? Oh, my blood pressure is going up... This is totally ridiculous when we are told we cannot monitor our children. We monitor our almost 19 year old's phone and email lol He doesn't care because he has nothing to hide.
ReplyDeleteI am new to your blog and I am so glad to hear your views. SO many parents think their kids have rights. It frustrates me. I work in law enforcement with juvenile delinquents for a living and I have done searches in juveniles rooms and found loaded 9mm handguns and the parents had no idea! Parents need to know everything thats going on!!
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