I am sorry this thread suddenly went south because I read through it all and was really interested in the discussion. I hope you see my post Saluki because I want to thank you for the thread. I really enjoyed reading the link you posted and felt relieved that I am not a helicopter mom. In part because I have been too sick and self absorbed to do much more than basic parenting but also because I have always had an issue with over stimulating and pushing kids with too much organized activity.

I totally get what you are saying about kids going wild if over restricted. I try to find the middle ground but it is tough sometimes. Even though he is 16 in so many ways he will always be my little boy who needs me to take care of him. Time goes so quickly it is hard for me to make the adjustments as he becomes an adult.

I do remember being a teenager but I wasn't a typical teenager nor did I live a typical teenage life. My mother was injured in an accident when I was 12 and from that time on I became the chief cook, bottle washer and person responsible for the comings and goings of my year younger sister. I had an older brother but in those days boys weren't expected to pitch in on house chores. By the time I was 15 everyone but my mom and me had moved out and my mom was in the hospital more than she was home so I was home alone raising myself. Before my sister left she was a handful. She would sneak out and get into cars with guys much older than her and skip school etc etc and if our dad found out I would be in as much trouble as she was. She used to like to hang with her friends at a coffee shop up town but I never could figure out the attraction. More often than not I would be there dragging her out before dad got home.

Looking back I feel like I didn't really have a teen life. I had to grow up so fast that I lost most of my friends because 'I got too serious'. Even when I had the house to myself I never invited kids over or did anything I wouldn't have done with a parent around. The worst I did was skip school now and then to come home and watch a soap opera. lol.

Basically I didn't have a rebellious bone in my body. I was my father's daughter I was as tough on my sister as my dad. I was as self righteous and rules oriented as my dad. I guess I tried to win his approval and love by being responsible and as perfect to perfect as I could be. In the end it wasn't worth diddly because he did the ultimate betrayal when he abandoned me and my mom to take up with another woman when I was 15.

Sorry.... I digress... back on topic.... Back to the question of parenting with freedom.... I find myself unsure of the line as I try to parent a teenager having no experience of being one myself. I don't know what this issue with privacy is all about. I lean toward the view that he has no real privacy while he is under my roof. If I have reason for concern I will snoop at anything without feeling like I am violating his privacy. We don't lock doors in our house and nobody has any secret passwords. That I know about. lol. Funny how rules go.... no absolutes.

I would not put a tracker on him though. When he was young enough for me to worry about an abduction then he wouldn't be without adult supervision. I did loose him a couple of times and man oh man that was scary and a tracker on his clothes would have been a good idea but that is not what we are talking about. My son would have been a perfect candidate for a harness if I didn't think they were degrading for children. Man could that kid disappear fast.

We are talking about tracking teenagers and I think the idea is over the top. If parents do it because they don't trust the kid then tracking isn't going to fix that. Something else has broken down between them that is far more concerning. They need to communicate and know thier kid rather than spy on their activities 24/7. If parents do it for safety reasons that's different and I can relate but I have come to conclude for myself that I can get carried away with safety concerns some times. I came to think that I would deny my son valuable learning about personal safety if I was always protecting him. Instead I taught him how to respond to dangerous situations and I have learned to trust him to use those skills as required. I can't prevent danger in his life but i can prepare him to respond in dangerous situations. We don't even have cell phones. I hate them. But if I need one for an emergency then there is bound to be someone around who does and if I or my son needs one its just an ask away.

When my son moved from the elementary school across the street to busing to highschool I bought 2 cell phones just to settle my own separation anxiety. It wasn't long before both phones were in a drawer. Between him downloading expensive apps, texting in class, forgetting it in a locker, loosing the power charger and me realizing the school had free phones for students to use they became more of a bother than anything. An expensive bother but a good lesson in letting go. I may buy a phone again when he starts to drive. It will be left in the vehicle and restricted to emergency use and calling home. If I think I need to track where he goes then he won't be using the vehicle. We will be resolving our trust issues first.

If my son decides to sneak out at night.... well good luck since my insomnia is totally unpredictable.... but if he were to break the rules and sneak out I need to know he has the skills and wisdom to not walk into trouble. I think as parents we need to prepare our children to survive rule breaking. I taught my son how to cross the busy road to his elementary school from day one even though the rule was to always use the overpass walkway. I knew there would be times that he would fall to the temptation to dash across the street instead of going all the way around over the walkway. I needed to know he would survive breaking the rule. He knew the rule and the conseqences if caught but I couldn't trust that he would never break the rule so I needed to know he would be safe either way.

I think I try to treat my son more and more like an adult as the days go by now that he is 16. Giving more responsibility and giving him more privileges with strings. Holding him to account for the conseqences of his choices both short and long term. I ask him what he thinks the appropriate discipline might be for this or that. I ask him how he would handle a particular situation. I pick his brain a lot to see how he thinks things through to get a sense of how well he can manage situations he will face on his own. I regress to treating him like a kid sometimes but less and less as time goes by.

While my son has shared a short glass of wine with a festive dinner and sipped on a cooler while camping I am pretty strict when it comes to underage drinking. I am grateful he prefers to have his friends over to play video games and not attend teen drinking parties. He says he wants to go but doesn't because he knows I don't want him to go. So long as he is in agreement with the boundry we are good but one day he may decide he wants to be out partying and hanging with friends instead of staying home playing games with real or online buddies. Just not sure how I will deal with it because there is a part of me that worries that if I am too restrictive then when he finally is on his own he will get carried away. I hope when the time comes I will still have the communication with my son to be able to determine the right action together. I think parenting a teenager is a team effort. I can't impose as much on him as I could when he was a child. I need him to buy in to the boundaries. Otherwise I figure the boundary is useless and I would revert to tracking his every move to be one step ahead. Sounds horrible.