Keeping an eye on our little ones

There is a video from my childhood that I remember seeing several times. I am still at a crawling age, and my Dad put the video camera on the floor to capture my movements. There is some muffled adult conversation around me, but the camera stays focused on me and my explorations of the room and the toys left within my reach.

I thought the video was cute when I was younger. As a parent, I had to wonder: If the camera hadn't been on the floor, would anyone have been watching me?

My son didn't have a lot of privacy when he was a baby. We were watching him in person, or via the camera baby monitor in his bedroom or on the web camera at his first school. 

And while I've backed off from the techno-snooping (for the time being) I still use the tried-and-true parent snooping method: I help him purge his room.

I don't actually feel that bad about my current monitoring activities, because almost all parents spy on their children.

Most do it via a combination of technical controls, blocks and monitoring apps, but there are old-fashioned room snoopers as well. What it comes down to is the fact that we parents are trying to stay ahead of our kids.

It's hard not to snoop. Who among us wants to be the one "bad parent" in the group who doesn't know where their child is and what he is up to?

Still, I have to remind myself to let some things go. I have to remember that my son has plenty of memories without me in them and they are his to keep without sharing. I have to remember that my son deserves his privacy...at least in some things.

Do you have any monitoring apps set up on your child's devices? Tell me in the comments.