BPDFamily.com

The Difference Between Monitoring vs. Spying on Your Children

by Hilary Smith

Raising children is no easy feat, especially when we are supporting family members with borderline personality disorder. It’s no secret that our sons and daughters are potentially more susceptible and vulnerable to certain dangers and we strive to prepare our kids to handle what life will throw at them: peer pressure, stressful environments, new situations, and friendships.

Unfortunately, the world we live in is constantly updating with new digital advances, programs, and devices. Our children flock to handheld devices (like tablets and Smartphones), because they allow access to a world of ideas and instant communication with their friends. While cell phones and other wireless technology offer our kids an easy way to interact with peers, these advancements can harbor a frightening world of cyberbullies, online predators, and oversharing. As technology evolves, we need to adapt our parenting skills to include digital safety.

Making Rules In A Digital World

Having rules and limits are extremely important when dealing with a child with borderline personality disorder. However, the unlimited connectivity our kids’ devices offer make this difficult when it comes to technology. If left unchecked, the Internet and social media sites can become a playground for heartache and digital aggression.

For parents of teens and adolescents, researchers recommend that families institute contracts to help children know the expectations and consequences for using technology. Include the children in this process of designing a contract to begin healthy dialogues about what is and is not appropriate uses for technology. By proactively outlining the boundaries for cell phones, social media, games, and the Internet you can prevent future disagreements and problems from arising.

Being In The Know: Monitoring A Child’s Activity

Another favored approach by many experts is monitoring a child’s activity. This technique can take many forms, but the main idea is for parents to know how a child is behaving online or with their phones. Knowing a child’s contacts, friends, sites visited, and passwords will allow you to stay alert and aware of any festering situations that are developing before they spiral out of control.

Monitoring can take many forms, but the main idea is for parents to know how a child is behaving online or with their phones. We need to be involved and take advantage of our kids’ love of technology to stay alert to gain peace of mind in a frightening world of selfies and disappearing messages.

For more information on healthy monitoring please click on the photo to read the attached infographic:

(https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/images/mb/monitoringvspying01.png) (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/images/mb/monitoringvspying02.png)

   bpdfamily.com/message_board/images/mb/monitoringvspying02.png (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/images/mb/monitoringvspying02.png)

Hillary Smith was born and raised in Austin, TX. She is a free-lance journalist whose love of gadgets, technology and business has no bounds. After becoming a parent she now enjoys writing about family and parenting related topics.

In my opinion it depends on the child and the situation.

When the child in question is actively suicidal, drug addicted, sexually active and relying on alcohol I would and have flat out spied on her at any given oppurtunity. And have no regrets or guilt about it.

I just subscribed to a service on my phone that allows me to know who my daughter is texting and calling.

I've started identifying allies and blocking trouble makers. I know my daughter posts drug related stuff on her instagram and I can't stop her. The last time the police corporal was over he told me I should have her password so I got it and then when I took her phone she wiped it clean. The next police officer said I might want to rethink taking her phone because if she goes missing again the police will be able to track her with it. I'm glad I listened. Since I own the account, I get to know who she's texting and calling. If I say "hi this is unicorn's daughter's mom and she is missing" and they ignore me, they get blocked. So far two kids have come forward to help me look for her, and two other ones have ignored me.

When my BPDSD was a teenager we had a lot to untangle- to get a true idea of how many bad behaviors she was involved in, we worked hard to stay a step ahead of her. There were many times we failed.

Looking back it started with what will probably seem like spying to some folks- we used to let her go to the movies on Friday night. My husband would give her money, expecting change and she always had a story for why she had no change. We tried the typical asking her for plot points of the movie she claimed to be seeing but she was obviously getting a review from kids that she knew who DID go into the movie.  I was new to  the family at this point and her excuses for what she was doing when we busted her about the movie plots didn't seem right so we spied on her using a borrowed car and sitting at a distance after we dropped her off. She wasn't even going to the movies- she was spending her money on weed and cigarettes for herself and others and getting into cars with people we didn't know.

We also caught onto the fact that she had a myspace (and then facebook) page that we were privy to and one we knew nothing about. Her older step-sister created a fake account and claimed to be a boy new to our area and my SD was more than happy to give "him" way too much information about our family and activities and sent "him" racy photos of herself. She made plans to sneak out of the house and meet "him" and we busted her in the midst of this... .never let on that the boy she was "in love with" was really her SS perpetrating this fake identity at our request.

There were more and more escalating behaviors until we finally put a tracking device on her phone and a keystroke tracker on her computer. It wasted a lot of our time to keep track of all of this but at least we were not totally in the dark about her behaviors.

We searched her room on a regular basis. We searched her car but we didn't search her purse until she overdosed at a party when she was 19- and still living at home. That event helped us turn a corner with her- my husband finally had enough and he quit enabling her and believing her lies.

It seems clear to me she might have gotten herself into much worse trouble especially with strangers if we had not been so vigilant.

She is 24 now- I quit spying on her facebook about three years ago. She is doing so well now I actually feel trust towards her. It used to be that when we told her she needed to build back trust with us, she would get irritated that it wasn't an instant thing- when we asked her how long she thought it should take to build back trust she said (and I'm not kidding) "a few days".

We find that the more she is authentic in her life the more she understands about herself and her issues. She is becoming a really great person to be around and I am finally enjoying being her step-mom! Lot's of thanks to her 12 step program and sobriety and the process of time and maturity working their magic.

I do not feel any guilt nor do I have any regrets that we spied.

Thursday

We started this thread out on the Parenting Board and have now temporarily moved it to Co-parenting because we think it also has value for the members here. Finding the right balance between monitoring your child's activity and spying, can be quite tricky. This article and the infographic included can help with that.

Someone just suggested this thread after I posted on the general parenting board.  I am having trouble with my 16 y/o daughter's out-of-control online behavior and communication with bad associates but want her to have a cell phone for safety reasons.


Unicorn, can you tell me what this service is? 

Smart limits, it's an AT&T app.

Thanks, Unicorn!

Yw, I hope it helps!