Thread: Spying on children or spouse, acceptable?

Originally Posted by Terry D

Mark Twain said, "When a child turns thirteen he should be nailed in a pickle barrel and fed through the knothole. At sixteen you plug the knothole."

Yeah, we've got five years to go -- I'm not exactly looking forward to it. I'm making a note of this pickle barrel thing. Trying to figure out how it can be combined with Foxee's bubble wrap idea.

Originally Posted by Foxee

With the turn this discussion has taken I've just thought of an example that I use here with my school age daughter.

I moved her to cyber-school here at home for a lot of reasons, one of which was that she was horrible about bringing home the right materials or even acknowledging that she had certain assignments. She would either forget or else figure that if I didn't know I couldn't make her do it so she could have more time away from school stuff.

Now that she is in cyber-school I can see her gradebook when I want, watch any of her classes on playback, check to see what homework she has and if she has any she hasn't turned in, and keep tabs on upcoming tests and projects. For a while she was keeping up with everything well so I stopped checking so much, then she began to take advantage of that.

I sat her down and showed her on my computer, "Honey, I can see this and this and this and so can your teacher. If we want to check to see if your work is done we can do it easily, do you see?"

I explained that keeping track of her assignments was her job and that she was expected to do her job. Since then, anytime she comes down from a class and I ask, "So what's your homework like?" she can usually remember most of her assignments.

I don't check up on her all the time, she's exhibited that she gets it and we've rebuilt some trust. Still, she's ten and if she finds a way to get away with cutting corners I think she'll give into the temptation to do it, but she knows momma makes spot checks and she knows that I know what her assignments are (especially when I keep her on track for upcoming stuff).

If I just checked everything and then said, "What about this and this?" she would learn nothing. Building trust is an exercise that happens between two people that can't happen with an impersonal one-sided tracking. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't use whatever I had in an extreme situation. There are quite a few variables with this such as how much the trust has been damaged before.

And this is good parenting. By verifying you corrected the bad behavior. Some aren't so lucky, their kids get into really bad things as they mature. That is the time that a parent must use whatever they have to to protect them.

Spying is just an invasion of privacy and liberty. People deserve to be able to keep things private and secret . It's not against the law to keep secrets to yourself

I think that spying isn't the most efficient method to begin with. If your partner's cheating on you then you don't need to know the whos, whens and whys, your relationship should be dying out anyways. Learning about it would only accelerate the process a month or two, but the fact is that things aren't going well.

I think being suspicious is a natural thing in human beings, not suspecting is taking things for granted, and taking love for granted is asking for trouble. Love begins and ends like all things, and pretending that it's eternal won't make it last. You don't need to check emails and intercept phone calls to tell you are not being loved back, and that's all you need to know.

As for children, I think spying would only make things worse. That would only increase the distance between parent and child. I would give limits to their freedom from the get-go, and slowly grant them independence as they see fit, but leaving it clear that this independence is the result of trust, and breaking that trust is breaking the independence.

That's what my parents did with me, and I never went too far. I had my share of temptations, but the worst thing I did in high school was playing poker in class (and drinking a little with friends). I knew that if I returned drunk one day from a club (which I went to regularly, no questions asked) my dad wouldn't ever give me the keys again, much less if I crashed and got myself hurt.

However, I never vented my troubles with them. And that's because they where two extremist worrywarts. Had they leveled their standards to that of children, I would have been more open to them with my worries. Instead, all I did was give them the results they wanted, and that's how I gained trust. In the end, my motives, aspirations, worries and problems were things they found out years after I got over them. I think spending time with children and becoming a perpetually understanding authority to which you can talk about anything is much better than spying on your children.

My point is, what's the point with spying? what will you do about the truth? how will you deal with it? How you find out has a lot of influence in how you solve things, and solving distrust with distrust isn't going to take you anywhere. Instead, I wouldn't give absolute trust to begin with, never doubt their motives, and then be somehow surprised that they turned their backs on me.

Originally Posted by elite

I think that spying isn't the most efficient method to begin with. If your partner's cheating on you then you don't need to know the whos, whens and whys, your relationship should be dying out anyways. Learning about it would only accelerate the process a month or two, but the fact is that things aren't going well.

I think being suspicious is a natural thing in human beings, not suspecting is taking things for granted, and taking love for granted is asking for trouble. Love begins and ends like all things, and pretending that it's eternal won't make it last. You don't need to check emails and intercept phone calls to tell you are not being loved back, and that's all you need to know.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to "know the whos, whens and whys." Obviously, cheaters lie, and most likely won’t come clean when confronted. So if a spouse has good reason to be suspicious, he or she might need to present hard evidence in order to force things to the next level – that might be giving an ultimatum to break off the affair or in the worst case, start legal proceedings.

Cheating doesn’t always mean that there is no love or hope for the marriage -- so spying may be a necessary measure of last resort. I hope I’m never in a position that I might have to consider spying -- but until I have been, I won’t presume to tell anyone that it’s always a bad idea.

Originally Posted by elite

As for children, I think spying would only make things worse.

It might be necessary if you have reason to believe your child is doing something harmful or illegal. Kids often won't come clean when confronted either, so spying might be a measure of last resort to determine whether or not they are in real trouble. I'll trust my kids too -- right up to the time where I have good reason not to trust them -- then all bets are off.

I think I have to separate my thoughts on children and partners in this one.

For children, you have an obligation to guard their well being, and to ensure they grow into healthy adults. You should be teaching them in a way that you will trust them as they grow older, but as some have mentioned outside not-so-well-taught-influences can have a dramatic influence on our progeny.

I think you should try and trust your children as much as possible, but there's no boundaries on "spying" on them if you see the need. Hopefully you won't have to resort to bugging their cell phones and sewing GPS trackers into their underwear, but whatever helps, go for it!

Partners are different. They're adults, and you have no responsibility to monitor their whereabouts or activities. Spying on them electronically is almost always an invasion of privacy, and if you're having enough doubts to get to that point you should probably sit down and talk with them anyway.

I don't like "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be afraid of me spying." I have watched Maury with girlfriends in the past, where they take their partner on to get a lie detector test to see if they are cheating. Sometime she'll ask "would you go do that if I asked?" and I'd say "yes, but I'd break up with you immediately afterwards no matter what the answer came back as." To me, a relationship needs to have trust, and that includes no spying. If you're at that stage, the relationship is pretty much over anyway.

Now, if there was evidence leading me to think they were cheating, or as in the past if friends who didn't know each other but knew my gf and I came up to me and said they saw her cozying up with another guy, I might be a little more watchful and inquisitive, but if it got to the level where I was actively considering spying, I'd have to sit down with her and have a talk.

Life's full of greys.

When I started dating the guy who I married, he had come fresh from a moderately abusive relationship in which the other guy had cheated on him almost from the get-go. He was overly concerned that he would fall for someone who was hiding stuff from him. So I gave him my passwords, and permission to check my private stuff when he felt he needed to. He hasn't needed to for years.

My daughter, I watch like a hawk. She has no privacy from her dads. Of course, she is only 19 months old.

Originally Posted by JosephB

Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to "know the whos, whens and whys." Obviously, cheaters lie, and most likely won’t come clean when confronted. So if a spouse has good reason to be suspicious, he or she might need to present hard evidence in order to force things to the next level – that might be giving an ultimatum to break off the affair or in the worst case, start legal proceedings.

Cheating doesn’t always mean that there is no love or hope for the marriage -- so spying may be a necessary measure of last resort. I hope I’m never in a position that I might have to consider spying -- but until I have been, I won’t presume to tell anyone that it’s always a bad idea.



It might be necessary if you have reason to believe your child is doing something harmful or illegal. Kids often won't come clean when confronted either, so spying might be a measure of last resort to determine whether or not they are in real trouble. I'll trust my kids too -- right up to the time where I have good reason not to trust them -- then all bets are off.

That's true I guess, there is always an extreme situation where it's necessary. But in most cases, I think things can be resolved without going that far.

Well, it's more likely that when people have good reason to believe a spouse is cheating, they don't sit down and write out a list of spying pros and cons. They're hurt and angry and maybe a little desperate. It's easy to suppose what you might do in that situation, or second guess someone else, but I'm betting that sometimes the overwhelming need to know overrides better judgment. I really can't say for sure how I'd react in that situation.

Originally Posted by BipBopRealGoodNop

Spying is just an invasion of privacy and liberty. People deserve to be able to keep things private and secret . It's not against the law to keep secrets to yourself

I think I read that somewhere... Oh right! It was carved into the railing at a catholic church I visited.

Right in front of where the altar boys knelt...

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Originally Posted by JosephB

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

There are people in positions of influence over your children, be they peers or authority figures, that will have a vested interest in your children keeping secrets from you. As a parent you have only one obligation: safeguard the mental ans physical welfare of your child.

There is no right to privacy for children in respect to their parents, and any they are afforded is earned through trust. Spying on children is not only acceptable, but recommended. They are not fully formed humans, and are prone to errors in judgement fueled by outside forces.

Parents need to monitor their children and stave off both the negative actions and negative influences. "Spying" will sometimes be the only way to gain critical information that will protect children from harm.

Oh well, I didn't get it.

That's basically my position, as I said a few posts up. But monitoring and spying aren't really the same thing. Spying might be necessary if you have reason to believe that there's a problem. But if you keep tabs on your child -- check to make sure they're where they say they're going to be, communicate with their friend's parents etc. and if they're behaving, and not showing signs of drug or alcohol use or depression -- then I don't know if "spying" is necessary -- and doesn't really make for a very trusting relationship. If they break that trust and if there is evidence that they might be headed for trouble, then spying or snooping might be a good idea.