When should you violate
privacy? From a Father's perspective!
So I am always advocating privacy
and you should never give up privacy for any reason. However maybe that’s a bit
narrow minded in the grand scheme of things. Maybe privacy is something that
needs to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Sometimes privacy can be a bad thing. As I will
explain with a personal experience I have and am working through.
As a parent I walk this line every
day and do try to adhere to my strong
support of individual privacy. I mean after all I don’t like when my privacy is
taken away from me so I do try to keep that in mind with raising my kids. For
the most part I have never had a need or reason to go against it.
This summer
however I noticed a change with my daughter. She seemed to start to spend more
time in her room on her mobile device. At first I believed the line of watching
stuff and playing games. So I tried coaxing her into doing that with me
downstairs with little success. With the exception of hiding in her room there
was no noticeable change in her behaviour. Again I figured it was nothing more than
teenage girl stuff.
Now where
things start to become more serious was trying to get her to do her chores.
After some time of always facing a battle it came out. She said she was
depressed and considering suicide. This of course caught me completely off guard.
I mean I see her smiling every day and she has a pretty good life here at home.
With the usual exceptions of course with respects to brotherly teasing.
I am not
great with emotions at the best of times and this was a real challenge for me
to process. I at first felt angry that I was just finding out about it. Then I went
into the fear stage wondering how I was going to proceed without making things
worse. The fear part unfortunately does not really go away to be honest but you
do start to use the normal approach to problems you use in your daily lives.
First you try to understand why and where this feeling came from so you can
start the process of undoing and correcting things.
This is
where I got hit with the second shock. I would never have guessed or even
suspected anything like this in my wildest imaginations. So as it turns out she
had this friend who was under a suicide watch and claims to have some issues.
Well thankfully hangouts stores chats in there software and it was my window
into the changes I would now have to undue.
This kid her
age had spent months repeatedly trying to convince her she is depressed and she
should kill herself. This from what she believed was a friend. After enough
time anyone can be convinced of anything if you try hard enough.
Now nothing can tear a heart into pieces then
reading those conversations as a father. Nothing fills you with more dread and
anger at the same time. My first instinct
of course was of anger and well let’s just says not very nice thoughts. It does
not matter whether you’re a mother or a father when your child’s life hangs in
the balance your claws come to bear and your teeth are exposed. The initial
knee jerk reaction of course is one you hold back and force your mind back to a
rational thought process.
Where to go
from here? Well for me it began with blocking this kid from all my daughters’
social channels with a warning if she goes anywhere near my kid again the
entire transcript of her trying to get my daughter to commit suicide goes to
the cops. Next is start to try and understand how to change that influence that
has now become a cloud in our house.
I think the
last few weeks of the summer have been really great for the recovery process.
Though with school starting again tomorrow I only hope that my daughter has the
strength to tell that evil kid to stay away. She has some very amazing friends
that were there for her through all of this and I hope she learns that those
few friends are worth more than any number of bad ones.
The point of
this rambling is I would not have known the source of this influence of how close
I came to losing someone whom I always swore I would give my life to protect.
This meant eventually having to go against the privacy rule which even I hold
very close. Sometimes it becomes necessary to go against your own firm beliefs
if it means keeping your family safe. I was fortunate this all went on through
Google Hangouts otherwise I may never have found the source of the depressed
and suicidal thoughts. In this I could never be more grateful to them for their
diligence in logging chats.
Never be
afraid to challenge even your own thoughts. Yes privacy should be paramount
especially for your kids. However if you start to notice any change in
behaviour even very subtle don’t be afraid to do some looking around. I never
believed I would have to deal with this type of situation but let me assure you
it can happen to anyone. Not knowing is not the answer. Mental health issues
are a silent viper and even if they do not have it today, there are always
predators out there even in there age group that can quickly turn that around
on you.
Lastly never
be afraid to ask for help if you feel depressed or know someone who is. Telling
someone who can help can save lives!
Always challenge your mind!