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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Thanks.  This is helpful.  I am not looking for anything in particular, but we have been having attitude issues and I want to make it very clear to my teen that if he chooses to act in a particular way, his rights to privacy and trust are demolished.  It is less about actually finding things, and more asserting inserting our authority as parents that unfortunately, has gone by the wayside in the past few months. [/quote]

I'm that poster back again - glad you found my post helpful. That being said, your reply raises a few questions in my mind as I would not generally advocate the approach I posted in anything less than a situation where you have an actual suspicion that the teen is on drugs, engaging in behavior that could hurt himself or others, or breaking the law. I'm not really one to try to micromanage others' parenting, so you can feel free to ignore the rest of my post if you like. But, would you be open to considering other approaches to dealing with the attitude problem that stop short of something this drastic?

Doing something like this might honestly ruin your teen's trust in you and hamper your loving relationship for years or possibly forever. In a drugs/alcohol/crime type situation, I would say the parental duty to protect the child makes it worth the risk, but I hesitate to make the same assessment for something you describe as attitude issues and loss of appropriate respect for parental authority.

To be clear, I consider myself a very strict parent so a bad attitude, lack of respect for authority, and insubordination would never fly in my house and I'm absolutely not advocating you let that slide. If you decide the room search route is right for your family, that is entirely your business and I completely respect that as your choice, but I just wanted to mention a few possible alternatives because I hope to help you avoid any possible regrets if the method I suggested turns out to be too harsh for the situation.

Have you sat your teen down and had a very serious talk laying down the law - sort of an "I've been seeing X Y and Z disrespectful behaviors, and that doesn't work in this family; let me reiterate our expectations" type chat? How was that received? Does grounding work? For pervasive attitude and defiance, we would probably go with room restriction where the kid is either at school/doing homework, eating a family meal or doing a family activity, doing (extra) chores, or in her very boring room which had been emptied of all electronics.

Is your child involved in a sport, an extra-curricular activity, or a faith community? If this bad attitude has been cropping up outside the home (or even if it hasn't) could a respected adult mentor from an activity like that have a chat with him to serve as sort of a wake up call? Would you consider having him get involved in community service/volunteering? Perhaps something like that would serve as its own kind of wake up call to knock the attitude off towards the people who've made his life of relative comfort possible.
[/quote]

This is such a helpful and awesome post.  OP, listen to this poster.  He or she sounds like a kick-ass parent.[/quote]

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