"There is never a valid reason for reading your child's diary."

Have you ever read your child’s diary? Given the chance, would you?

Is there ever a valid reason for prying into your children’s deepest and most confidential thoughts without their permission? I say no.

Recently, I discussed this moral dilemma with a bunch of girlfriends over coffee. Half were in the ‘definitely not’ camp, whilst a few said they would ‘if they were worried about their child’.

One of the ladies, however, went on to say that not only did she think that it was okay, she had in fact, recently done it and was in no way sorry that she’d pried.

Apparently, her daughter had turned broody and uncommunicative and despite trying to talk to her, was beginning to worry that something was going on. Turns out she was right, there WAS something going on. She discovered that those nights her daughter was supposedly at her friend’s house ‘studying for a French test’, she was in fact, studying French kissing with a much older boy. This lady went on to confront her daughter, who of course was devastated and felt utterly betrayed by the invasion of privacy and stopped writing in her diary altogether.

What struck me was that my friend did not appear conflicted or at any time uncomfortable with her decision or the consequential fallout.

Although, I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of such trespassing and maybe that’s why I hope I would never read my daughter’s words uninvited.

When I was 15, I suspected that my mother was reading my diary so I kind of booby-trapped it by leaving it a particular way in my room. I also wrote something like “I’m sure my mother is reading this which is a complete invasion of my privacy and utterly and profoundly WRONG!”

Yeah, you might have worked out. I was a bit dramatic back then.

If she had been reading my diary at that time, all she would have come across was my desperation to be loved by the one boy I had had a crush on since I was in Year 7 and the way I sunk into despair when, after eventually asking me out, he dropped me within a week. She also would have read my blow-by-blow recount of each day where from memory, nothing really happened. But the angst, oh god the angst!

The juicy stuff started later on and by then I had learnt the value of a kickarse lock and a good hiding spot. The thing is, I did eventually make my mother worry about me. I got into some trouble at school, was nearly expelled and I was a wretched thing to be around.

Maybe a diary she could secretly read and not judge me on would have helped both of us communicate better.

Now of course, there’s also the electronic version of our old paper journal. Now parents can spy on their children’s Facebook or email or whatever social media platform they choose to partake in. The same goes for this, would you take a peek behind the digital curtain if you had the access?

Right at this moment, I would have to say no, I wouldn’t.

When people, be they children or adults, write down their deepest and sometimes darkest thoughts, they are doing so with abandon, without fear and with complete honesty.

They are committing to paper the thoughts they may not be able to say out loud or ones that jostle to get out of their heads as a way of therapy. To invade that space uninvited just seems so very wrong to me.

That’s how I feel right now anyway. This is of course at a time when my 14-year-old daughter still communicates all of her fears, her likes, her crushes, her worries and her delights with me. If she changed, however, and stopped communicating and I became worried for her, well then, I guess, I’d have to reassess.

Would you ever read your child’s diary? Do you check up on them on Facebook?