Years ago, when my BFF and I found that our mothers were trying to snoop in our diaries, we would smuggle them to school after writing in them in the afternoon, exchange them, hide them under our pillows or something at night, and smuggle them back to the original owner the following morning.
Our snoopy mothers never did figure out our system, and we valiantly promised (and as far as I know, we kept our promises) not to read each other's diaries. Of course, we knew just about all each others' secrets anyway. . .
And it's funny. We were both "good" kids who never did anything that our parents should have worried about anyway. I think our biggest transgression was to sneak phones into our rooms on New Years' Eve, hide them under the bedclothes, and at the stroke of midnight, one would call the other and we would talk in whispers for HOURS. Otherwise, our calls were limited to 10 or 15 minutes. Our mothers didn't think we needed to talk for longer than that.
Once we were grown, married women, we often enjoyed 2 and 3 hour talks. Our husbands had to learn to deal with it.
As a 14 year old,I was beaten by mother who discovered and read some of my adolescent fiction which , naturally, was highly romanticised and based on real (non-Mo)people befitting my limited social circle.
That cured me of writing anything other than school related "stuff". Never kept a diary or journal or personal letters.
To this day I wonder if instead of being a huge consumer of the written word I may have been a creator of it.
I refused to keep a journal for that very reason. I wish I'd been clever enough to keep a fictional one just to mess with my parents' heads. "Oh, no, I'm working out story ideas and you bought into it. LOLz!" They didn't believe a word that came outta my mouth either way, I should have just cooked up some good juicy fiction.
I was also known to keep things in my locker at school, and/or at my sister's apartment or in her car once she moved out. I also occasionally moved certain things to my mom's house.
How about adult kids spying on parents? Since my mother is now in skilled care she has very little privacy. What little privacy she has is being invaded by my sister. My sister has enlisted her Facebook friends (some are nurses and church people) to report to her about everything my mother says and does. She's not asking this to stay current on Mom's health and well being. She never even asks about those things. She wants to know if Mom buys anything, goes anywhere, says anything about her, and other creepy prying questions. Mom cannot even have her nails painted without my sister finding out and questioning how Mom is spending "her inheritance".
When I was a teen, my father constantly searched my room for contraband. So I left a white Tic Tac in a dresser drawer for him to find. Sure enough, he presented the Tic Tac to me while I was watching TV. "Are you trying to blow your mind?" he asked. "Hmm, Tic Tac," I said, and I took it from his hand and popped it in my mouth. He was furious.
My parents made it clear from the time I was a child that no one in their house, except for my mother and father, should have any expectation of privacy whatsoever in regard to anything. Of course, I lied all the time, and they still suffer under the delusion that they know must of the stuff I did as a teenager.
They probably are aware of about 10 percent of it, if that. But that 10 percent led them to conclude I was a hellbound youth.
I know an LDS family, the children of which are now middle-aged, in which the father used to show up at the kids' schools randomly once or twice a year and demand that his kids open their lockers so that he could inspect the contents. After the first raid on the oldest son, they all knew that anything they didn't want the @$$hole to see should be stashed in someone else's locker.
None of my boundaries were respected as a child. I had no privacy whatsoever.
I don't know what my moms deal is with sex, Maybe she only had it twice; to conceive me and my sister. Every girly magazine I hid she found and she would tell me how terrible those magazines were and that "they are making fun of womens bodies"
Really? I was admiring their bodies. Actually celebrating them. Between her and the church I have a bunch of shame dumped on me that I didn't ask for. And rage due to that.
My mother has a serious disturbance as it relates to even recognizing that there are boundaries. If I didn't love her in spite of that I'd never have anything to do with her.
I don't think I am like the helicopter moms who must know every aspect of their kids thoughts and lives. But if I hadn't read my daughter's journal, I don't think I would have known that she was suicidal. Then we were able to get her the needed help, and all is well today.
My right to privacy certainly didn't exist as a teen, and well into my 20's. My mother was/is absolutely horrific when it comes to snooping. I was a prolific writer/poet and artist as a kid, but I quickly learned that those things were to be completely unsupported, and in fact, condemned, due to their subject matter. So I squelched my talent after I grew tired of being beaten for writing simple things in the diary I couldn't seem to hide well enough. I then saved my allowance and bought one with a lock. She broke it. My first boyfriend at 17 was into writing letters. She found those and tore them up in front of me and then punished me severely.
A few years later while I was in college, I had my first cell phone, but was on my parents plan. My cheapskate dad told me that the minutes were free after 9pm and to use the day minutes only to call them(because that was to be the only reason I had one). So I used the phone at night thinking it was ok. Months later I found myself in a long distance relationship with a man in SoCal while I lived in Vegas. We talked for hours at night, and I also had other friends I called often. Turns out the minutes weren't really free and my dad got a gigantic phone bill. He freaked out and called me and threatened to call all the numbers on the phone bill to tell them to get a life and stop calling me. I was surprised and reminded him that he had told me that the minutes were free at night. Only on weekends he said. Then he called all the numbers and did just what he had promised. I lost the bf, and got some angry calls from employers and friends telling me to tell my father to lay off.
I went out immediately and bought a tracphone and turned off the other one and never looked back. Then he complained I wasn't using the phone enough.