danf, I grew up with an crazy Catholic mother who ate up every won't-somebody-think-of-the-children?! news story with a big ol' spoon. Didn't stop me from doing anything dangerous, in fact it might have made me more interested, although I leaned that way anyway. As long you don't see any warning signs that she's up to anything truly nefarious, I wouldn't worry.

Danf, you're not being under-concerned. You're being rational.

(And am I remembering correctly that your daughter has a girlfriend? If I've got that right, this all says that you're concerned about stuff that matters, not stuff that doesn't. Good for you.)

My daughter has a gf. . . .pregnancy. . .not likely. . .std's. . .a tad more likely than pregnancy but still. . .

So if her honey was a male, a whole different ballgame, so to speak.

I DID link an ask mefi hickie removal thread to her. . .she had one on either side. . .*smile*. . .

heh - i read the title of this as "I Don't Have the Internet, I Have an AOL Account".

In bringing that up, danf, I just meant to point out that you don't seem to be the kind of parent likely to go apeshit over perceived threats, and that you trust your kid. The parents in the Chronicle article could use an injection of that kind of thinking, if you ask me.

Although not entirely sympathetic, I was somewhat okay with this...

But DeRosa, a respondent to the Common Sense Media survey, followed the links to her child's best friend's profile. There, the friend had listed not only the school they both attended but several of the classes they shared. And her child's friend had posted a photo of DeRosa's daughter and a boy whom DeRosa's parents didn't approve of.

"My daughter is a little ticked at me right now. She says, 'Mom, everybody's on MySpace,' " said DeRosa. But she won't stop spot-checking her children's e-mail accounts. "I may be a little overprotective."

...right up to what immediately followed...

"But even though my daughter is 18 and going to community college, she has to follow my rules while she is under my roof."

...at which point my mouth flopped open in amazement.

But she won't stop spot-checking her children's e-mail accounts. "I may be a little overprotective."

Of course, the kids are at an advantage since they know they can quite easily set up a free email account mom knows nothing about.

"But even though my daughter is 18 and going to community college, she has to follow my rules while she is under my roof."

That made your jaw drop? I heard that kinda shit my whole life. Of course the miute I got my own place, I called my mom up to tell her I had every light in the house on and was running with scissors.

Getting bad grades was a huge deal with my parents, and I was miserable in school anyway, so my chief rebellion was skipping and flunking classes. I also drank, but that wasn't rebellious.

In general, I felt no compulsion to do anything because my parents forbid it. Partly, that was because they weren't strict.

But every child is different. We all form theories about child-raising from our own experiences as a child and fail to realize that children are different, environment and circumstance is different. I am very skeptical about any supposedly one size fits all child raising philosophy.

Not the "under the roof", but the being so protective of an 18 year old who's out of high school.

When I graduated from high school, I was grown up as far as my parents were concerned. They wanted me to pay rent if I stayed living with them. (I moved out within a month of graduation. Although, um, I did eventually come back a couple of times.)

In general, I felt no compulsion to do anything because my parents forbid it.

Well, that wasn't my prime motivation, but it would pique my curiosity. For all my mom's hysteria, she didn't seem to notice all the drinking, drug-taking, petty delinquency, sexual experimentation and whatnot I was up to from age 12 on. And I still managed to turn out OK. My Dad, growing up in NYC probably had more of a clue, but I guess he kept it to himself, bless his heart.

If you have an AOL account then you do, in fact, hate the internet.

Every kid is different. My step-daughter had an on-going "relationship" with a boy from Wyoming via the internet and the phone. She got mad at my husband and I because we wanted proof that he was a 13 year old boy. (Not to mention the $130.00 phone bill we got-late night clandestine calls). We live in New Jersey, and her evasiveness just added to our uneasiness. Eventually we got some sort of proof (spoke to his mom, and him) and the calls petered out and stopped. She's just a naive, (alright, airheaded) kid, now sixteen, and we still worry. She claims not to give out any information about where she lives, etc., but we still get strange numbers on our phone bill. And you'd think by now she'd realize that we check the numbers! I have less fears with the other kids, I think they all have more common sense. So if that makes me overprotective, so be it.

But even though my daughter is 18 and going to community college, she has to follow my rules while she is under my roof.

That totally makes sense to me, especially if you live in the kind of household I lived in where you didn't have to pay rent and only had to do chores every now and then, while they paid for your car insurance and your college education. If I'd accepted those "gifts" AND rebelled and totally flaunted all the rules, I would have been stupid.

Having to call home around midnight or to always let my mom know where I was going was a small price to pay for being able to spend the night at my friends' places all over Orange County and L.A.

Yeah, but when the "rule" is that they don't approve of her friend's MySpace page and that it includes a photo of their daughter with a boy? It's not that there's rules, it's that the rules are insane.