This Issue | Child Locks Door, Parent Removes Lock: How to Balance Encouraging Learning and Respecting Privacy
When children lock themselves in their rooms, parents worry about them slacking off during study time and remove the door locks – on one side, children are furious about their privacy being violated, and on the other, parents are frustrated by their children’s lack of self-discipline. How should the balance between urging learning and respecting privacy be struck?
“After removing the lock, he still wants to close the door. Is the next step going to be removing the door itself?” A recent report in Hangzhou’s “Urban Express” stated that after Xiao Wang entered the second year of middle school, he often locked the door to his room. Fearing that her son was not studying diligently, his mother discussed with his father and removed the lock. Xiao Wang was angry and continued to close the door while doing his homework, even using his desk to block it. His mother posted a question in the parents’ group.
This question elicited responses from many parents. Some said their children were comic book fans and would lock themselves in their rooms to read comics all day on weekends instead of doing homework. After removing the lock, the children found other ways to block the door. One parent even had the door removed during the summer vacation. Others mentioned that when their children were transitioning from elementary to middle school, the teacher visited their home and suggested that parents pay attention to what their children were doing alone in their rooms and not let them close the door. After discussing with their children, they moved the desk to the living room. One father shared that his child loved to lock the door, and they asked for the key to be left on the door, but when the child locked it from inside and they broke the key trying to open it, they simply removed the lock.
According to a report by Jimu News, in 2021, a father in Bazhong, Sichuan, reinstalled the lock on his son’s room on the night of his son’s college entrance exam. Previously, the father had removed the lock in anger because his son often locked the door to play on his phone. Some parents even install surveillance cameras in their children’s rooms. A parent in Jiangsu removed the camera that had been installed in their son’s room for six years after the college entrance exam and posted on social media, “Thank you for accompanying my son for six years.”
On “Xiaohongshu,” many users have shared their experiences of their door locks being removed by their parents. There are 20,000 posts related to “What to do if my parents remove my door lock.” Some users said it was because their grades had dropped, “I can’t stand my mother’s controlling nature. I was the top student in the best middle school in a first-tier city, and now she’s doing this because I didn’t perform well this time.” Others mentioned that their locks were removed after arguments with their parents, with one user saying, “I argued with my dad, and he asked me to tidy up the desk. I said I’d do it later, and he kicked down the bedroom door lock.” Another said, “When I’m angry, I lock myself in my room, and my mom asked my dad to remove the lock.”
Children’s resentment, parents’ helplessness
How do children view their parents’ behavior of removing locks? “Urban Express” asked a middle school class teacher in Hangzhou to conduct a small survey in their class. The results showed that out of forty students, over thirty usually do not lock their rooms, with five of them stating that their locks had been removed by their parents. More than twenty students expressed that they could not accept their parents removing their door locks because it made them feel “like they had no privacy” and “no sense of security.” Some even believed it was “arbitrarily damaging others’ property, which is illegal.” Among the dozen or so students who could accept their parents’ behavior, some said they had already completed their homework at school, some wrote their homework in the living room or their room door had no lock, and some understood, “They must have their reasons for doing this, maybe they want me to study hard.”
On social media, most users whose locks were removed believe that their parents did not respect their privacy and had a “strong desire to control.” One user recalled a conversation with their mother after the lock was removed, “I asked if we could put the lock back because I wanted privacy, and she said, ‘What privacy do you have?'” Another user said their father told them, “This is his house, and he can do whatever he wants.” A student interviewed by “Urban Express” said their parents removed the lock after their grades dropped at the end of the semester, telling them, “You can have privacy when your grades improve.”
While children are upset, parents also have their own grievances. Some parents have expressed their helplessness on social media and short video platforms about removing their children’s door locks. “He stays up until two or three in the morning. I’ve talked to him, scolded him, and pleaded with him, but it doesn’t work. It’s really torturous,” said one parent. Another said, “He ignores us when we knock on the door and stays in his room except for meals. He can close the door, but the lock must be removed.” Some parents believe that locking the door is a form of defiance and refusal to communicate, saying, “He has a bad temper and doesn’t communicate with us.”
In mid-November, Shanghai’s “Morning Post” initiated a poll on Weibo asking, “Do you mind your child locking the door to do homework?” Of the 572 participants, more than half believed that “the door can be closed but not locked”; thirty percent said they “didn’t mind as long as the homework was completed”; and nearly ten percent said they “minded and that children needed adult supervision.”
Having guardianship does not mean ignoring children’s privacy rights
“Parents removing locks to supervise their children’s learning is excessive focus on grades while neglecting life education and education about the value of life, which may have the opposite effect,” said Xiong Bingqi, Dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute. “If we don’t cultivate children’s independence, self-directed learning abilities, and sense of responsibility, how will they complete their studies and work independently when they are no longer under parental supervision? Parents who remove locks, doors, and install surveillance cameras think they are doing it for the children’s benefit, but in reality, they don’t see their children as individuals with independent personalities. When children don’t feel the dignity of being human, how can they feel the value and meaning of their lives? The increasing incidence of depression among younger individuals and the worsening psychological issues among students are closely related to family education.”
Ling Zongwei, Deputy Secretary-General of the Teacher Education Professional Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial Education Society, believes that family relationships should be built on mutual respect and trust. Using academic performance to determine whether children have privacy places grades above parent-child relationships, distorting normal family ethics. Parents can put themselves in their children’s shoes and imagine how they would feel if they were being monitored by a camera at work. He suggests that parents can help children manage their time and space through demonstration and guidance, give positive feedback on their efforts and progress, and guide them to learn independently without adult supervision.
Zhang Jie, a partner at Beijing Dacheng (Nanjing) Law Firm, told The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) that children locking their doors is a reasonable way to protect their privacy. Parents who long-term deprive their children of privacy under the pretext of “supervising their learning” may constitute an abuse of guardianship, and installing surveillance cameras without permission is a serious violation of privacy rights. “Children’s need for personal privacy and independent space reflects the establishment of self-awareness and boundary sense. Parents cannot ignore minors’ privacy rights just because they have guardianship and equate locking the door with ‘evading supervision.'” She believes that removing locks can easily trigger rebellious behavior, making supervision more difficult. She suggests that parents and children jointly establish rules, such as clarifying when and under what circumstances parents can enter the room, to avoid directly interfering with children’s personal space, thus respecting privacy while cultivating children’s self-discipline.
