3. “You don’t need privacy!”
Parents are so concerned with their child getting caught up in something bad and not telling them that they stop to wonder whether their actions are the reason their child doesn’t talk to them.
Taking away doors, reading journals, monitoring texts, or creeping over your child’s shoulder while they’re online won’t help you foster trust.
I get it, “My house, my rules,” or “I own this house and everything in it,” or “You don’t need privacy if you have nothing to hide;” all of these make your actions sound logical.
But all that really does is (1) ensure your kid doesn’t trust you and (2) ensure your kid doesn’t have any safe spaces or coping mechanisms if they do get in over their head.
Why do we think of kids as our property?
Teach kids from a young age that they are entitled to their own selves.
Stalking them will not teach them anything except how to hide from you better and that they can’t trust you, even if they need you.
4. “You’re too young to be asking those questions!”
Listen, kids – and when I say “kids,” I mean both young children and older kids/teenagers – are going to have questions about the world.
They’re going to want to know about love, sex, death, life, responsibility, and a lot more that we don’t always know how to explain.
If they’re asking the questions, they’ve already started making the observations on their own that bring up those questions.
Respect your kid’s intelligence enough to understand that and at least give them enough of an answer to help them understand what they need to.
Otherwise, they’ll go looking for information on their own and who knows what answers they’ll find?