Why Invading Your Teens Privacy is Wrong!

For some reason or another, the invasion of one's privacy seems to be a common theme in my life this week. It wasn't me who had their privacy invaded, but a couple of my girlfriends have been batting around the idea of snooping around in their partner's private things to get to the bottom of a few things. I was absolutely horrified, and it immediately launched me into flashbacks of my mother snooping around my drawers, closets, book bag and anything else she toss about. It haunts me to this day, and has caused me to closely guard everything I've ever written down. It's left a definite scar.

Look, I'm not a parent, yet. But I do understand the pitfalls of navigating your impressionable adolescent through the mine field of growing up in today's world, because I was a teenager, and not so long ago that I need to dust the cobwebs out of my mind. There is enough heartache being a teenager. I mean, in between feeling socially inadequate because a lack of the right friends, trying to catch the eye of the cutest guy or gal, and then dealing with the disappointment of being dumped for the first time, it's all so overwhelming. But it's one thing to go out into the world to have everyone judge you, to make it their business to know everything about you, only to judge you. It's very much another when you have to go home and have the only part of the world that you can actually call yours, only to watch it be raided by someone who loves you.

Despite what parents think, teens deserve privacy. They wandering through life, trying to figure out who the heck they are. Tip toeing around your kids room like you're some sort of CIA agent on a recon mission,  is just begging for conflict. I get that parents are considered about what their kids are dabbling in; Drugs, sex, booze, any anything else that will lead them astray. And there may be a handful of cases where snooping is absolutely necessary, but very, very few. You as a parent, cannot possibly control what your child does when they walk out that door. All you can do is arm them with the tools they need to take on the world. Snooping around in their stuff teaches your child that you are not someone to be trusted. Why on earth would they come to you with something serious, if they can't even trust that you won't ransack the only place that they feel safe.

My mother snooped on a regular basis, and the ironic part was, I never really gave her a reason. I never touched a drug (and still to this day!), I didn't drink until I was legal, and I wasn't having under-age sex. I did well in school, I played tons of sports, and I never missed my curfew. Yet still, my mother felt compelled to root around in my private life. All it did, was cause a rift, and when sh** hit the fan, she was the last person I went to for help.