We Spied on Our Teenage Daughter with a Hidden Camera. Now What Do We Do?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/style/hidden-camera-surveillance.html

by gnicholas • 3 years ago

2 10 3 years ago

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

I'm not sure you need to submit every NYT tech article posted today.

gnicholas3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure advice columns qualify as tech articles, or articles about recycling for that matter. The one about green bubbles and blue bubbles on iPhones is about tech, but is it surprising that someone would post a tech-related article from a popular news outlet?

Feel free not to read/comment if you're not interested!

h2odragon• 3 years ago

Do not ask questions whose answers you did not want to know.

johndunne• 3 years ago

If you’d thought about and committed to using a hidden camera, then you should have thought about this answer prior. As a parent, I find this idea disturbing, the potential damage to trust is a no go.

fargle2• 3 years ago

my wife and me, having successfully* raised teens to adulthood and with a 15 year old daughter still in the house, here's my opinions. caveat: i don't need from 80 people who never had kids as to why i'm wrong. you'all can do what you want, but the OP (in the article) essentially asked a question:

- for this analysis i'm presuming the parents did not violate the law or child-pornography issues. Otherwise, we're not talking about an advice column, we're talking about a lawyer. So the rest of this presumes that, because otherwise we'd be reading about it in the court news.

- the adults did not breach "trust". the daughter (hiding a boyfriend) did. it's totally a forgivable and understandable thing, kids being kids. but its still wrong.

- the article raises a good point. gee, i wonder why? probably overbearing parents. never-the-less...

- but we'd have definitely handled it different. not because it's necessarily wrong, but it's just not stupid and not effective - what did you expect to see? what were you going to do about it if you saw it? better just remove the bedroom door or tell her up -front "ok but we put cameras up all over the house so if you have anyone over we'll know about it".

- this must be balanced with privacy and freedom. but always from the position is that the givers and takers of these privileges are the adults. privacy and freedom, phones, internet, cars, "having a life" are earned privileges for kids.

- a good example. we purposefully told my daughter, just like any employer does, the privilege of internet and phone comes with the fact that we have the right and ability to monitor everything done on them. do we? probably not, but we can and will. disclose it up front. it creates a disincentive to stray.

- but you can't do that all at once. you can't spend 15 years not training, and then come down hard when the first boyfriend or joint or party pops up. training is about setting up situations for success, not failure. so my kids know already how to succeed and make good choices to earn freedom way before the teenage years. yes, a parent's job is a kid-trainer.

- reasonable expectations. kids, especially teens, are allowed to stray (a little), have their own lives, have boyfriends you don't like, etc. what are your "red-lines" you don't ever cross? stick to that and be fair and consistent. it's not fair to allow boyfriends, but only the "ones you like". it is fair to allow boyfriends, but only XOXO, but no XXX, and no-smoking, no 42 year olds perverts, etc.

- the response in the article is such bad advice. let's say the parents realize they royally screwed up and feel really guilty. ok, go confess to the priest or something. don't do that again then. everyone survived and is fine. shut up.

- to the question: "what now?". well, kid survived high-school (and her parents) and is headed to college. do you want a giant fight? do you want to wreck your relationship? what good can come of it. nothing. so shut-up, throw that damn bear away and never speak of it. look forward.

*so far, knock on wood, but married, employed, and homeowners, so far so good

fargle2• 3 years ago

can't edit, but typo: " but it's just not stupid and not effective"

*but it's just stupid and not effective

_g0wg2• 3 years ago

I cannot be convinced that a good parent would ever decide to put a camera in their child's room. All this talk of "training" and making sure they do no wrong is just people who view children as objects. Children are people and they do not deserve to be in prison. Furthermore they can't develop their mental skills properly if they know they have no privacy, they never take the opportunity to do things outside of what the parents dictate.

Having parents like this is torture, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm almost 30 and I still get scared when someone walks near the bathroom door or near my bedroom. I still pretend to be doing something else when someone is coming. I still refuse to use a cell phone (I think this one's rational actually). I still won't get naked in my own room. I still feel the need to walk lightly to avoid anyone knowing where I am. It feels like they're still watching me at all times. Sometimes I wonder if they ever had anything at all, if they just did a good job of brainwashing me to be afraid all the time. I wonder, now, if they they think all the bullshit was worth it for their precious public image?

Every justification parents use for being invasive overbearing fusspots sounds like it was taken directly from the North Korean Dictator Handbook. "Without rules there would be no order". Fuck order. Just another word for "do whatever I say". It's tyranny. Those people don't deserve to have children, and every bit of resistance their children give them is completely justified.

gnicholas3• 3 years ago

If you're open to sharing, what surveillance were you subjected to that causes you to not want to change clothes in your own room? Where do you change that is more private?

_g0wg2• 3 years ago

I never knew for sure if there were cameras in my room, but ambiguity was always part of the abuse. There were at least a few places they could have hidden one, and I was always nervous around those places (small hole in the ceiling for example). My dad was some kind of weird thing back then, like an undercover cop that's not actually employed by the police. A narc, maybe? Or just a "friend of the police"? Anyways, he was really sneaky, really suspicious of everything, had a power/superiority complex, and was a master of manipulating people into self-incrimination. Everything was always a trap, nothing could be trusted.

There was a constant looming threat of someone just barging into whatever room I was in to "make sure I wasn't doing drugs". They were always accusing me of nonsensical things, mostly of being a bad person and a drug user and a liar, none of which I became until later in life. One time I had to sneeze but it went away, and they accused me of making disrespectful faces at them and took away every source of happiness I could possibly find for a month.

That was the punishment every time, plus usually a whipping with a leather belt, and if I cried or moved it started over. They'd take away every possible avenue I could use to gain any positive emotions, and these punishments were in standardized increments of one month. Any mistake during that period effectively doubled the length of the punishment, though I'll be honest I never kept good track of the time, and I think they purposefully messed with time as an extra layer of abuse.

In fact time was one of the things that got me punished the most. I'm autistic and have ADHD (among other things), and they simply would not accommodate my time blindness, attributing it to a character flaw. I asked for help remembering to take the trash out on time; to help they took away all my shit for a month and said if I wanted it back I'd stop being so lazy and defiant. I spent whole years like this.

They read my text messages and listened to my calls. They didn't tell me this, they'd just come out and say "I know X". It was never anything actually bad, just stuff they didn't like. There was this weirdness around the phone, like they really wanted me to have it. When I started using encrypted messaging apps, they demanded the password to my phone and started making me leave it in their room every night. They claimed it was "because I just sit up all night on my phone", even though that was a total lie. They made me feel like a liar for telling the truth.

Their abuse was primarily focused around their openly admitted desire to use me as a tool to improve their social status. I'm not exaggerating, they said those words to me. I was a "bad person" because being myself hurt their public image.

All of these things were said to me during hours-long brainwashing sessions. He'd sit beside me, 90 degrees to the left, and he'd punish me if I didn't look directly at him. I'm pretty sure this was the primary cause of my chronic neck pain. He'd explain to me in great detail just what kind of piece of shit I am for being who I am, down to every individual detail about myself.

I have to mention the moment I started standing up for myself. During one of these hours-long one-way roast sessions, I said something (don't remember what) that upset him. He threw an entire glass of milk in my face and then told me to clean it up. I said "you made the mess, you clean it up LAZY". So then he tried to make my step-mom clean it up, and I said the same thing again; she didn't do it, she doesn't deserve to clean it up. Unfortunately she was broken by then and cleaned it up anyways. That's about when I stopped listening entirely and became disillusioned with the idea of authority.

To finally answer your question, I am only ever naked in the shower with the curtain closed, or under my covers in bed. Even then I feel really weird about it, it still feels like people are watching, but I can't keep the same clothes on forever so they're just gonna have to look at it.

We Spied on Our Teenage Daughter with a Hidden Camera. Now What Do We Do?

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