can someone please help me find my daughters myspace account

[lucyellensmum]

My DD is 17 and living with her boyfriend at his parents. I know she is spending an unhealthy amount of time online. She refuses to give me her myspace address, her bf, who is lovely, has implied she spends too much time there. She has a record of talking to strangers and im worried sick. At home she was banned from the computor due to this problem, now i cannot monitor it at all - any ideas, i only have her name to go on.

You can search using full name, and also using email address if you know it?

depends. if you have a name it is possible to do a search. have you tried going onto myspace and putting in her name, without spaces, and seeing what comes up?

what would you do if you could find it? This is quite a high level of interference in a 17 year old's life - I understand you are worried about her, but do you think this will do your relationship any good?

don't know if I am only one to find it ironic that OP is worried about her dd 'having a history of talking to strangers on the internet'

er what are you doing right now?

To be honest, in order to find her myspace page you'd have to give us more information about her than you ought to be feeling comfortable posting here.

You could try finding some of her friends on MySpace and see if they have her listed as a friend.

Or you can see what you can find on Google.

Try

"17 Female" herfirstname site:myspace.com

and see how many hits you get.

You could also try

"17 Female" herfirstname UK site:myspace.com

or

"17 Female" herfirstname nameofyourtown site:myspace.com

You can search her full name or a first name, or a friends name then look for her in their friends iyswim.
Do you have a myspace? you need one to search on there.
Erm, try her bf's name?
I do think you should talk to her but it's not too hard to find someone on there, I found loads of pals of mine.

I'd try the age as 18, 19 & 20 too - ime teenage girls rarely put their true age on sites like this.

franny, its difficult to say what i would do - maybe i just want to put my mind at rest. I do talk to strangers online, on aol im, which is precisely why i am worried!

does everyone feel it is fine for a parent to pry like this when their children have specifically asked them not to?

I understand sometimes we balance privacy against security, but this is a myspace page, it isn't like she is endangering her life with drugs or something

I don't know what the OP can hope to achieve if the trust between her and her dd has gone like this

she will be angry and upset you have snooped on her like this - it will not do you any favours

cross posts lucyellensmum

I think your need to put your mind at rest does not outweigh her right to privacy

I do have sympathy but this casual attitude to snooping is a big mistake IMO

TBH, I do agree with franny, you'll probably make it worse for yourself, even if you can see her page, which may be set as private, you won't be able to see her messages, and going through her friends wouldnt help either, I have about 200 friends on myspace, and for myspace it is a SMALL number of friends.

She doesn't even live with you. Its really none of your business at her age.

I have to say I wouldn't try to look at DD's myspace unless I had really serious concerns & good reason to believe she was in danger - and even then I'd try to talk to her about it instead. (she's 17 too,18 next month)

well thanks for the support

I do not want to pry into her conversations, i just want to know that she isnt talking to any weirdos, as she is quite niave and could easily be talked into giving away personal info. Its not about prying, its about worrying.

I am still her mother, she may well not live with me just now, although i suspect she may be back soon - i would hope that i dont have to stop caring about my children when they leave home

I'd say it was interfering unless you had REAL reason to be concerned. At which point I'd probably talk to her bf or his parents (as she lives with them) if she wasn't willing to listen.

At 17, I was at uni living 150 miles away from home, phoning home once a week (the days before mobiles and 'proper' internet) and talking to all sorts of strangers in real life! I think you need to step back a bit and let her make mistakes herself.

I would like to know how many hours spent online you consider to be, "an unhealthy amount of time"?

I know I often say to my dh that I am just going on the computer for half an hour, to emerge several hours later. I have been on here for two hours tonight, why do you consider this unhealthy?

Could you not give her a lecture about safety on the internet or something? Even if you were to find her myspace, chances are you'd find that she was talking to strangers as that's what myspace is all about? What then?

You don't stop caring about your children when they leave home - nor do you stop worrying, but you do have to accept that there may not be anything you can actually do about it.

DD still lives at home, though she spends a lot of time, including nights, with her bf. I worry that she may forget to take her pill & get pregnant, that he may crash his car, that she will walk from the station to his house one night & get mugged/raped, that she will not do enough work & fail her A levels and lots of other stuff - meeting a weirdo online is pretty low on the list tbh.

But I have to accept that short of confining her to the house, there's not a lot I can do about any of it.

Lucyellensmum I am trying to support you by pointing out I think this would be a really bad idea. I think it could screw things up between you and your dd.

I understand your concern but your dd is almost an adult and needs to make some of these decisions for herself. She has told you very clearly that she wants to keep her myspace account private. You need to respect that.

she has had all the lectures, she even was dragged up in front of her head of year at school a few years back for posting inappropriate stuff about herself, including her postcode!!!

I havent a clue what i will do with the information once i have it, probably nothing i can do - but if it were your children you would be worried.

Perhaps its just me

She is 17, not 7. While that's not legally, entirely an adult, it is old enough to have a right to privacy. I wonder if she left home because you wouldn't stop snooping and prying and trying to control her life? If you want to maintain any kind of good relationship with her, try respecting her a little more.

What info are you expecting to get though LEM?? Her space will have lots opf peopel on that she doesnt know, and most of them she probably never speaks to. I can understand you want to see what is on it incase of too much personal info etc but you probably wouldnt be able to see it anyway.

i spoke to her today and she said that if i convert the loft (i mentioned we might) that she would come home, especially if it was en suite!!