There's a PSA on television about parental involvement that leaves the viewer with the impression that you should grill your children on where they're going and where they've been and what they've been doing and on, and on, ad nauseum. In the PSA, a girl says something to the effect of, "Mom, you read my diary--my innermost thoughts. ...Thanks."
Yeah, right. Like I'd want my mom reading about the stuff I thought about between ages 10 and, well, now. When I was six, I read my sister's and quoted it around the house for a few weeks, teaching her and I both a valuable lesson: don't keep one--not because of the parents but because of the siblings. I asked my mom recently if she ever read the ones I'd start and then forget, and she said she didn't and never felt the need to.
The way we grew up, we never had to earn trust--it was always there. It was always a huge bolster to my ego to know my parents trusted me. Losing that meant the introduction of the restrictions, not the other way around. Later, in our teens, we did our fair share of rebelling, but I never left home for long and I was the worst. Got my car privileges taken away for that one, too, which meant I had to ride my bike to work and back for a week. (And when you've got an office job, arriving all sweaty sucks a lot!)
I despise the commercials paid for by the Ad Council and NBC's The More You Know telling parents they need to grill their children, read their diaries, invade their space, and in the end this will make their kids grateful to them. That's what parents do when they've already lost control, or rather, when the kids have already lost respect for the parents. Suspicion doesn't foster close relationships.
So I'd say the award for great parenting goes to my parents, for churning out four kids with good characters and good heads. Yeah, that's kind of self-righteous, but I'd like to think it's true of me for the most part.