Should Kids Have a Right to Privacy?

[Music] Hey podcast family, welcome to Motherhood in Black and White. I'm Conji. I'm Tara. And we are having a conversation as we do every week about our parenting journeys, about our friendship issues and problems and the benefits of being friends, and just all the things about Motherhood as a Gen X moms, right? That's right. For those of you that are just tuning into the podcast, thank you so much for listening in. What we like to talk about is similarities and the things that we have in common as moms and then the things that we experience that can be a little bit different, because Motherhood is challenging. It's hard. We'll use that word. Yeah, just say it. Hard. It's hard. But it's not universal within those challenges. And so sometimes we like to see if we're experiencing similar or the same things or if there's anything that's different and what we can learn from each other and from some of our guests. And so that's kind of just a little breakdown of who we are if you are just joining us. And if you have been listening to us for the last three seasons, welcome back. So Tara, what's going on with you this week, friend? So many things. You know, works always crazy for me. And we are settling in. We've been talking about this on the last few episodes of the podcast, but we've kind of settled into our first week of middle school with gauge. It's been an interesting little turn of events. Let's get into this. So this whole summer with gauge was interesting because he just turned 12. And we've noticed like, especially in the last six months or so, we're kind of creating into these preteen puberty changes. You know, he's starting to look like a dude walk around my house like a grown man. I don't understand what's happening. So we're getting into this territory where he's asserting his independence in a lot of ways, which is right on time. This is when he's supposed to do. It's totally okay. Right. I accept it. But then there's also, you know, we're starting to see he's on his own in his room a lot more, doors closed, kind of doing his own thing. Totally cool. I want that for him. He's got his own friend groups. They have their own conversations. I'm not privy to a lot of it. He got a flip phone this summer. He talks to his friends sometimes on messenger. So he's just having like his own little experience over there in his own little independent life. And I'm struggling with where I was. It's getting better where the limits are for like how much privacy he gets. How much do I go and check on him or interfere? Like when do I look at you know, so we're getting into this territory where I'm trying to really let him be independent. But I'm also like, okay. But like when do I just make sure everything's cool? Yeah. You know what I mean? And you're a couple years ahead of me. Absolutely. It's just been an interesting time. Again, I've shared recently, it's my favorite so far. But this is like what mom's having to worry. I'm having to work this out for myself. And we can work it out on our podcast. That's right. This is what this is for. So I'm so glad we're here. It's great because we've had some conversations not on air and not being recorded about like what our kids are going through, what they need. And there's this whole school of thought and lots of articles that will tell you like why children need their privacy and need to be respected. And so we can kind of walk through and talk through some of those ideas and kind of some boundaries. But I will share with you before we begin that one person who never believed that children needed privacy was my mom. My mom either this whole like keeping the doors closed knocking before entering. It is brand new to me because you know who never knocked and waited for me to answer the door. My mom. Yes. You know, and Roman. My son is in the eighth grade. And same thing with your son, Gage, Tara, Roman's door is always closed. And so what I have done is I just knock it open. Right? I'm coming. Don't wait for the come in, but you're like, I'm coming in. So how could I get a warning? That was not modeled. Right. So I didn't know that you're supposed to like wait for somebody to say come in. Wait for your child to say come in to the room that I pay for. Why would I wait? So I'm housed. Right. And the fact of the doors closed is another issue. And he says to me, he's like, Mom, you know, I could be in here. You know, you have to respect my privacy. And I'm realizing he's an adolescent boy. Right. I need to wait. Right. Listen for for his sake and him and for me. I'm going to knock it. I'm going to wait. Give it a minute as long as it takes for him to say come in. And again, that wasn't something I ever experienced. But when I'm looking at the argument of like why kids need privacy, one of the first reasons, of course, is you know, for modesty. And it's like, you know, they're going through their body changes and kind of figuring stuff out and doing things. And so for that reason, I absolutely do agree that we do need to give kids some sort of privacy. How much? I still struggle with terror. Yeah. Even from the body modesty thing, I also think about it in the terms of autonomy and consent. Like I think it kind of goes hand in hand. Like this is your room. This is your space. This is just your body. So you get to share what you know what I mean. I try to think about that too, but it is like, okay, but where is the line? What's the balance? I don't know. I don't either. And you don't know either. But so I get that. Like that's not the biggest issue with me. We think a little bit about you mentioned the gauge has a flip phone. Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, one of my girlfriends from New York and her sons were down visiting. And she and I were on Instagram. And she looked at me. She's like, wait a second. My son has an Instagram account. It was private. Wait. And she friend requested him. So later on dinner, I was talking and I said to her, I say, Tiffany, did he accept your friend request? And she's like, no, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, that's a no. So media is a line. So yes, do you have gauges passwords for all of his accounts, his email accounts, even his school account? How does that go? And do you check the accounts? I set up the passwords for all of gauges accounts. So he doesn't have any accounts that he set up on his own. So I do have all those passwords. And I check his iPad every couple of weeks. I'll just do a quick run through, you know, to make sure nothing's come through. It's not supposed to or that I miss something. Part of that is also so he can't spend all my money when he's buying those apps and stuff. And then we did a flip phone specifically because he already had an iPad. We needed a phone so he could call us in emergencies because he's on his own a little bit more now, but we did it on purpose because we didn't want to have in his pocket all that access, you know, the app has a lot easier to control at the house. We've taken a pretty hard stance Jason and I both on social media that that's not going to happen. I mean, hopefully that we know about clearly because I can, but we really are trying to make sure that doesn't happen until it absolutely has to. Toes Lane is possible. Yeah, that's an area where again, I'm struggling. I give myself a D minus. It's how we are able to kind of monitor our kids and their activities when they're online. Yeah. And you know, they have to have email accounts and sometimes they get the accounts when they're playing interactive games, video games. How do you kind of respect that? Okay, you have this autonomy, but I also have the ability to look at and check everything that you're doing. I mean, I think for us two things, the email accounts we've had to set up for his online stuff. He doesn't have access to anywhere. He doesn't have a laptop. We haven't given him that amount. He doesn't even know how to get into that email. He doesn't have to use it at school. He has his school email. And I don't even think he uses the email. I think it's just for a login. Like he might. We'll see, but I don't think he does. And when I'm checking his iPad, the way I deal with that is he knows what the limits are when he has the iPad. So if I check it and there are things that are outside the limits, he knows that we're going to have a conversation about that. Everything else, fair game. So I don't chew him up over every little dumb thing I see because there's a lot of dumb things on there. But if I've set a limit, he knows this is not okay, but I see that. Then he knows you're going to have a conversation about it. Yeah. And I think what you're talking about a little bit is kind of if they're able to cultivate that trust. Yeah. So if you start to check stuff, you see stuff and they're doing the right thing, they kind of earn a little bit more. That's right. However, if you start to check and they're not doing the right thing, that trust is broken. And then you were going to start checking more. That's right. And kind of setting up those boundaries and setting up those safeguards because clearly their developing minds aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. So yeah, I like what you said for us, one thing that we make sure we do is kind of if you're doing the right thing, then you're going to get a few more things. Right. You're going to get a little bit more. You're going to be able to, we're going to loosen our grip a little bit, but we will bring it back in real tight. Exactly right. Yeah. It's the start to act up. Right. Yeah. And I think too with Gage, like part of our conversation has been making sure that when we're talking about it, we're not demonizing, right. We're like, listen, you're a kid. Kids have to make bad choices sometimes to recognize consequences so they learn how to make good choices. So the reason I'm helping you. with this is to practice what it means to have consequences from bad choices so that you learn how to make better choices. Because I think at one point he would get really frustrated with himself. Like, I don't know why I keep, I know not to do, but I keep doing it. I'm like, well, that's what kids do. You're going to push the limits and we're just going to keep hitting this wall until you stop hitting this wall. And I think that's been a good practice too, is to like just be cool about it, not to make it a huge, I can't believe you keep doing it. And that seems to have worked for us. Yeah, I can't be cool. I'm making everything a big deal all the time. That's just, that's just my DNA, right? But, you know, and then again, what ends up happening is my kid starts to say things like, you know, mom, you're so annoying or you're so aggravating or you're the hardest mom I know none of my friends have mom like that. And I'm like, you're welcome. Yeah. Because what he doesn't see and again, there's a conversation there that I think I need to be better with my language because he likes to think that nothing gives me more joy than punishing him or scrutinizing him or checking up after him and checking on him when ultimately all I want to do is keep him safe. Right. And that's it. Yes. And I just don't understand why our kids are adolescent kids can't see that or get that and kind of like help me help me. Help me. Help me help you help you. Like, how do we communicate that to them in a way that their adolescent brains can understand? That's a good question. It's interesting because Gage and I had really interesting conversations when we were quarantined during the COVID time when we were like at a both at home during the day, we would take a walk and we would talk and he was on the internet a lot more because he was home, right? And I had real talk conversations with him where he would ask me questions like, why can't I have a free reign YouTube? Why is it limited to XYZ? And I would just be straight up like, listen, I'm just going to tell you there are really bad people on the internet and there's very inappropriate content that you don't need to see. It's not good for you. It's not good for your developing brain. You just got to trust me on this. I'm not trying to keep you from seeing all that the internet has to offer. I'm telling you straight up, there's stuff out there that you just don't want to be part of and what I'm doing is trying to keep you safe from that. I just said that to him and he seemed, I mean, this was two years ago. We'll see how he feels at 13 or when in the next year, but at the time he was like, okay, all right. So how do you have that conversation without creating fear? Right. Like, you can't go on the internet because someone will track you down because I didn't, because I didn't say it like that. I said, just matter of fact, I was just very matter of fact about it. There's a lot of people in the world. Not everybody's got good intentions. It's pretty rampant on the internet because there's no safeguards. You just have to be really careful until you kind of understand what the rules are. We're going to keep a tighter reign on you. And I don't know. He just wasn't scared. I don't know how I said it. I remember that. I don't know if you had that experience as a kid, but kidnapping was a huge fear. We were little. Did you have that? Oh, yeah. And I mean, my mom would just scare the devil out of me like someone's going to snatch you up at any minute. If you don't know exactly what I say every time I say, I mean, I was scared to death. And I feel like Gage knows that the world's not perfect and he needs to be aware, but he doesn't seem to be afraid. Okay. And I don't know if I did that or if he's just that kid, I don't know. I have tried not to use that same like, that was a huge fear for me. I just thought everybody was going to snatch me up any minute. It's crazy how they kept us in line with fear when we were little. So wild. You use it like past tense like that does still happen. Well, just think about that's how the world is operating out. It's true. It's true. Turn on any news channel and there's like fear about it's like, oh, everything is happening. It's a great recession. It's true. You know, monkey pox. I mean, maybe it's because I was not a friend. My mom, when she would share that with me, I could feel that she was afraid. Like that was her fear. And I don't think I'm sharing it that sounds like that's what I'm afraid of. I'm more like, that could really happen. You know, I don't want that for you. I don't know. It's a little different. You don't know. Yeah. Maybe that's something that I can reflect on and see if that's an area where I can change the way that I'm delivering information to get a different response because the response I'm getting now is one of us might not make it to the end. One of us might not make it to the end of these teenage years. I can trust and believe I will make it trust and believe. It's not going to be me. But you know, when we talk about like, you know, a lot of these things that we're doing is to safeguard our kids and to keep them safe. And then we also hear in the same breath, like a hearer is like, we want to keep our kids safe by keeping them offline and not doing these things. But then we're putting pictures of our kids up on social media. And then we are the ones that are like sharing their information, like it's their first day of school. It's their birth name in the background. Yes. I know. So I think that we also need to be mindful and be aware of kind of like what we're doing. Yeah. There was a lawsuit that came out a couple of years ago. And I don't know if you paid attention to this and it was just, I think an appeal was just filed. But do you remember the rock group, Nirvana? Yeah. Oh, the baby. The baby. Yes. I do remember that. The album cover was album. Never mind. Yeah. The album never mind. It was the baby in the water. When he became an adult, he sued his parents for an invasion of privacy because he didn't consent to being on the album. And they get that's right. Yes. And it's like, of course, you didn't consent. You're a baby. But it makes you think. And I would love to talk to some of my fellow attorneys to kind of get some information who focus on privacy laws. Right. And many kids have filed lawsuits against their parents for posting things about them without their consent or without their permission. God. I will be in very big trouble if Gates gets to an adult. Have you started asking for consent? No. You don't actually post many pictures from him. I don't. You don't. No. I post more than you do. And even I'm way less than I used to be. But I have started asking in the last two years, is it okay if I post this picture? Yeah, that's fine. And so that's because of how old he is, right? Yeah. Let's talk about in the last couple of weeks, we've had a lot of people and social media posting about their kids first day of school. And again, we were just talking about some of the information they're posting, where their kids going to school, what their kids are wearing. And we talk about fear. Yep. If a bad actor someone sees this information, what can they can then do with it? It's like you know where the kids go into school, you know what they're wearing, you know what their name is. Back in our day, that's when the bad man and the van could have used that information and be like, "Come and snatch you out." Yeah, come, come, come. She's my home by herself today. Yeah. Oh, here she is. Come help me find my puppy, right? Right. And so I think we as parents also need to be able to practice what we preach and consider. It's fair. Like what we're doing and what we're posting and how that can affect our kids in the future. Right. Like we always tell them where I'm telling my son now, like what you're doing now is going to stick with you for the rest of your life. Your life, it's like what I'm doing to you also will stick that. So be careful. Like the pictures I'm posting, the content I'm posting, the information I'm sharing, where I'm sharing it because it's not mine. That's his information. It's true. I feel like when a gauge was born, I had had an iPhone and I'd been on Facebook for maybe just a couple of years. And I feel like social media, we got behind the eight ball on that. We just jumped right in, right? Just picture picture, picture, post post post. And then it started to turn the corner. I would say even just in the last four or five years where people are starting to think like, oh, maybe I shouldn't put every single family picture on Facebook or maybe I shouldn't post every activity that we do on Instagram. I've been paying attention. And I don't post nearly as much as I used to, but I like to share our vacation stuff. And I love the first day of school pictures. I love them. I love them so much. But I do try to be conscious about his school name and identifying details. I try to be careful with that. But I don't know that I've been perfect at it. I think you've been perfect at everything you've done. I can always count on you, Conji. But I think that's probably my D-minus. If you have fears of the online, mine's on social posts. Again, we think like how challenging and how hard it is to parent in the digital age. Like the things that we're talking about are things that our parents probably never could have even considered. Right. But then we also think there are so many things that we're dealing with that they also dealt with. Right. How you start to loosen that grasp and start to give kids this autonomy and kind of respect their right to privacy and teach kids as they're growing, kind of what the boundaries are and can be and should be. And if it's okay to respect or to give them kind of privacy in different settings, right? Situations. And if it's something that's given to them freely or something that should be earned. I guess it might depend on what it is sort of like what we talked about. But I think there's similar to when they're little and you get those lists about here, the chores they can do at this age and the chores they can do. I think that there are a lot of things that we can do. levels that you're like, okay, well, you're 12 now. So here's some areas where it's yours, your modesty, your autonomy, your body. That's all yours. Online's not all yours. You know, I think that you have to look at their age and their maturity level and kind of decide where you open it up and where you keep it tight. And there's just so many areas. Yeah. And there's so many different schools of thought. One therapist, I can't remember their name, but said, you know, you should never check your kid's social media accounts because that will break. Right? No. That's a no. Because it's like, because you go break their trust. And I'm like, clearly this person probably don't have kids. No, adolescent kids, because you have to balance maybe breaking their trust versus keeping them safe. Yeah. Right. And if you're balancing those, I'm someone's like, your safety is my number one priority. Paramount. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, other things, I'm going to have to deal with you being mad at me, being angry me. We're going to work this out maybe in therapy for the next 10 or 20 years. But I need to keep you safe and alive. And I will do what I need to do to make that happen. I think there's a way to do it too. I mean, obviously looking at their social media is, you know, a version of being in their business. But I think there's a difference if you say it front, like I will allow you to have this account, but I will have full access to it. Please know that. And you set those limits. And that's different than just giving it to them and then doing it on the sneak. Oh, yeah. No. You know what I'm saying? Or there's also like there's a difference between if I'm checking it and I don't see anything. So I don't even talk to them about it versus if I see something, I think we need to discuss. So obviously he knows what the limits are. And he gets that space. And then I only step in when I feel like the limits have been broken. Kind of look what we're doing now. I just think there's a way to do it without breaking their trust. I think you can set those limits and everybody agrees to the rules. I, you know, and you're a master communicator. And that's key. And that's, you know, I'm going to give you that compliment because it's true. And also that's something that I'm learning from you during our friendship and over the course. Kind of what this thing that we're doing called podcast. It's what you're doing that's different than what I'm doing. And it seems to be working from you. So it's like, okay, maybe I can take something from that and adjust it, see how it works for me. You know, a lot of it is all of us kind of while we're on this parenting journey are also on this learning journey. And we're on this unlearning journey. Oh yeah. Right. Because it's like, okay, that's what was done for me. That did not work. Did not work. That did not work. I don't want to do that. But you know, you have to guard against overcompensation. We've talked about that. Like I don't want to do it like that, but I can't do it completely the opposite way. There's something in the middle. There has to be something in the middle. But it just feels like we're making it up as we go all the time. Just building the plane while we fly it is don't make no sense. Every single day. But you know what it's gotten us to where we are now. Yeah. And it was like it's working. Yeah, these kids are good. They're good kids. We're doing all right. I try to remind myself all the time. Like he's a good kid. We're going to be fine. He will be fine as long as you knock and wait for him to respond before you enter. He will be just fine. If you do what I do, it's just kind of like knock and enter both y'all might be in therapy someday soon. There might be some trouble discussed later down the road. So just don't do that. You know what the other thing I do? I don't know if you do this. But like, especially around that is because he's a boy and I'm a, you know, I grew up a girl. I don't know the experience. So I look at his dad a lot and I go, tell me how to do this. Like because I don't know all the nuances and details there. So I let his dad kind of lead the way a lot and that stuff. Have no desire. I'm like, if you tell me he's cool and not to worry about it, I'm not going to worry about it. Yeah. Again, not wait for this right permission to enter. And that's kind of like where I'm going to set that boundaries. Like, perfectly fine. I think that's good. I'm going to give it to you. So podcast family, we would love to hear from you and kind of how you are kind of addressing this situation. If you have kids and at any age, if and how and when you start to figure out what the privacy and supervision looks like and how you're able to cultivate trust without breaking any of those barriers that you're putting up. Yeah. In terms of like these boundaries. Yeah. That's also good words. See you Tara. Good communication every single day. I'm not a therapist, but it'll play one on TV. Tara and communication. That's her A plus for this week. And podcast family, we give you an A plus each and every day and how you're doing in your parenting journey. And we know sometimes some days, some weeks, some months can feel challenged and hard and they can feel like they're in a struggle, but know that you are not alone in this motherhood or parenthood journey. Whatever your journey looks like, we're here right alongside you and we will be every week, including next week. Make sure that if you haven't already, you are following us on your favorite listening platform. We love having you with us each week. Make sure you reach out to us on Instagram at black and white momcast. We really do want to hear from you on this privacy topic. We are obviously learning as we go and we want to hear from you to see what you guys are doing. Thanks again for joining us every week. We love having you with having said we are signing off. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. Take good care of podcast family.