In my first two articles about privacy and the adolescent years, I wrote about how we parents can and should respect a certain amount of privacy for our teens. By the time our children are 18 years old, after all, they should be approaching adulthood and independence. Of course, we may not treat a 13 year-old and an 18 year-old the same way, but we can work on the process of privacy and respect during the teen years. I also want to talk about how we can set an example and set our expectations about privacy by expecting our children to respect ours and others’ privacy as well.
When I look back at raising my family, I can see that we have had two general eras—the “before knocking” era and the “after knocking” era. When my kids were young, I remember them bursting into my room and my feeling like I could walk into their rooms without much notice. As they hit elementary age, we started to learn about knocking and asking to enter another person’s space (and talking about why it was important to shut the bathroom door) but it wasn’t until the early middle school years that it became the norm—suddenly—for doors to be shut and people to demand privacy. I quickly decided that these lessons in privacy and respect were going to go both ways, and by modeling an expectation of respect for MY privacy, I also needed to be willing to extend the same courtesy and respect to my children. This would be how they learned about healthy boundaries in this area.
As a parent of teenagers, it is time that you too set privacy expectations and boundaries—close your bedroom door and teach the children to knock and be invited in before entering, set a clear expectation that the kids need to ask before using items that belong to you. For me, I know that respecting my purse and work bag was an issue I felt very strongly about—I was not going to have kids who helped themselves to money out of my wallet and I don’t. If they ask for money, I will either get it for them, or ask them to bring me my wallet—I don’t even give them permission to just go and get it. Boundaries and privacy can and should go both ways when it comes to raising our children. This is how we teach our children how to respect both themselves and others.