Parents used spyware to save son
p2pnet news | software:- A Canadian mother, worried about her son, secretly planted spyware in the family computer.
“He wasn’t our son anymore; he was somebody we didn’t even recognize,” she says in the Vancouver Sun.
“We were absolutely desperate. Our son was spiralling downhill.”
When he started at a new high school in Grade 10, “his grades started tanking, and he began having violent mood swings,” says the story.
But, it wasn’t until his parents installed spyware on their computer that they learned the extent of his drug involvement,” it states.
The 16-year-old’s mother took advantage of a new Alberta law and sent her drug-addicted child to a detoxification facility for five days, says the Vancouver Sun, adding:
“Since it came into effect on July 1, 2006, the Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act has sent nearly 400 children between the ages of 12 and 17 – including about 60 from the Calgary region – into drug treatment.”
Also See:
Vancouver Sun – Law lets parents force kids into drug treatment, July 9, 2007
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July 11th, 2007 at 2:46 am
So you think it’s OK to get a 16 year old kid committed for pot, X, and experimenting with cocaine?
When I was 14, my dad, just like the parents of this story, was “absolutely desperate.” My grades, once straight As, were now barely passing — “tanking,” even — just like the teen of this story. I was always fatigued, always moody and withdrawn, refusing to speak for days on end, skipping practices, skipping meals, staying up all night. I was changing — perhaps into a person he “didn’t even recognize.” I don’t know whether he suspected drugs, alcohol, communists, or aliens, but whatever it was, he felt justified in spying on all of my activities, my friends, my finances, and my private things.
But I caught him at it. Again, and again, and again. It became a cycle. I’d withdraw further, hiding in the closet (in the literal as well as figurative sense), even sleeping in the park to escape the constant criticism, scrutiny, and bed checks. He’d intrude even more, more and more convinced that I was doing something wrong. When I was 16, the same age as the teen in this story, the spiraling feelings of isolation and oppression almost killed me; thank God the parks in town were safe, and nobody ever sharpened the knives in the house.
As it turns out, my problems were nothing but normal high school pressures. More difficult subjects at school: chemistry, composition, trig. New teachers whose methods weren’t working for me. Friends whose interests began to diverge from mine– toward girls, especially. Feeling left behind in athletics by older boys (I’d skipped a grade). No drugs. No booze. Just a bad case of being a closeted teen trying to make it through high school, compounded, now, by a parent who had gone too far.
Family is more than being the cop, making good human beings out of children by force of law. Family is about being the closest, most familiar example of trust and respect, an example I never got to experience for myself. The drug use of the teen in this story is tragic, and I sympathize with the parents to that extent. Still, the drugs do not justify the replacement of one possible evil with another more insidious one: the possible lifelong loss of the ability to form trusting, respectful relationships with others. I must wonder how much of that court ordered detox addresses the drug problem the teen made for himself, and how much of it has to address the trust problem the parents made for him.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:52 am
lol
July 13th, 2007 at 10:57 am
FIVE stinking days to “fix” something that has taken MONTHS, possibly YEARS to form??? How REDICULOUS!!!!!!! There is NO way to “fix” a broken psyche in only FIVE days!!! Talk about BAD laws!!!!!!!!! That five days will only serve to make things worse NOT better.
God help these poor kids. nuff said