Parental Poking About:Why You Should Be Spying on Your Kids

Ipods. Cell Phones. Playstaion, Wireless internet. MySpace, FaceBook, & Twitter.

Explicit lyrics. Telemarketing. Pedophiles and just plain crazy people.

Listed first, are the things I have allowed my kids to have or do.

Listed next, are the reasons why I spend a large portion of my time eyeballing their activities on the sly.

I spy on my kids, and I make no apologies, excuses or bones about it.

Three years ago my daughter begged and pleaded for a MySpace account. She already had a Yahoo email address. I let her do that after being on Yahoo for over 10 years myself. The same concept applied for MySpace.

Understand, this was in the day of MySpace as the pedophile eBay. I was terrified she would share too much, show too much, and get snagged by a smooth-typing, quick-texting ne'er-do-well, and be lost to me.

So I spent three months trolling the site myself. When I gave her the OK, I got her log-in & her password. Every time she changed it, she updated me.

I am a paranoid mother, and I think we all should be in this age of digital media, social networking and wi-fi. There are too many ways our children can be accessed, influenced, enticed, manipulated and twisted, to allow them to go blithely on without keeping tabs one way or another.

When I was their age, I ran all over the neighborhood, visiting friends, going to parks, riding my bike or roller-skating hither and yon. The thought of allowing my kids the same long leash terrifies me. I know what's out there, even if I don't know who. It's all over the news, the internet, and the airwaves. Kids vanish day and night. Strangers and friends alike must be considered carefully before turning your back.

I watch them online from my own computer. I got cells for them, and got the plan that comes with the locator service that lets me pinpoint them anywhere within the service area. Suffice it say, they don't even check the mail without their phones in their pockets.

I review her MySpace every few weeks and openly confront her about anything I don't like on there. Her page is so locked up my sister -her aunt- had to get permission to view it and send her messages.

I read her text messages on her phone, and I go through the address books. I do the same thing with her brother. I scroll through the selections in their MP3 players and simply delete anything that raises my eyebrows. Content on their computers has to be approved by me and any pictures she wants to post have to be seen and approved before they get out of the camera.

I watch them digitally and the old fashioned way. They know I do it because I love them, and because I an afraid that one day, I will be one of those mothers who has a room left just that way, hoping the child it belongs to will come home.

Some parents don't know what their child was doing online or after school, or even at school. They don't know who they talk to, what they listen to, and what they watch. I cannot be with them all the time, but when I'm not there, knowing that whatever they do, I can and will find out about it keeps them from making some very stupid mistakes. I can only hope my openness with them on the subject is part of why I usually find out I have nothing to worry about.

And this is why I spy. I spy because I cannot do anything else. I have to protect them from the world until they get out into it. Even then, I'm pretty sure I can hack my daughter's MySpace password within three guesses.