Do You Read Your Kid’s Email?

It might be a violation of privacy to read your child's email but a necessary violation. All caring and CONCERN parents should read their children's email so as to be very aware of what their children are discussing. Look at the creeps out there that entice children to get caught up in mischief. The more you know what your children are up to the more caring and concern a parent you are.

It is definitely okay to read your child's email and monitor other areas, such as myspace and checking to see what sites they visit, even if you have a filter. How many notes did our parents dig out of our pockets and read when we were kids?!!!! Get involved! They say they don't like it, but they will know you care.

Having taught Jr. and Sr. High school for thirty years, I am pleased to read what the previous parents are saying. If your children trust your love and you trust theirs, you can be sure that you will be thanked for this protective "invasion".

I have a teen aged daughter who, along with most of the children her age, has an email account and a myspace page. My daughter IS NOT allowed on the computer here at home without my supervision. She is allowed access at school. I check her emails and her myspace page everyday. It is the only way I can find out what others are saying to her. It isn't that I don't trust my child, but at the tender age that she is, she could be very easily influenced. I have a pure, innocent daughter, and I want to keep her that way! Of course, she doesn't think its fair that we invade on her privacy, but I explained that the world wide web is not "privacy", its world wide! And as for it being fair, one of my favorite phrases to my children is: "The fair comes to town one time a year, and this is not that time!"
She doesn't understand right now, but eventually she will appreciate it. Yes, I read her emails and monitor her time on line. It is only because I love her and want to protect her.

Not only do I read my 16 yr old son's email, but I go onto his MySpace page and remove disrespectful items and sexually explicit photos that girls from ages 12 - 21 send to him. He has no idea that I know how to get into his MySpace page, however, inorder to log on, you need to know your childs email address, then click onto "Forgot My Password". And since I created his email account, I know his email password, so I can retrieve his MySpace password from there, then logon and clean up the garbage before he even sees it. After reviewing the myspace account and see the awful photos and read the propositions from the girls, I go back to his email and put a block on the email addresses of those undisirable kids that invite him to be their "friend". I have no problems with this! NONE!

As much as I hate to do it (as I do feel it is a breach of privicy)...I also feel it is my responcability, as a good parent, to be concerned and keep track of anything my kids are doing online or in the real world!!! Only parents who do not care, would not do this for fear of privacy issues. My kids know they are tracked and I know everyplace they go and everything they do. That's what keeps them safe adn they understand that and actually appreciate it for the most part. My youngest gets a bit snide about it, until we remind him he will just not get online if he has a problem with it. LOL!My oldest will actually call me in to show me somethign if he finds it acidentaly. He was looking up a Pokemon site a few years ago...and hit one letter wrong...only to find he was on a porn site! He was about 11 or 12 then and yelled MOM GET IN HERE and was horrified that he had come across it like he did. He was concerned other kids might find it like he did and not have parents who watch them to ke

I ABSOLUTELY read whatever, whenever. I track ALL the kids in my family and alert their parents abouts sexual activity and drug use. I am in the psych field and i reach out to the kids and give them a chance to talk to their parents first, but I MOST DEFINITELY keep up with what all the kids are up to! I wish someone had cared enough to do the same for me when I was a teenager, then maybe I wouldn't have done as many crazy things as I did. Believe it or not, our kids will ALWAYS need us, just to varying degrees. I keep up on the lingo, I read the books they read so we have stuff to talk about, I watch shows I hate so I can keep up on "the latest"...I'm a "cool" parent, but I'm strict and NOSY at the same time. But guess where all the 16-17 year olds were (not drinking) on New Years Eve? You got it, MY HOUSE!!! Be all about hteir business, just remember to listen and to really care!

16 is not grown yet either. In a small town near here a boy from another state started talking to a high school senior. He wanted to come meet her and when she said that it was too quick for that that they needed to talk and get to know each other first. In two days he had shown up at her school and asked to see her. When he wasn't allowed he waited outside and watched until she came out for cheerleader practice. When he spoke to her it scared her but she talked to him and told him to go home that her parents would not let her date a stranger. He told her that he didn't want to date, she was his soul mate and he had come to marry her. She didn't tell her parents because she knew she would get in trouble for talking to him on the computer. When they got her the computer she had promised she would only use it for studing. They trusted her. The boy stalked her for about a week and then killed her. Her friends knew and didn't tell, never realizing if they had she might be alive today.

My feeling about this is that it's akin to employee/employer rules. My 9-year old son is an employee of our family (the "corporation") and I've told him that he should never type and send anything that isn't an okay embodiment of the corporation he's representing. Anyone out there who has been in the corporate world in the past decade knows that there is NO protection for anything an employee sends or receives at work. Everything that crosses the firewall is fair game for management to read, print, discuss and even use as grounds for your firing. That's the same way I'm positioning it to my son.