Reply to phone number on early teen's cell that parent does not recognize

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't monitor like that, but I personally would think that was perfectly normal and I'd expect there to be plenty of numbers on[b] my tween [/b]or teen's phone that I wouldn't recognize.

She's got a large group of friends and people change numbers often. She's in numerous activities and meets new acquaintances and friends from other schools in the area with whom I would hope she'd exchange contact info if she wanted to keep in touch but whom I certainly wouldn't know.

I don't know the random person in her class she's assigned to work in a one-time group project with and needs to contact about that, so I wouldn't recognize their number either.

Not to mention occasional contacts she needs for work.

I don't recognize all the numbers in my own phone address book - that's why they're in there and not just in my head - let alone my child's. Nor, frankly, do I see a need to.

Unless the text you saw gave you reason to be concerned, or your child is very young, I wouldn't worry about this at all and I would do... nothing. [/quote]

Really?  How old is your tween?[/quote]

Not pp but dd is 12 and has a similar set up. I spot check her texts to make sure they're appropriate (she knows we do this, as well as browser history on ipad and laptop), and I don't know all of her contacts. [b]By the time they're in middle school, it's assumed that our kids are going to know people we don't know, and possibly have reasons to text them. [/b][/quote]

I'm the PP you quoted,  DD is 12 and we agree with the PP I quoted immediately above on the line I bolded (although we handle monitoring differently, very different philosophies it seems).[/quote]

Just curious. What is your monitoring style?[/quote]

Almost nonexistent, as detailed in post 18:36. We've chosen to monitor only picture messages sent to the cell phone and use the one questionable one she's gotten so far as an example of the sort of thing she needs to not be sending or posting anywhere because of potential legal implications. Her receipt of this one appeared unsolicited and we believe she didn't want it... no repeats in over a year, not that she couldn't be doing that stuff somewhere else if she wanted to. We don't want to monitor even that, but we did want to be able to use a teachable moment if it presented itself.

We don't monitor or spot check texts, social media, internet history, etc, because of our own personal views on privacy and our cost-benefit analysis of monitoring efforts. We do not find such monitoring appropriate or think monitoring our specific girls as detailed on this thread was necessary (DD 20 and Niece 22 had no apparent issues, so we were correct for them and appear correct so far for DD12). Nor do we think it would teach them the sort of decision making style we want them to have or foster the relationship we want. We assessed that monitoring was unlikely to actually catch our kids if they were determined to get up to something we would disapprove of (which is limited to anything malicious or illegal) but was likely to damage our relationship, so we saw little benefit to strict monitoring for our family.

Basically, we have always talked openly about anything, including some very touchy topics our girls indicated their friends' parents would be unlikely to talk about, so we simply trusted that they would come to us with questions or concerns. That appears to have been well-founded trust, as there have been a few situations where one of the older girls did reach out for some adult advice when they decided they were in over their head, and we were able to assist.

We were lucky to have three kids for whom this approach worked, kids who as far as we know didn't get involved in anything potentially risky, and a relationship that was that open. In a different situation, with any one different factor, we may well have made different choices. That's just what happened to work for us so far and what we'll be sticking with for now unless a situation appears to call for something different.[/quote]

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