Here’s How To Supervise Your Child And Respect Their Privacy

The age-old debate of children’s privacy and limitations continues to become a hot topic for most parents.

Some parents insist a child does not have any rights to privacy whatsoever, and so they take off their children’s bedroom doors, read through their diaries, and monitor all phone conversations.

Others say privacy is crucial, and often let their children hang out with whomever they please, never ask questions, and give their children the freedom to pick and choose what types of shows, music, and TV they let into their world.

But there’s a happy medium between the two extremes that will allow your child some sense of privacy, without letting it be a free-for-all.

Children need boundaries, but since their minds aren’t yet developed they often don’t know what’s best for them.

Without boundaries, your child’s limited mind could cause them to make poor choices such as hanging out with the wrong crowd, or getting into a bad relationship.

It’s completely reasonable to set a boundary and not allow your child to go to another child’s house without proper adult supervision.

But the key to maintaining trust is a healthy open-door communication with your child. If your child trusts you, they’ll come to you with crises and problems so you won’t have to pry or snoop around to find out what’s really going on.

However, with that said, it’s important to teach your children, they are not free to do as they wish.

Setting guidelines and boundaries at a young age will show them they are to adhere to the rules of your household.

One of the trickiest fields to navigate is the use of social media.

Social media is becoming more and more dangerous, with predators seeking to lure children away, often posing as other young teenagers and communicating with them through a fake profile.

Often times, children don’t realize the danger they are getting themselves into by not checking certain privacy settings online – that’s where you the parent step in and teach them the importance of personal privacy and safety.

CNN reported:

With location-aware social media such as Twitter, Kik, and Facebook, kids can reveal their actual, physical locations to all their contacts — plenty of whom they don’t know personally. Imagine a selfie that’s location-tagged and says, “Bored, by myself, just hanging out looking for something fun to do.”

Protect yourself. Turn off location sharing on your kids’ devices, both in the phone settings and in the apps they use, so their status updates and photos are not automatically tagged with their locations. Make sure your kids never tell strangers their address, their school name, where they hang out, or where they’re going to be. Teach kids to choose “no” when asked to share their locations.

Setting up filtering and monitoring services on your home Internet is important in order to have a log of what takes place online.

It’s also recommended to cut off Internet access after a certain agreed-upon time – as nothing good happens late at night online, and it’s important your child learn to put down the electronic devices and actually go to sleep at night.

If you create healthy communication, you won’t need to read your child’s diary to find out what’s going on.

Give them space to grow and “test the waters,” but make sure at the end of the day it’s clear you are the parent, not them.

What strategies do you use in your home to balance privacy and freedom?

Do you think kids should have the freedom to make their own choices without supervision?

Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.