Is it wrong to monitor your childs text messages?

your logic is flawed, people just have personal conversations and want to keep it between them and one other person or share somthing that the parrent wouldn't understand, for example. say your parrents are highley religious and you now share a different faith but can't tell them, so this would be your place to let the stress go instead of build up. and just like rick said, its a blatent invasion of privacy.

parrents nowadays think they can "TELL" there kid instead of have an actual conversation and maybe find their own logic to be flawed.

Yeah sooner or later they're going to know...if there is something serious within a text message (highly doubtful) that is something that should be known to a parent (not meaningless drible but actual important information that may need a parents interference) then they're going to find out sooner or later. Hell I'll stay with your example and tell you that I have different "relgious veiws: then my parents and i have a good enough relationship with them to not only have told them but to have had a conversation about it and have it be accepted, but maybe that's because i don't hide in a shadow of my cell phone and use text messages to tell people how I feel but i actually physically confront people if i have a problem with something... then again most people love to hide so I suppose i can't just factor out average human actions.

Look if you don't have something to hide this does not matter. If you're to much of a coward to actually do something when you have a problem and just "run away" from them and take the most convent and softest route then you need to be "guided" by someone who can help you because you're obviously to weak and/or stupid to make proper decisions, and who can do that? A parent!

If you had a chat with your best friend where she admitted to you that she had been raped last weekend and she wanted to keep it between you two, would you like your parents to know about this stuff? (Of course, she has told the police and her parents, else you would have done it for her.)


You're jumping from should to would here, which is not really a good thing to do.

Besides, there is no absolute answer to the question "When do parents think there's a problem?". If a girl has her period, or her boyfriend broke up, she would react with more negative emotions than normal. The parents would usually think that there's something behind all of this, and check her text messages. Voilà! Now your parents might look through your ex-bfs preferred sex-positions and discussions around why he felt that you weren't the right for him. As this is natural in a teenager's life, do parents need to learn about this?

As a final note, if you think your child has a problem, I would assume the best thing to do is ask if there's anything wrong. If yes, don't ask what the issue is, but ask what you two (parents) can help them with.

Ya know, you seem to make the assumption that if something "tragic" where to happen it being known by an outside party will be immediate horror. In all honesty what "bad" thing would come from my parents knowing my friend was raped. She gets comforted more, she has more people she can talk to about it, what exactly?

And I'm not sure if i read that correctly but... did you just ask if a parent should know whether or not their daughter is having sex? If i had a daughter who's boyfriend was talking about sex positions I'd be a little flustered and question it. I'm not just going to go... "oh so you might have underage sex for the first time... make sure to widen your hips!" because it's natural teenage actions.

As to what a parent should do if there's a problem that's more in personal parental control and how you feel about it. What should be done is more your opinion then a fact because if a child has something that's a serious problem like a drug addiction or a pregnancy then it's doubtful the child would be honest and allow a parent to just give them advise because they probably wouldn't provide accurate information.