Parenting is one of the toughest things in life. It is a task that requires wisdom, patience, and timing. A little here, and a little there, makes it perfect.
A slight mistake that makes anything either too little or too much will put everything in jeopardy.
A friend of mine who is 24 years and currently in 300 level in the university was telling me how her parents still don't allow her to visit friends and sometimes seize her phone.
She lamented over the issue bitterly: telling me how she prefers being in school than at home and I felt for her. I know it is good as a parent to want to know what your children are doing out there, but there is a limit to everything in life.
You can not keep them under your watch forever, and even if you can do that, you can't stop that child from doing whatever he/she wants.
At most, you can make them hypocrites, being saints in your presence and something else in your absence.
To most parents that kind of control comes out of love and fear of their children becoming wayward and I understand with them.
It is not even wrong to want to watch over what your children are doing but there is a time and age range for that. At least from birth to age fifteen, I don't think a child should be without monitoring.
Sometimes even 16 and 17 children can't differentiate between right and wrong; they need to be guided through certain things.
At that point, it isn't wrong to ask about their whereabouts and place restrictions on certain things in their life but even at that , certain things need to be off limits for parents.
This may sound unwise but maturity isn't about age, sometimes, one can be an adult by age but a child in the mind, and vice versa.
The truth is a child will become anything and do anything he/she wants depending on the kind of heart they have, therefore I think what matters is not you being a police in their lives but a friend instead.
Privacy is something everyone cherishes, including children. If you keep making attempts to intrude into their privacies when they are not comfortable with it, it may become a problem.
I believe that parents' relationship with their child matters. There is how a parent would create a good relationship with the child that even without asking them questions or going through their privacies like their phones to see their activities, they would willingly always tell you every single thing happening in their lives.
It's not about trying to monitor the child, it's not about trying to be strict all the time, it's about your relationship with the child. If you become both their parent and their friend, you would not need to fear because you would become their confider and there won't be privacy anywhere to make you restless.
Instead of giving yourself so much work; trying to track your child's every move and also trying to time when to give them liberty to take charge of their lives, focus on building a quality relationship with the child. This way, everything will fall into place naturally.
It will make it very easy for you to train the child and give them a balanced life. Sometimes, even when you feel it's time for them to have their own privacy, they will still hand over the privacy to you because of how much they believe in you.
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