I find this a difficult one (BTW, I'm the father of a girl who recently hit her teens).
As far as I know, our daughter doesn't keep a diary, but she might. For years now, her bedroom has been her territory. The door stays closed at all times (mainly to keep the cats out) and my wife and I only go in there when we really need to for some practical reason. It's a huge mess, but it's her mess, and as long as she sticks to the rule that she never takes food in there and her phone is left outside the bedroom when she goes to bed, we'll let her cultivate her own personal version of chaos. There could conceivably be a diary buried under the apparently random jumble of clothes and other stuff that I occasionally glimpse, but who knows?
I like to believe that the style of communication between us and her is open and honest enough that she'd tell us if something was bothering her. Her mother and I certainly pick up very quickly when something is "off" with her, and a little gentle questioning will pretty quickly lead to things being discussed. But then she's always been the sort of kid who wears her heart on her sleeve, so we're more fortunate than the parents of kids who tend to keep things bottled up.
And because I'm aware of that, I'm not going to condemn you for what you did.
It seems to me that what this incident could suggest is that you might need to put a little more effort into consciously and deliberately connecting with her on a one-to-one basis. It sounds like it only took a little persuasion to get her to admit what was bothering her, so it's not like she flat-out didn't want to talk about it. Maybe she felt that it wasn't really that important and that the casual, "How was your day at school, honey?" question that parents habitually ask wasn't actually an invitation to unload about what was _really_ going on with the kids she has to deal with every day.
It's important that kids feel that they're part of a loving, stable family group, but kids also value one-on-one time with both of their parents where you don't have an agenda, but just spend time chatting about whatever pops up. I wonder if you might have found out about this problem without snooping if there were regularly times like that when all your attention was on her, and her sister and father weren't around to stick their oars in to the flow of the conversation.
Is it normal that I read my daughter's diary?
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I find this a difficult one (BTW, I'm the father of a girl who recently hit her teens).
As far as I know, our daughter doesn't keep a diary, but she might. For years now, her bedroom has been her territory. The door stays closed at all times (mainly to keep the cats out) and my wife and I only go in there when we really need to for some practical reason. It's a huge mess, but it's her mess, and as long as she sticks to the rule that she never takes food in there and her phone is left outside the bedroom when she goes to bed, we'll let her cultivate her own personal version of chaos. There could conceivably be a diary buried under the apparently random jumble of clothes and other stuff that I occasionally glimpse, but who knows?
I like to believe that the style of communication between us and her is open and honest enough that she'd tell us if something was bothering her. Her mother and I certainly pick up very quickly when something is "off" with her, and a little gentle questioning will pretty quickly lead to things being discussed. But then she's always been the sort of kid who wears her heart on her sleeve, so we're more fortunate than the parents of kids who tend to keep things bottled up.
And because I'm aware of that, I'm not going to condemn you for what you did.
It seems to me that what this incident could suggest is that you might need to put a little more effort into consciously and deliberately connecting with her on a one-to-one basis. It sounds like it only took a little persuasion to get her to admit what was bothering her, so it's not like she flat-out didn't want to talk about it. Maybe she felt that it wasn't really that important and that the casual, "How was your day at school, honey?" question that parents habitually ask wasn't actually an invitation to unload about what was _really_ going on with the kids she has to deal with every day.
It's important that kids feel that they're part of a loving, stable family group, but kids also value one-on-one time with both of their parents where you don't have an agenda, but just spend time chatting about whatever pops up. I wonder if you might have found out about this problem without snooping if there were regularly times like that when all your attention was on her, and her sister and father weren't around to stick their oars in to the flow of the conversation.