School is under way in my corner of the world, and that means one sure thing: I can check on my children's academic progress with a couple of clicks of the mouse. From the comfort of my home, in pajamas and flip-flops, I learn about one's quiz grade, the other's attendance record and the third's homework assignments -- without ever having to show up on campus.

Every school I know, public or private, elementary or secondary, has this option for a parent. It's a modern marvel, the next best thing to having eyes in the back of your head.

Or is it?

My older children, who were lucky enough to graduate before the Internet married the grade book, think this option is, at best, meddlesome and intrusive.

''Suffocating,'' the 26-year-old opined.

''Micromanaging,'' declared the economist.

''I would have been grounded my entire life if that had been around in my time,'' sniffed my only daughter.

In solidarity with the teenagers, they are ardent supporters of the old-fashioned handouts that came home only once a quarter. These mid-term progress reports gave a kid breathing room to pick up his grades.

Or to continue the spiral downward.

Now, if I want to (and I don't), a daily progress report is as accessible as my e-mail account.

The technology that gave teens and their younger brethren the upper hand in all things digital has also awarded us electronically challenged parents the ability to, well, to spy on them. I find the irony of this hilarious.

Online grade books are certainly the least offensive (and perhaps most necessary) example of modern parental management. We now have gadgets to know what house the kiddies are hanging out at, how fast they're driving, who they're texting, what they're downloading and when they're Net surfing. Dozens of businesses market their products to overwrought, overworked parents who find a modicum of comfort in keeping tabs on their offspring. Stuck at the office (or in traffic,) we can now use 007-style toys to do virtually what we can't do in person: supervise.

But at what point does supervision cross into snooping? Are we keeping track of children too much? Do these so-called peace-of-mind products feed into parental paranoia, of which there is plenty already? Is this constant monitoring really necessary?

Except for the weekly visits to the electronic grade book, my control of my children's comings and goings is definitely low-tech. I have not installed GPS in their cars or cellphones. Nor have I considered the software that alerts me when a topic such as drugs or sex is being discussed in their e-mails.

I spy the old-fashioned way -- reading notes left in the laundry room, listening in on conversations from the front seat of the car, bribing their friends with brownies and asking a million questions. I've long operated on the assumption that I'm aware of half of what really happens in my teenagers' lives -- and it's probably only the half they want me to know. Thus, the subtle snooping.

Yet, there is something about resorting to 24/7 monitoring that simply doesn't sit well with me. I worry that too much minutiae hints at a false sense of control. As parents we walk a tightrope of temptations, balancing precariously between appropriate vigilance and willful ignorance. The no-man's land between the two provides enough room for the success and failure that mark healthy growth.

It should stay that way.

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