Parents like spy gadgets, but here's real secret weapon

The kindergartner scampers off to school with a Global Positioning System tracking device clipped to her belt, so her parents can make sure she really did walk home with Katie after school.

The teenager's Facebook page reveals plenty, but his parents also scan his cell phone text messages as well as the history of Web pages he's visited to make sure he doesn't step outside the lines.

Separated by 600 miles, the college kid still involuntarily updates his parents about his travels thanks to a key chain that not only monitors his routes and stops, but keeps track of his speed along the way.

Not even the Bush Administration has this much power to spy.

"The opportunities to be mini-James Bonds are out there for parents now," says Dr. Donald L. Shifrin, an expert on the impact of media on children's health, and a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, headquartered in Elk Grove Village. "It's a double-edged sword: one side is good, and one side is bad."

In the unlikely event your 5-year-old gets snatched on the way home from school, that GPS device could save her life. Likewise, anything that stops your teen from seeing if the Honda can top 100 miles per hour might also prevent a tragedy.

But as a teenager in the 1970s, I was glad that my parents didn't know I was reading "Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks" just for the sex scenes, perused Time magazine for pictures of naked streakers and sometimes spent a little longer than necessary in the car before dropping off a date after a movie.

"Unfortunately, the genie's out of the bottle," says Shifrin, who is 60. "The curtain that heretofore has divided childhood from adulthood has pretty much come down."

Instead of sneaking a peek at a friend's father's Playboy, a modern 12-year-old boy curious to see a naked breast might try an online search that will deliver high-definition videos of misogynistic, pornographic sex involving young women and farm animals.

There are good filters for computers and TVs, and parenting tips to keep kids from delving into graphic porn and violence, but "you can't keep everything out," Shifrin warns. "If you take the computer away completely, there's always Johnny's computer next door."

The best protection isn't spy technology.

"You have to give them your values so that when they see this, they know this is not healthy sex," Shifrin says.

Secrecy breeds secrecy. A parent secretly tracking a teen's every move will inspire the kid to be better at keeping secrets.

"If you want honesty from your children, you have to be honest with them," Shifrin says. "We need to discuss what our concerns are, and then be a little flexible. You want to keep a dialogue going, but you don't want to be on the pulpit. Kids don't want to be preached to."

If you do discover your kid did a bad, bad thing, don't yell. "The calmer you are, sometimes the worse teenagers like it," Shifrin says. "When you are yelling and screaming, they think, 'I can handle this,' because eventually the yelling and screaming will stop."

Gadgets catch kids' misdeeds, and the fear of getting caught might prevent some misbehavior, but that's not a permanent solution.

"The first thing that youngsters learn is trust," the pediatrician says, explaining how infants come to rely on parents. "If they don't trust you anymore, you've lost that parent-child dyad. The more imperialist parents try to be, the more their children push them away."

Talk to kids about unhealthy choices, and tell them you love them and are paying attention, Shifrin says. Instead of threats and spying, use frank and honest discussions. There are lots of good Web sites that help parents manage these difficult discussions, but because the content is geared to different ages, parents (and kids) might start their search at the American Academy of Pediatrics Web site at www.aap.org.

"It's very tempting for parents to take the short-term routes, but that's going to lead to long-term problems," Shifrin says. "We've got to understand that the only way to protect your kids is to talk to them."

That can be difficult, but parents investing a fortune in spy gadgets should take comfort in knowing that talk is cheap.