<p>He is 18 years old, but I am fb friends with a college junior and they will still do silly things at times. At 22 your S should be looking for a job and graduating from college, so it would be appropriate to clean up a fb page. I am giving him a year or two before I tell him to clean it up for jobs.</p>
<p>And maybe your son doesn’t have the same sense of humor :)</p>
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<p>One FB friend is a 50-something college Prof. who lists a friend as a “sister” and varies between “married”, “civil unions”, and “it’s complicated” in the relationships. </p>
<p>Another 50-something former supervisor/friend lists “Starfleet Academy” and Stalag 13 of Hogan’s Heroes fame as two of his educational institutions.</p>
<p>A few other established professionals on my FB friends network have done variants of that and worse as a joke. </p>
<p>It’s not necessarily a sign of immaturity…unless you have a seriously impaired sense of humor.</p>
<p>According to Ds FB page she has 42 sisters. That was news to me.</p>
<p>Since when did people start taking FB so seriously?</p>
<p>Not to go too far off topic, but I think more and more people are using LinkedIn for their serious profiles. IMO, people ought to remain within the bounds of polite society on Facebook, but a bit of tomfoolery among one’s Facebook friends is okay. Good heavens! Has it come to the point that employers are scrutinizing how many cute cat pictures their prospective employees have “liked” and other such silliness?</p>
<p>The point is yes, the parents did overstep their boundaries. I’d bet this young woman has done things to cause this mistrust. Maybe the parents know a lot more than they’re saying, but at age 18 there really isn’t much they can do. It’s really too bad because she may need her parents once she graduates and can’t get a gig on Broadway.</p>
<p>Parents have to let go of their kids at some point, and college seems like the right place, especially senior year when said child is on track to graduate. I did a lot of things in college that would have driven my parents nuts, but thankfully there were no laptops or cell phones in those days- the most contact they had was a weekly phone call from the pay phone in the dorm hall. Here I am 35 years later, still alive and gainfully employed. If my parents had intervened to prevent all my mistakes, how would I have ever learned to cope in the world? </p>
<p>And about the facebook thing- no one should take facebook seriously as some kind of online resume. That’s the role of Linked In. Facebook is for fun. And parents and other older relatives should stay off the facebooks of teenagers/young adults if they don’t like what they see. My daughter got in a lot of trouble with her uncle and grandparents who thought she had posted some picture of her cousins calling them “rednecks”. She had never done such a thing, but they scoured her facebook history looking for these supposed photos. I got pretty angry about her GRANDMOTHER telling her what to post on facebook, especially since her stuff is quite inocuous. IMHO, they had no right at all to scrutinize her facebook. It’s no one’s business what she puts on there. Fortunately, she knows all the tricks of how to block people from seeing her stuff (including Mom!) I gave up long ago. It’s her facebook. I don’t pay for it, and I don’t look at it. I think the employer/recruitment issue is overblown, anyway. She’s got a job doing social media and public relations, and her boss could care less about her facebook.</p>
<p>I just can’t get passed the fact that people assume the student had to have done something to start her parents on this obsessive path. Maybe they are just “crazy party of 2” as my daughter would say about some of her friend’s parents. I think some parents seriously can’t handle letting go of their kids. Especially in the case of parents of kids who by their own talents have cast bright light on their own families. When they go away and the parents are no longer getting the “your kid is so awesome, talented, fab…whatever” they feel lost and isolated.</p>
<p>It is interesting to consider that some assume that the young woman did something to trigger/deserve the parents’ actions. </p>
<p>The list of traits of parents who abuse includes bullying, emotional blackmail, false accusations, blaming, shaming and engulfment. One could make an argument that the little that is in the media supports many, if not most, of those traits in the parents.</p>
<p>[Out</a> of the FOG - Parents Who Hurt Their Children](<a href=“http://outofthefog.net/Relationships/ParentalChildAbuse.html]Out”>Relationships — Out of the FOG) </p>
<p>It lists the things that the law forbids one adult to do to someone else, but is done by parents with near impunity:</p>
<p>hitting
slandering
harassing
stalking
invading their privacy
confiscating their property</p>
<p>So, it really cannot be questioned that what the parents were doing was illegal.</p>
<p>It discusses that the religious message of honor and respect of one’s parents is in the context of non-abusive parents and without that context can support abusive behavior of minor and adult children by their parents.</p>
<p>Some people have suggested that the parents’ concerns are legit, at least as to “mental illness.” I’ll add to what other posters have noted–(1) why wasn’t there any indicaton that the young woman had any mental illness presented to the court and (2) if she suffered from mental illness, why did the parents support her being 600 miles away? If she had a mental illness and was at risk to herself and/or to others, and her parents were aware of this, does it seem the act of concerned parents to be hours and hours away?</p>
<p>Often there is a post on CC from a student about conflicts over what the student wants and what his parents what. Uniformly, the other posters fall along a contiuum spanning from "they are your parents, do as they say, " to “if you don’t like what they want, figure out how to get your education without them.” </p>
<p>To me, the young woman has shown that she can figure thngs out. For three years she indured the parents’ actions, so the parents have no beef for those three years. Now the young woman is not costing them anything and, to me, the parents have no beef.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that some think this is an attempt by the young woman to have 15 minutes of fame. If her parents were abusing her sexually as the cost of their monetary support of college and she found the strength to come forward she would be lauded as brave and inspirational. I don’t see that coming out on false accusations, bullying, emotional and/or financial blackmail abuse makes it less of a positive.</p>
<p>Sounds like some parents here are looking past the fact what the parents of the student in the story did has been ruled illegal in many jurisdictions with offenders receiving jail sentences. </p>
<p>I’m wondering if its a mixture of always assuming the child in the relationship is wrong even in adulthood and a clinging belief in a form of “just world theory” in which parents always love their children and can never do nor mean any harm to them. </p>
<p>For such parents, I’d wonder if they’ve been reading news stories for the last 10 or even 30 years about abusive or toxic parents who existence isn’t limited by geographic area or by socio-economic class.</p>
<p>I doubt the student did anything wrong to the level that would justify any of this. Is she perfect? No. </p>
<p>Has she likely drank, maybe smoked some pot, stayed out late, and slept with guys? Probably/maybe/who cares. The point is that if she’s engaged in some typical college behavior that the parents “don’t like,” it doesn’t justify anything close to what they’ve done.</p>
<p>I’m not assuming that the young woman gave them any reason to worry. I’m also not assuming that she didn’t give them a reason to worry. I just don’t know. </p>
<p>Like many of you, I’ve had some personal or close second-hand knowledge of some events that were publicized by the media. In many cases, the media version of events was inaccurate, to put it mildly. For an example of this, think of the Newtown shooting. The media named the wrong brother and claimed the wrong brother had murdered his girlfriend in Hoboken. The media were interviewing the brother’s neighbors, telling them that the young man had murdered his girlfriend and asking them what it felt to know that they had ridden in the elevator with an “alleged” murderer. Obviously, not true.</p>
<p>One event I know something about made the cover of Time magazine. There’s a “non-fiction” book about it. It’s even the subject of a play. The truth of what happened is very, very different. The truth, though, would not have sold a lot of magazines. Or look at what just happened at the Cape Cod Times–a reporter was fired because she had “interviewed” dozens of people who don’t exist and published the stories over a period of many years before she was caught. </p>
<p>As for facebook, Aubrey Ireland’s is public, even now–or at least as of last night. I think it’s pretty self-evident that journalists are going to be scouring your facebook when you become newsworthy and it’s common sense to make it private or to watch what you post. I also think it’s self-evident that hers is at least in part designed to further her career. (As far as I know, you can’t post extended videos of yourself singing on linked in.) </p>
<p>In fairness to Ms. Ireland, I don’t think she could have anticipated just how much publicity the story would get. So, personally, I do not think she filed the action to get her 15 minutes of fame.</p>
<p>With parents like these, it’s surprising she doesn’t have mental issues – especially anxiety. These parents appear to be unstable, controlling and as other posters have mentioned, very cult-like in their behavior. </p>
<p>Very glad the school stepped up and gave her a scholarship to finish her education.</p>
<p>jonri–</p>
<p>I think that everyone should acknowledge that anything they believe or assume factually is speculation based on limited and possible inaccurate information.</p>
<p>Who knows, the restraining order could have issued on the basis that the conduct of the parents was illegal without reaching whether the daughter might be in serious need of professional help since the proceeding before the court was on the restraining order not civil commitment.</p>
<p>I read that the restraining order came after two hearings before the court and the mediation in between. Apparantly the daughter filed in October of 2012. I also read that in 2011, the daughter had filed a police report of an assault by her mother that was alleged to have taken place at the daughter’s apartment in Ohio. According to what I read, the mother did not deny there was a confrontation, but she said the daughter assaulted her. Apparantly the parents cut off the daughter monetarily after that incident, but subsequently “accosted” her in the theater after a performance and again outside the theater. I gathered that was what caused the school to hire security to stop this in the future.</p>
<p>I think that the daughter’s side is more likely as I do not think the school would have given her financial aid to replace her parent’s contribution if her side were not closer to the truth. They certainly have no motivation to give away money without reason, and have more facts than we do.</p>
<p>This is definitely a strange story. I don’t feel like all the facts are out there. I would think that she is better off because she obviously wanted some freedom from them. It is a little weird that the college is giving her money. My parents aren’t paying for my college expenses, but no college is offering to give me money because of that. If she were qualified for scholarships, she should have already been receiving them.</p>
<p>I wondered about this, too. Can a school really decide to give you a full ride because your parent’s won’t pay? Being cut off or running out of money is not that unusual. Fighting with parents for control is not that unusual. Reporting parents to the police is weird. Maybe she was justified, maybe not. At this point I really have no idea but the school deciding to pick up the tab seems a little strange to me, as well.</p>
<p>Are people aware that employees are sometimes monitored by IT in companies (for company-issued cell phones and laptops, etc.)
-productivity tracking
-tracking to check you are not speaking with a competitor
-inappropriate website use - per the company’s standards</p>
<p>Well, wanting to watch her sleep on skype is a creepy request and since she is a full-time college student in a time intensive major I doubt she is running all over Ohio and I don’t know what they are hoping to gain by monitoring her movements, anyway. It really sounds like they are having trouble letting her grow up and make her own choices and mistakes while they are still on the hook for all of her expenses. Stage parents are used to an exceptionally high level of control.</p>
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<p>Apples and cranberries. </p>
<p>Companies do have the legal right to do so as a condition of employment…provided such monitoring is limited to their own computers/network and otherwise does not conflict with Federal and state network/privacy laws. </p>
<p>Private family members, even spouses are actually prohibited in many jurisdictions from doing so…even if they bought the computer/phone concerned. Some spouses who tried spying on their SOs thinking that it was ok because they bought said phone/computer are now serving jail sentences as a result of such actions.</p>
<p>I can’t believe some people are borderline excusing the parents’ behavior because of facebook. </p>
<p>They wanted to skype and watch her sleep. What else could you possibly need to know about the case to know that the parents are absolutely off their rockers?</p>