Is Your Teen Leading a Secret Life?
Terri Fifer spent a painful week wondering where her 13-year-old son had gone. After a rough year both at school and at home, he just disappeared.
In a July 15 article in the Ahwatukee Foothills News, writer Doug Murphy reported that although Fifer’s experience had a happy ending (her son was found unharmed), it forced her to acknowledge how much she didn’t know about her own child:
“You don’t know until your kid goes missing. I learned the hard way what my kid’s secret life was,” Fifer said last week after her son was found, thanks to tips from friends.
But in the seven days he was on his own in Ahwatukee Foothills, she learned that she really didn’t know who his friends were, who their parents were, that many of the middle school students he hung with would either ignore her frantic calls asking for help in finding him, or outright lied about where her son was.
And there is more she has yet to learn because she can’t log onto his MySpace page, and thanks to the electronic social world, it is often in the electronic world that children open up to their peers and discuss what they are doing.
Modern technology, especially the Internet and text messaging, make secret lives easier — and should remind parents that they need to be especially vigilant regarding their child’s comings and goings (both online and in the “real world”).
Changes in friends, behavior or school performance could be signs that your child is hiding something. Maintain an active positive presence in your child’s life, and don’t be afraid to exert your right as a parent to know where he’s going, what he’s doing, and who he’s associating with.
Tags: adolescents, parenting, secrets, teens
