The younger one is completely different. I mean the exact opposite. To the extent that if she told me it was raining frogs, I'd fully expect to hear croaking.  This is probably going to sound like a gratuitous statement, but my older daughter takes after her father - the real, one and only one. He's a dick. Nuf said.

When the older daughter was growing up and still living under the homestead roof, I didn't start off my career as a mother by thinking it was my job to snoop into her room or her belongings or listen in on her phone calls. I believed for a long time that kids deserve a certain amount of privacy. Now, I'm not going to air the family dirty laundry here, but there was a point at which I got blindsided with information that proved to me that I had no clue what my older daughter was all about and what she was up to.

So I began checking on her. And it's a damn good thing I did, because I was responsible for her until she was 18 years old, which means legally I was accountable for what she did. My ignorance was not an acceptable excuse if she got into trouble and I was sued or whatever. As far as the family was concerned, I saw her as violating my trust. Once that was gone, I couldn't believe much of anything she said. Legally, I was not about to be held responsible for her behavior if I could help it. The only way I could help it was to make myself aware of what she was doing no matter what she said that was. She lied. That changes the whole dynamic.

Now I'm hearing some advocate for children's rights telling me that parents have no business checking on their children.  We pay the bills for the electricity and the phone service our children use. But we should have nothing to say about how they use or abuse what we provide? We may be liable if our children break the law before they are 18 years old, but we have no right at all to know what they're doing?

That's flat out nuts. But if states want to enact laws like that which make it virtually impossible for a parent to take parental responsibility seriously, then I think parents should be able to divorce those problem children rather than be driven crazy by willful, disruptive, and yes, dangerous behavior. I want to be able to go to sleep at night knowing one member of the household will not burn the house down, because I have done whatever I could to make sure that doesn't happen. It's not something I'm willing to leave to chance. And if my eavesdropping on a telephone call allows me to prevent a bunch of teenagers from getting drunk and doing God only knows what to themselves or someone else, then I'm going to eavesdrop. If the law doesn't like it, then the law can decide what to do with the brats who thought that was a good idea in the first place. And they can leave me out of it completely.

If it takes place in my house and I'm going to be liable for it, then I deserve the right to know what's going on. I'm willing to keep up my end of that deal. Why in the hell would states want to fuck with that?