SPYING is big in the international headlines at the moment. The NSA, GCHQ, MI6, DSD and ASIS, a whole acronym soup of spies, are all getting much more attention than I’m sure they’ve ever wanted.

But my focus is much more domestic: “Should we spy on our kids?”

Until recently, I fell into the “hell, yes” camp. As the mother of 7 and 11-year-olds, I’ve been much more inclined towards surveillance than privacy. As any parent knows, young kids can get up to all sorts of trouble when your back is turned. Indeed, it’s when everything goes quiet that you need to be on your guard.

In recent times, minor household worries have included making sure that my daughter isn’t trying to hatch chicken eggs in the heating duct in her bedroom, and that my son hasn’t left off the top of his home-made ant farm. There’s also the growing question of what they are looking at and who they could be interacting with on the Internet.

However, at the same time my son has given me pause for thought. He’s started to show signs of wanting a bit more privacy, marking out his territory with a fierce looking “keep out” sign outside his bedroom, and he’s rigged an alarm to his door. This isn’t too serious, and it’s largely directed towards his sister. But it also shows he wants a bit of autonomy. “I’m not a little boy now, mum,” he reminds me from time to time.

Even when we’re not watching them, we’re arguably preparing them for a lifetime of surveillance by telling them that Santa and the Easter Bunny will know what they did this year and whether they have been naughty or nice. (Admittedly Santa and the Easter Bunny lose a bit of their all-knowing authority as the kids get older – after all, my daughter is emphatic Santa couldn’t have known about the rotten eggs in the heating duct.)

Still, a time comes when you have to give your kids greater autonomy. Just when and how much is a matter of judgment. I’m trying to work that out. It will probably be a hit-and-miss affair for quite a while. And I don’t rule out the possibility that a few surveillance cameras might yet come in handy – especially in the teenage years!