Tracking Your Kids?

Thought this was interesting:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...940395,00.html

What a wonderful and appropriate article, salukigirl!

I know that I have found myself fearing silly things, but I have been learning to let go. My son is smart and careful (well, as careful as a 9 year old will be) and I have started letting him have his space, letting him figure out problems on his own, I've even had to accept I cannot pick his clothes out anymore. I feel better for it.

Saluki I take absolutely no offense. The proof is in the pudding. I am very proud of each and every one of my children and honestly wouldn’t change a single thing about any of them. If the ones still in HS suddenly had some form of a personality flip and started being irresponsible or disrespectful I’d definitely ask them what’s going on. If I didn’t get a satisfactory answer I’d definitely start looking at text messages, computers etc. And while I’m not computer savvy enough to find those things that they may be trying to hide, I know people that are.

I don’t see this particular feature of these phones being particularly helpful in “spying” on my children. If my children were untrustworthy they wouldn’t have a phone to begin with. I can however see myself using it to find out where my husband or child is when there is something going on. We live in a rural farm community. If whoever I’m concerned about does not answer the phone (ie pull over and call me back) I can see myself activating this feature to see where they are. If the phone is not moving and there is nothing in that area (ie friend’s house, store etc.) you’d better believe I’m on my way there to find out what the heck is going on.

Several times a year something will break at work and my husband will put in an ungodly day 16 hours or more. Or every couple of years there will be a huge storm that traps him at work. On those occasions his company is perfectly willing to put him up in a nearby hotel, but my husband is relatively stubborn and chooses to drive home instead. I would absolutely feel better being able to monitor his trip home.

I am confused though, how is it that you felt so oppressed growing up that you had to sneak out at 3 am, yet you also expressed your parents frequently had no idea where you were? That seems like quite a contradiction.

I never said I HAD to. I just said I did lol. Even though my parents were fine I still did all the teenager stuff.

I know this was addressed to Salukigirl, but I did the same thing. Only, my parents never let me out willingly, so I always snuck out. They never knew where I was. And if I had a cell phone with a tracking device in it, I'd still sneak out.

In fact, Nikki's friends came over this morning, and we were arguing about the very subject. Kaitlyn, a mother of three and "helicopter mom" as described in Salukigirl's link, has the kiddy lo-jack system for her 13-year-old son's cell phone. He compensates by leaving his cell phone in his room when he sneaks out.

I was/am confused because Saluki in one reply states “I used to sneak out of my house at 3 am and walk around my town just because my parents wouldn’t give me any freedom.” Then “I was allowed to do pretty much what I wanted. Half the time they wouldn’t even know where I was…” Which happen to be completely contradictory statements at least in regard to “freedom”.

Even though we run a tight ship here, I believe the question is would you use this technology? I don’t even know what I would do if I discovered my kids were sneaking out of the house at 3 am. As for Kaitlyn’s son, were he my child he’d lose the privilege of having a cell phone. I don’t think anyone would suggest that this technology could replace knowing your children and their interests and knowing who their friends are.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, what exactly did you do when you snuck out of the house in the middle of the night? I’ve been trying to come up with an “innocent” reason, and I simply cannot fathom anything good or productive happening at 3 am for a teenager.

There is no innocent reason. I hear about this all the time as I work with teenagers. Nothing good can be going on in the middle of the night that a kid would have to sneak out for. If it can't be done before curfew hours with parental knowledge and permission, I'd say there is a real problem going on.

Something to note, parents, read the link and see that this topic includes a much larger picture than you can imagine!

We ALL are closer to being tracked. Have you heard about "RFID?"--- Radio Frequency Identification...

"With RFID about to arrive in full force, don't be lulled at all. Major changes are coming, and not all of them will be positive. The law of unintended consequences is about to encounter surveillance devices smaller than the period at the end of this sentence."

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/169

Now, do you feel safer?

When I was a young teenager sometimes I would sneak out of the house after dark. I would walk to the drive in theater and buy snacks. Once I asked my neighbor if it was okay if I slept on her porch for the night. She said that was fine. She then called my mom and told her where I was if she was missing me. I was looking for adventure. It really was pretty boring but there wasn't much to do in a rural area like mine.

Here's another one for you...even more interesting!

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/169
copy/paste, if needed

Well, when my kids decide to sneak out, I will ground them. Then I'll show them what a tweaker looks like, and why they want to avoid that particular lifestyle. I will teach them about the wonderful world of condoms. And I'll have them identify their goals, then explain to them that, if they wish to achieve their goals, they'll need to set their priorities accordingly ... i.e., school is more important than nightly acts of petty vandalism and gang affiliations.

With Kaitlyn's son, if she took away his cell phone privileges, she wouldn't be able to track him. Well, that was her reasoning.

Hehe ... When I would sneak out, I engaged in several extra-curricular activities. Mostly, we'd vandalize houses (not arson or anything, but egging, and T-P'ing, flour and sprinklers or rain, writing dirty words in the grass with miracle grow, etc.). We often put fish, rotten meat, or sardines in people's hub caps or in the engine of the car. Egg cars. For a friend's birthday, we wrapped her entire car in saran wrap and put a bow on top of it. We'd doodle on people's cars with car paint. Switching door mats and other lawn ornaments. (We once took all the lawn gnomes and placed them strategically around a gargoyle ornament. We did this several times, creating different scenarios ... such as the lawn gnomes were worshiping the gargoyle, or made a giant chess board in the park, with different lawn ornaments being different pieces in a chess game. Once, a gnome was hanged by the gargoyle executioner while the other gnomes watched. Or gnome court. Gnome jail. Or we would take a younger sibling's clothes and dress the gnomes up. I really hated the gnomes...) Convincing the local camp that their surrounding forest was haunted. Fiery bags of dog crap. Bootlegging contraband items at school, and at night to those kids who had strict parents. Resisting arrest (on several accounts). Disorderly conduct (several accounts). Gambling. Skinny dipping. We once snuck into a rivals house and wrote on his ceiling in glow in the dark finger-nail polish "No one can hear you scream". To this day, he doesn't know it was us. It wasn't always when I was sneaking out, either. I managed to get in trouble even when we went to church. At school, we conspired with teachers and other students to pull pranks. Oh, the stories I could tell... But it wasn't until I moved in with my cousin did my criminal enterprise really take off. Then it got a little more serious...

My sister, however, would also sneak out. She only did a few times, until daddy dearest caught her. Keep in mind that our house was a prison. Literally. We weren't even allowed to deviate from the lifestyle and personality that father commanded. If I had to choose, I'd rather go to prison than back home. She ran off to her boyfriend's house every night. Father forbade her from seeing him (or going out at all, except school activities), even though she was 18 at the time, and he was a good guy. They married soon after she was free from the house. She was very depressed from trying to meet the high expectations of her at home and at school. It's my opinion that sneaking out to go see someone who accepted her as she was helped her relieve that anxiety.

I respectfully disagree. While I was sneaking out with the intention to participate in or incite unruly behavior, not everyone in my neighborhood was. While out and about in the middle of the night, we often saw other neighborhood kids sneaking out. They usually were just sneaking out for the thrill and never did anything other than walk around and talk (and run from anyone or any car in site, regardless of whether or not it was a police officer.) They never even got more than a block from their own homes.

You can't really track people with the RFID tags that are found in clothes and other items. The ones that are too small to see easily have a very short range signal (a few inches). And the ones that have a more widespread signal are easily seen and can be destroyed.

How is there no innocent reason? Just wanting to be your own person and having a little privacy is innocent enough. My friends and I would sneak out and just walk. Maybe go to the park, just walk around the neighborhood.

I feel like some of you kind of forget what it was like to be a teenager? No offense, just my opinion. Not all teenagers are going out to go vandalize and can't be trusted. The feeling that they can't be trusted is what makes them do all that stupid stuff. I think that if people would give kids some slack, they would discover that they're not dumb or evil. They're just kids trying to be kids.

And I'm sorry I didn't initially state this but my parents are divorced and have been since I was 7. My mom was more "helicopter-y" than my dad. My mom is the one who wouldn't give me any freedom and would go through my notes, go through my emails, my files on my computer etc...

My dad really didn't care. One night he woke up at around 2 am and I wasn't there so he called me and asked where I was. My friend had been drinking and called me so that they didn't have to drive home and he said "okay, good thing you were there to pick him up" and that was it. I didn't get any backlash for leaving at 2 am with no warning.

But my mom......when I snuck out and got caught I would end up bawling my eyes out from her screaming at me. And all I wanted was a little freedom. I feel like doing that to your kids makes them feel like they are never really good enough for you. No matter how good of grades they get, how much they stay out of trouble, you still never trust them. There has to be a point where you let them be their own person.

No offense to the parents here, I'm a parent myself, but I was thinking the same thing Saluki said, I do believe you forget what its like to be young, a teenager. My son is still young enough that I don't have to deal with any of this yet, so who knows, I may change my opinion, but I do understand why teenagers sneak out and its not because they are all bad and going to go commit crimes and all that. Sometimes sneaking away is one's only reprieve from a bad life. Sometimes its just part of the independence process. But doing it doesn't make the teenager automatically "bad".

Again....how did we survive to be the age we are? This is all a part of growing up and becoming able to function as an adult in the world. Mistakes are learning opportunities and I truly believe we are doing our younger generation a disservice by trying to wrap them up in a protective bubble.

What will happen to them when we are gone? How will they have learned to be responsible adults who know that actions have consequences?

How will they learn that yes..there are bad people in the world that will hurt them? Put their trust in a chip or a cell phone to save them? Again, just my thoughts. I am a mother of a 26 year old (who caused me a lot of grey hairs) and the grandmother of a 4 year old.

I absolutely remember what it is like to be a teenager. But, hindsight being 20 / 20 I also see the lack of ability to accurately see the consequences of your actions in that mindset; which is precisely why we have things like parents and laws. If parents are too foolish or negligent to care what their kids are doing we have laws to attempt to legislate safer behaviors.

I trust my kids absolutely. Just because their motives being out in the middle of the night might be innocent doesn’t mean everyone out there have the same motives. There are also other forces that teens don’t take into consideration. As a teenager I did not understand that some places are physically dangerous. You feel immortal, everything bad happens to other people. Climbing the same bluff you’ve climbed a million times takes on a new danger when it’s in the dark.

I grew up in a very strict, restrictive household. My husband grew up in a home where his parent had no clue where their children where, or what they were doing (nor did they seem to care). The ironic thing is he’s the one that would be perfectly content locking them in the house until they’re 30 because he carries the baggage of the mistakes he made without parental supervision. Because of the baggage I grew up with, being much oppressed and having a younger brother with more freedom than I had simply because of his gender, I’m more permissive. We balance each other out. Having said that, our main goal is to have them grow up as happy, healthy, well adjusted human beings I’m not going to allow them to do something unsafe just because they REALLY want to.

I do not think that some form of tracking device will “save” my child. I would be happy to be able to afford On Star for all of our vehicles. If there were some form of an accident they could deploy necessary services immediately. I also think that has this device been available when my older children were teens, they might have had more freedom. So perhaps I’ve changed my mind. I don’t know what I would have permitted with that false sense of security.

The kids in our neighborhood knew of the local chesters. Most of us had known by the time we were in grade school, and we avoided those houses, thinking they were the homes of the "monsters", as told to us in horrific detail by our older siblings and baby sitters. When we became the older siblings and baby sitters, we passed on those legends to the younger kids. Partly to protect them and keep them away from those people, mostly just to scare them. By the time I was thirteen, we'd run the chesters out of the neighborhood entirely. Teens, in the late teen years especially, are intelligent enough to stay away from the chesters.



It's true that teenagers are very arrogant. I was. I still kind of am. Partly. Mostly... But they're not completely stupid and vulnerable. Besides, most of the trouble they seem to find themselves in occur while at a friend's or a party (of which the parent knows), not while sneaking out at night.

I'm not condoning the act of sneaking out. When my kids sneak out, I will punish them. But, when they get older, I'd have no problem with them being out until curfew without a lojack system of any kind. As long as they don't come back in a squad car... There needs to be a happy medium.

There is research to support the fact that teenagers' acts are the product of evolution. I watched a program on Discovery once about how it is "programmed" into us to feel invincible because of evolution. Teens aren't dumb. They are actually extremely intelligent, they CHOOSE to make the decision.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/201...med.take.risks

It has nothing to do with how "good" your kid is. That's what kids do and I feel its a little unnatural to completely keep them away from typical teen learning.

In Amish culture, when a child turns 13 they are given the entire year to do whatever they want. They can explore other cultures, they can have fun and pretty much do everything not allowed in Amish culture. When that child turns 14 they are given a choice - to go be with all of those fun things they experienced over the past year, or to come back to the Amish and live their lifestyle. If they choose to leave then they are completely ostracized. Even the Amish understand that teens net to be let loose! lol

I haven’t heard anyone suggest that teens are dumb, stupid, or intellectually challenged in any way.

The age of rumspringa is usually 16, not 13 btw because the Amish do not believe that a person can be held accountable for anything they do before 16. Although if they wanted to ensure that they came back, 13 would make more sense as they cannot get a job, housing, etc at 13.