Good morning and happy Monday! One of my goals for this upcoming school year is to make sure that my beautiful blog isn’t ignored as much. I might even sink a little money into it, making it truey “mine” (if something like that can be), but that’s for another topic! Just wanted to wish everyone a grand day in doing whatever it is you do!

As for the topic of my blog, I’ve written about my youngest daughter in passing before.  A beautiful child who is a singing voice that is really starting to come into its own (she sang a solo as part of a 4-H group that brought people to tears) and a personality that is larger than herself for certain.  She’s a happy girl, who can be furious with us one minute, and hugging us the next, like many teenagers I’m sure.  The reason for this blog: social media and messaging.  She’s done some not so smart things on social media because she cannot seem to keep her nose out of the drama, and it’s come around and bit her a number of times.  Without going into too many details, she’s been grounded from her phone and iPod for a while because something that’s happened recently, and I made the comment that i may go through her messages on her phone and various apps.

*Insert nuclear blast here*

The argument that ensued was pretty epic dealing with personal space and a right to privacy.

My argument: my house, my rules, and you have no expectations of privacy until you are 18. If I want to see your phone, I don’t want an argument, I don’t want a “that’s mine”, nor do I want you clicking and deleting a bunch of stuff either. I ask for it, you hand it over, we are fine.

Her argument: I’m my own person and those are my private conversations. You can’t look at them because it’s my phone and my iPod.  You and Mom don’t know what it’s like because all my friends are able to do whatever they want with their devices (we won’t let them be in the rooms after 10:00 PM), and I have to follow these stupid rules.

Now, I’ll admit, I was maybe 1/50 as social as she is when I was growing up, and so no, I don’t know what it’s like. However, I’m a teacher and I do my best to try to walk the walk in terms of digital citizenship. I have high expectations for both my daughters in terms of their social media use, and they are night and day when it comes to the usage. My oldest still has an egg on her Twitter profile, two years into the service, but also pushes boundaries in terms of when and where she’s texting her boyfriend.  Yet, I know that things have happened, and there’s a trust factor that is not there.  I believe that a parent has every right to take a phone, iPod, computer, whatever electronics, and make sure that things aren’t being done or said that we lead to bad things happening.

Am I wrong in that?

Sometimes, my wife and I get get wore down in that constant barrage of “my privacy”, that we question ourselves. Thus, this blog.  So, please, chime in whether you have kids or not!  Do we has parents (and when I say we, I mean collectively all of us) have that right to ask for a device, not often, when necessary? Or does my daughter have that overriding right to privacy, that her conversations shouldn’t be tarnished by adult eyes?

As you might guess, I do have my own opinions, but I’m curious where other people stand on this topic!

Thank you for humoring me on this. It’s been stuck in my consciousness for a while now, and it’s nice to get it out, and let it go!