David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Walking on Eggshells: When Good Parenting Becomes Prying
by Nancy Darling, Psychology Today
April 19, 2011
When does monitoring kids cross the line to prying?
Parents' lives are full of contradictions.
Parental monitoring - keeping tabs on your children's day-to-day activities - is an important component of good parenting.
You can't parent effectively without knowing what's going on in your kid's life. And you can't take steps to forestall problems or shape the environment so that kids make good choices for themselves without being sensitive to your children's moods and watchful of small, early signs of problems. You can't even celebrate their triumphs, joys, and everyday good spirits without being around and keeping up with things.
The problem is, HOW?.
Just bursting in and demanding information just doesn't work.
The first essay in this series, Get Out! Sneaky Kids and Prying Parents Make a Toxic Mix, reported on recent work showing that when parents pry, kids respond by becoming more secretive, with the long term result that parents know less than they would have if they'd just laid back a little. In other words, when parents pry, the result is that they know less about their kids, not more.
Kids lose too. When kids respond to privacy invasion by becoming more secretive, parents become even more invasive, responding to suspected problems and hidden information by becoming more and more intrusive. A lose-lose situation.
Balancing protection with fostering independence is always problematic - even in toddlerhood and those long, heart-wrenching nights trying to decide between letting them cry it out or snuggle them close. Things get worse, of course, when kids become adolescents.
Adolescence is when the normative increase in their desire for autonomy comes head-to-head with poor decision making skills exercised in risky contexts. Parents want to know more at the same time that kids want to share less.
So what's the balance? When does good monitoring cross the line to unhealthy prying?
We know that kids respond to perceived prying by putting up barriers to healthy communication. But what, exactly, is prying?
Brad Brown and colleague Hsun-yu Chan recently presented the results of a studying asking exactly that question. They surveyed 227 adolescents and their parents about what strategies parents typically used to gather information about their teens' lives and how intrusive teens thought these strategies were.
Some of their answers were surprising.
What do parents do?
Probably not surprising was what parents did to find out information. Parents were asked how often they used a list of 21 different overt and covert strategies (rated from 'never' to 'more than several times').
Most common strategies (several times or more) included:
Least frequent strategies included:
More surprising, to me at least, was how kids responded to different strategies. Brown and Choi had a panel of 18 teens rate each of the 21 parent strategies on a 1-3 scale from 1 (not really intrusive) to 3 (intrusive).
The strategies rated least intrusive were:
On the other hand, what did teens see as most intrusive?
Asking for details before your child goes out someplace? (Isn't that what parents are supposed to do?)
Sharing information with other parents? (If it's okay for parents to ASK other parents about you, why can't they TELL other parents about you? Is it because parents know a lot more grotty details about your life - simply because they live with you - than the parent of a friend might know? So what's shared is potentially more private?)
Asking for details after an event? You mean, like asking "How was the dance? Did you have fun?"
The Real Puzzle: Guess Who's The Most Nosy
Who engages in the most intrusive behaviors? Not the parents who are worried about their kids. Not the ones who think they have every right to butt into their kids' business.
No, it's the parents who have the most positive relationship with their kids and the ones who just want to know about the good aspects of their teen's social lives. GOOD aspects.
Interestingly, the more parents were worried about negative aspects about peers, the LESS intrusive they were.
Interesting.
In other words, the parents who are most likely to pry and ask intrusive questions - as seen by their kids - are the ones who are least worried.
And the ones who were most worried were least likely to ask questions.
The next question up for researchers: Why?
by Nancy Darling, Psychology Today
April 19, 2011
When does monitoring kids cross the line to prying?
Parents' lives are full of contradictions.
Parental monitoring - keeping tabs on your children's day-to-day activities - is an important component of good parenting.
You can't parent effectively without knowing what's going on in your kid's life. And you can't take steps to forestall problems or shape the environment so that kids make good choices for themselves without being sensitive to your children's moods and watchful of small, early signs of problems. You can't even celebrate their triumphs, joys, and everyday good spirits without being around and keeping up with things.
The problem is, HOW?.
Just bursting in and demanding information just doesn't work.
The first essay in this series, Get Out! Sneaky Kids and Prying Parents Make a Toxic Mix, reported on recent work showing that when parents pry, kids respond by becoming more secretive, with the long term result that parents know less than they would have if they'd just laid back a little. In other words, when parents pry, the result is that they know less about their kids, not more.
Kids lose too. When kids respond to privacy invasion by becoming more secretive, parents become even more invasive, responding to suspected problems and hidden information by becoming more and more intrusive. A lose-lose situation.
Balancing protection with fostering independence is always problematic - even in toddlerhood and those long, heart-wrenching nights trying to decide between letting them cry it out or snuggle them close. Things get worse, of course, when kids become adolescents.
Adolescence is when the normative increase in their desire for autonomy comes head-to-head with poor decision making skills exercised in risky contexts. Parents want to know more at the same time that kids want to share less.
So what's the balance? When does good monitoring cross the line to unhealthy prying?
We know that kids respond to perceived prying by putting up barriers to healthy communication. But what, exactly, is prying?
Brad Brown and colleague Hsun-yu Chan recently presented the results of a studying asking exactly that question. They surveyed 227 adolescents and their parents about what strategies parents typically used to gather information about their teens' lives and how intrusive teens thought these strategies were.
Some of their answers were surprising.
What do parents do?
Probably not surprising was what parents did to find out information. Parents were asked how often they used a list of 21 different overt and covert strategies (rated from 'never' to 'more than several times').
Most common strategies (several times or more) included:
- Ask child for details after activity
- Ask child for details before activity
- Ask child in general conversation
- Gone to school event
- Gone to community event
Least frequent strategies included:
- Tried to get information from child's friend
- Ask others you know about child's relationships
- Looked through child's personal belongings
- Asked someone outside family for information
- Asked child's friend to tell you about child/peers
More surprising, to me at least, was how kids responded to different strategies. Brown and Choi had a panel of 18 teens rate each of the 21 parent strategies on a 1-3 scale from 1 (not really intrusive) to 3 (intrusive).
The strategies rated least intrusive were:
- Found out about child / peers by accident
- Learned something without even trying
- Called another parent to check on activity
- Asked someone outside the family for information
- Ask others you know about child's relationships
On the other hand, what did teens see as most intrusive?
- Asked for details before event
- Shared info on children with other parents
- Ask for details after event
- Eavesdrop on conversations of child with friend
- See what child writes on computer
Asking for details before your child goes out someplace? (Isn't that what parents are supposed to do?)
Sharing information with other parents? (If it's okay for parents to ASK other parents about you, why can't they TELL other parents about you? Is it because parents know a lot more grotty details about your life - simply because they live with you - than the parent of a friend might know? So what's shared is potentially more private?)
Asking for details after an event? You mean, like asking "How was the dance? Did you have fun?"
The Real Puzzle: Guess Who's The Most Nosy
Who engages in the most intrusive behaviors? Not the parents who are worried about their kids. Not the ones who think they have every right to butt into their kids' business.
No, it's the parents who have the most positive relationship with their kids and the ones who just want to know about the good aspects of their teen's social lives. GOOD aspects.
Interestingly, the more parents were worried about negative aspects about peers, the LESS intrusive they were.
Interesting.
In other words, the parents who are most likely to pry and ask intrusive questions - as seen by their kids - are the ones who are least worried.
And the ones who were most worried were least likely to ask questions.
The next question up for researchers: Why?
