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What Are You Doing in There?
Privacy Issues and Preteens
By Kelly Burgess
When my mother was a child, she had a wild streak a mile long. So did I, and so does my daughter. It's because of that wild streak that I keep a closer eye on my daughter than my mother did on me. I don't want her doing some of the things that I did – and that I'm lucky I survived.
So far I've never felt the need to check her e-mail, go through her purse or call her friends to be sure she's where she's supposed to be when she says she's going to be there. Would I ever cross that line? Quite honestly, I don't know.
She's almost old enough to drive and is "going out" with the first boy she's ever been the least bit serious about. She's also a lot more mature now than she was when she first slammed her bedroom door and locked it at about age 12. Will that wild streak get the better of her upbringing and intelligence? I don't think so, but I also hope not to have to find out.
Margaret Sagarese, along with co-author Charlene Giannetti, has written a new book on this provocative subject called What Are You Doing in There? Balancing Your Need to Know With Your Adolescent's Need to Grow (Broadway Books, 2003). Aimed at parents of children from early adolescence through older teens, it takes a modern world approach to privacy issues from clean bedrooms to the Internet. She wrote it, because as an expert on adolescent parenting issues, she sees parents moving away from a solid, parental relationship with their children as they get older.
