13 - The New Adult?

My oldest daughter turned 13 in November. She got permission to get a Facebook account as long as I had passwords and monitored it. This is how her email is set up. She has a hotmail account and I manage it. Not often, but I do check on her enough. I check her inbox, her trash, and her sent box. I am aware that she could be permanently deleting things without my knowledge, but I have to trust her a little.

She has to get permission to sign up for any websites or accounts and I have to have the passwords. I also check the history on the computers she uses.

Imagine my frustration when I got an email from hotmail informing me that I was no longer allowed to manage her email because she was now 13! Isn't 13 still a minor? Why does she get free reign of her email account at 13? I realize that I still have the password and can still check on her, but I don't understand these "rules". Even Facebook has some sort of privacy rule like this. I can't shut her profile down. I can't get into it if she changes the password and doesn't tell me. I can't force the people at Facebook to let me in. Does this make sense? Shouldn't we be watching our children more? Shouldn't we be supervising and monitoring? Isn't this how situations arise? This almost gives parents permission to say "we didn't know what our child was doing" after they ran away, got pregnant, or blew something up.

Well, in MY house, if I don't have passwords and access to all social networking sites, email accounts, websites, etc, then you don't have access to one of my computers. Period. Overprotective, maybe. But, I'd rather be safe and overprotective then have a missing or troubled child.