By Stephen Whitley, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – The only way I can describe it is sick, sad, and scary. Hiding video cameras around their house to spy on the kids seem to be the latest parenting tool. What would Dr. Spock say?
Recently, ABC's John Stossel did a segment on "20/20" about parents who use hidden cameras to view their children's activities, or computer programs that allow them to read everything their kids look at or say on the Internet. One parent in the segment, Linda Puzino, described the camera she uses to monitor her 13-year-old son Derrick's homework as "a detective of sorts." Her son hasn't done anything wrong; she just feels he needs constant monitoring. Since when do parents need to resort to clandestine activities to check up on their children? Wouldn't this mother know if her son isn't doing his homework when he brings his grades home? That's how my parents knew when I wasn't studying. But then again, my parents always knew. That's part of being a parent.
I always believed my mother was a bit psychic. When my sister and I were little, she would tell us she had eyes in the back of her head. I could never understand how she could see through the helmet of teased and sprayed hair that was popular in the early 1970's, but all the proof I needed was that she always knew when my sister and I had been up to something. Once I realized the biological impossibility of what she was saying, I tried, as most kids do, to get away with things like pushing my sister around or, later, sneaking cigarettes. But whatever I did, somehow, someway, my mother would always find out. My Dad was less intuitive, but was more investigative; his favorite pastime was putting his hand on the television when he got home from work to make sure my sister and I had not been watching TV when we got home from school. My parents never needed any hidden cameras to check up on us. They never would have resorted to such pedestrian tactics. They were too smart for that.
The owners of a "spy" shop insisted (in Stossel's report?) that they are just trying to help parents out, and that parents who buy hidden cameras to spy on their kids are doing it because they love them and want to keep them on the straight and narrow. While these parents may love their children, all spying on a child will do is diminish the trust that must exist between a parent and a child. I know when I did something to make my parents punish me, the next time they allowed me a bit of freedom, they were exhibiting a level of trust that I would not engage in that behavior again. With full-time hidden cameras, the children have no reason to ever believe their parents will trust them, and they have no incentive to try to build and keep that trust. I feel sorry for parents who feel they have to spy on their children to get them to behave, but I feel most sorry for children who will find it difficult to trust other authority figures in the future when the most important adult in their lives invades their privacy.
As anyone who has gone thorough puberty knows, kids from about 12 on need their privacy. Linda Puzino told Stossel that she might add additional cameras throughout the house to further monitor her son's activities. She was smiling when she said this, but her son didn't seem quite as convinced. His was a look of total gloom, as if his teenage years will simply consist of monitored bleakness. Perhaps she needs lessons from my parents.
Stephen Whitley is a writer from Dallas.