Monitoring a Child's Digital Travels Re " "Big Brother"? No, It's Parents" (front page, June 26): Even though children today have a new set of electronic tools that we didn't have as kids, the basics of the journey from teenager to adult are essentially the same. I know that my mother didn't feel the need to follow my every teenage conversation. Children need parental and community guidance on what's right and wrong, not overly anxious parents monitoring their movements and communications. As the mother of four teenagers, I have found it best to trust that the lessons of respect for others, being a good neighbor and being held accountable for your own actions will extend into their electronic world and guide their behavior. Trust and open communication seem like far more powerful tools than electronic snooping. Protecting their children from harm is a crucial ethical obligation for parents, but so is maintaining their children's trust. Monitoring a child's Internet use without telling him or her about it honors the first obligation but undercuts the second. The ethically intelligent thing for parents to do is to keep tabs on their sons and daughters and to inform them of this. One need not, and should not, sacrifice one valuable objective to obtain another. The writer is the author of "Ethical Intelligence" and "Is It Still Cheating if I Don't Get Caught?" It appears that parents are getting swept into a game of online Whac-A-Mole with the proliferation of online tools geared toward helping parents monitor their child's online activities. This is a zero sum game for parents and masks the real issue: how to work with children effectively to teach them self-advocacy and self-regulation online. The key litmus test for parents is what the child does out of view of the parent or guardian. If parents fall prey to what appears to be the quick-fix online tool to shield children from the trappings of social media, children will never have the chance to learn valuable coping strategies and lessons for greater independence. The writer is the head of the upper division at Marin Country Day School and the author of "From Fear to Facebook: One School's Journey."