Spying on the Kids: Good Parenting or Paranoia?

Let's face it, our kids invented nothing.  Sneaking out the window after mom goes to bed?  Been done.  Putting a miniskirt in the backpack to change into at school?  Done - over and over.  Spending the night with a friend, only to be at a late movie with a boy mom despises?  Of course!  The things we do as teens seem to bleed over into our own children as they become teens.  It's almost eerie how our children become us, and we become our parents.  

As I ponder the thought that perhaps I have become my mother, I can hear the background sound from the shower scene in the movie Psycho.  I shudder to think of what names I called my mother in my journals, and how I felt like she was the most evil mother on the planet for not allowing me to run wild in the streets.  As I have gotten older, and had children of my own, those thoughts seem silly, but the reality is - my children think the same of me, I'm sure of it.

Even the best of children lie or tell us half of the story, omitting the parts we won't approve of.  Having a teen daughter that's famous for her half-truths, I check up on her.  I meet her friends, get phone numbers of the friends she will be with, and I do call to check in if she will be gone overnight or over a weekend.  I've been called paranoid plenty of times, but let the record show my daughter isn't on drugs, using alcohol, or pregnant.  There will be a time when she will live her own life, have her own home, and I won't be able to track her movements.  It's not that I don't trust her, it's that anything can happen, and god forbid she becomes a missing person, I will at least know who she was with last, phone numbers for those people, and have some idea on where to start the search.