A mom pulled me aside recently and told me that her and her teen daughter were "on the outs" because she had taken the girl's cell phone without her knowledge and scrolled through her text messages, confirming her suspicions of less-than-appropriate actions and thoughts.

I can't answer the question whether the mother was justified. It's an individual decision only to be made based on particular family dynamics. But what I can do is give a few suggestions to consider as you set boundaries with your children.

1) Set the rules early.

• Any time the latest, greatest thing comes out, sit down with your children and spell out your expectations. If the family gets a new laptop, then you should be up front and clear about the software you installed that will prevent them from accessing certain websites. Should you decide passwords will be allowed, then you also need to decide whether you will have them all kept in a safe place to allow you freedom to check their account at regular intervals.
• The key is to be purposefully spontaneous in your check-ups. It's been proven behaviorally with our little rodent friends that they perform better when they don't know when they'll get a tiny shock. Children aren't so different! They should be better stewards of their technology resources when they aren't so sure when you will check up on them.

2) Explain the reason behind your rules.

• It's important that children know why you're doing something, especially if you didn't set rules early on and want to implement them after the fact. Let them know you want to be able to check on them not because you don't trust them, but because you don't trust others. They need to feel like you're not "out to get them," but that you genuinely care about the outside influences impacting them.

3) Give them ownership of the consequences.

• From what I've experienced in sessions with children and parents, when a parent allows the child to set their own consequence, it's often far worse than what the parent would have set for them! This way, when you do check up on them and are less than pleased with what you find, they can't gripe about the consequence for their technological infraction because they created it.

4) Stick to the rules and consequences.

• While your son is in the shower, you log on to his facebook page and realize he's posted some questionable pictures that go against the established rules for usage of the digital camera on his iPhone. He gets out of the shower and you confront him, telling him that he's grounded for two weeks, per your earlier discussion. He whines, saying he was on his way to pick up a date. He can't just "leave her hanging." What do you do? Stick to your guns. It'll embarrass him, but he won't soon forget that you mean business.

5) After an infraction, start fresh.

• Once a child has been caught red-handed doing something they shouldn't do, give them their due punishment, but don't treat them as perpetually evil. More often than not, they are going to straighten up after that first consequence. Do yourself a favor and tell them you trust them to stick to the rules from now on. This doesn't mean you won't be checking up on them as before, but you aren't going at it vindictively. Let your child know you were disappointed, but that you want to give them the benefit of the doubt that there won't be a next time.

Jeannie Campbell is a Christ-follower, wife, mother and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, in that order. She got her masters of divinity in psychology and counseling from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and her bachelors in psychology and journalism from The University of Mississippi. She's a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors and American Christian Fiction Writers. In her spare time, she writes feature articles for magazines and local newspapers and blog posts for The Character Therapist. Email Jeannie.