Facebook-delisting, changing status

[Cataboo]

ecletic,

I haven't had kids, but I've had much younger brothers & my father died early enough that I did play a big role in their teenage years and I knew myself and how I responded to my parents and how basically all 5 of us kids did... It was impossible to actually talk to my parents or to go to them with problems because of the overreaction or the consequences. I'm definitely not trying to demean or insult my parents in anyway or how they raised us - because we all turned out fine, I love them, and I get why they did the things they did. However, they did create 5 kids that are extremely secretive, can't go to them to calmly discuss their problems and get advice and the rest of that, and all of us still go to each other for advice instead of our mother.

Anyways in regards to my younger brother - yes - I snooped when he was a teenager, there'd been a few deaths & illnesses in the family & I was pretty concerned about his mental health and possibly self destructive behavior at various points. But I snooped very carefully knowing that my younger brother was way more computer savvy than I was and very bright and if at any point he suspected, he'd be able to lock me out of all his accounts and his computer to the extent that I'd never find anything. Now, I guess I could have had my mother take away his computer in retaliation for him locking me out of everything - but the reality was that the computer was an extremely good outlet for him, he's still great with them, and he writes extremely powerful prose & poetry to express his feelings - and he never really shows that stuff to anyone but a few of his closest friends. Without a computer, he'd have lost a valuable outlet that was helping him cope, or he'd have gone to a library or stayed at school to do that stuff, or done it on friend's computers - and I wouldn't have access to that.

But for the most part, I was a non-judgemental snoop, if what I found was concerning enough or he expressed a wish to have a therapist to a friend and didn't think we'd go for the idea.... I'd wait a few weeks or whatever, get my mother on board, and maneuver a conversation to offer it to him. Mostly he was a good kid that worked hard in school and had teenage angst, he experimented a little bit with drinking, maybe said off color things, etc. When I knew he was doing some drinking, it was obvious he really wasn't enjoying it - it was making sure he could spend a night at the person's house he was doing it with to make sure he or noone else wouldn't be driving and the opportunity to do it a few times was enough for him to realize that it wasn't fixing anything and that was the end of that.

Now, I suppose you could argue that maybe if I'd chewed him out everytime he said something off color to his friends or knew he was drinking, that he'd be a better person today - but I just did my best to provide guidance without him realizing I was snooping and left it at that.