| I know where you're coming from but there's something that's a bit off for me. The way I think about it is if I take my daughter to the park and let her run around. I have my eye on her of course and she knows that I have my eye on her. I'd be less comfortable if I told her to go the park and have fun but then without her knowing went over to the park and watched over her. If she was annoyed by this I couldn't blame her. I wouldn't really want to get in a situation where I'm worried she'll find out I'm surreptitiously spying on her. If on the other hand it's the first scenario where everything is in the open and she's not happy with that - she's running away where I can't keep an eye her - then we can talk about it and as the parent if worse comes worse I can just say, OK no more going to the park because we can't come to a place where we're both happy. At the end of the day though I don't want to be going to the park with my daughter. I want her to go by herself and not get up into shenanigans. The whole thing I'm doing is to raise her in a way that when she's on her own she's aware of what's bad/dangerous/stupid and doesn't do that. Monitoring her (especially without her knowledge ) is only tangentially related to the goal. And if I'm doing it on the sly how do I let her know? Say, daughter, if you were in a park and if some guy offered you candy, you'd say no, right? Further wouldn't that give away the game that I'd been spying on her? |