Do you track your teenager?

[Coffeesndteav]

I have had my dd on the friend finder app. We live about a mile away from her school so being in the park with friends etc it eases my mind.She is 13 next week.

We have had a temper tantrum tonight saying none of her friends parents do this. I am a stalker. We don't trust her. We care too much

Her attitude is very bad at the moment. Wow teens are hard work.

AIBU to track her on the app?

I have a tracker on both my teens but it’s not an issue as I only use it if I can’t get hold of them

They haven’t even mentioned it tbh but then we don’t discuss it as I don’t monitor it as such

We all have tracker app as a family, including some cousins!

I don’t use it much though when dc are out, only really if I am getting tea ready so I know roughly how long it will take them to get home from when I ask. Use it more with dh 😊 but only because we work together and saves me interrupting a meeting.

I think (as with many subjects) there is a massive spectrum between having some sort of tracking system enabled and how much it is used...and why

Lydia , your DDs are adults at uni. Surely you aren’t checking they’re back every night!

The world is such a crazy place. I kind of understand why you would track your children. I feel really bloody conflicted about it though.

As someone who was never trusted or allowed out really through the whole of high school (for no reason I might add), please don't actively track your kids/invade their privacy. I still have trust issues now at the age of 25, almost to the point of not being able to be in a room without the door closed. It just creates more issues.

On the back of this, find my iPhone is really useful, me and dp have a family account and it's great if one of us have lost our phone in the house somewhere etc. And dp has a medical condition so if I couldn't get a hold of him for whatever reason and I saw on his medical app he was having issues then I could contact emergency services and be able to locate him but never to actively track where he is!

When they’re at uni, it’s great to check it in the evening and see they’re both back at their uni houses. It means I don’t need to text them as much.

Why on earth do you need to text your adult children if they are not home? This is bizarre. Regardless of whether they are quiet homebodies or not, it is not up to you to keep them safe or keep checking in on them.

Its funny when ds1 is home and goes out for the night dh goes back to being unable to sleep until he gets back

When ds1 was at uni dh didnt worry at all

The whole out of sight out of mind thing 😀

I simply told my son (14) that the tracking being on is not about him and trust, but it's about a preempting action that if anything happens we know where he is and can go and help. Why would I check where he is if he checks in? I have a life, thank you. And he knows that.

I think the key is to know the boundaries. I have my son's username/pwd to all his online stuff - phone, school, discord, email,....
If i need to go in (eg google classroom) I tell him. I observe, not judge. Don't make a point of "why didn't you do x hw?" I did however suggest that he could use the platform better and in a more effective way.

@FantasyPanda

My DD is 13 and I track her phone. It's for my own peace of mind incase something happens to her, not because I don't trust her. Sit down with your DD and tell her that you do it because you care and it eases your mind. You want to make sure she's safe. Having a tracking app also could be useful if the phone gets lost.

100% this.

DS is 13 and has an iPhone, as do we, we have the ‘family’ settings so that when he is out we can check where he is via find my iPhone or find my friends.

He (used to pre lockdown) play rugby twice a week and sometimes if they have an away match they can travel quite far and can be back quite late, it can be reassuring to be able to see where he is and when he makes it back,
He also has a habit of ‘not hearing’ his phone when he is out so if he’s late home or not answering my calls/texts I can see where he is and go and find him if I need to.
It’s also good to make sure he is where he says he is.
I don’t check on his every move, it’s just a useful tool to help parenting a teen easier.

It’s not abusive or controlling, that’s such an utterly ridiculous accusation.
Like anything it’s how you use the tool, yes it has the potential to be misused but at 13 they are still vulnerable and most have their moments of stupidity where going places they shouldn’t or doing things they shouldn’t might seem like a good idea, being able to know where they are at the click of an app is very useful and can help to protect them.

I think being able to track your kid and actively doing so are 2 separate things. And let's not forget, whatever we enable/put on their phones: those things can be left at any place and then they are off to god knows where.
Thinking that having a tracking app on a kid's phone will help keep them safe is a false sense of security. It doesn't stop them acting stupid - not looking around when crossing the street, getting into fights,...

I also agree being able to do so in case of emergencies is one thing and a good idea, activeLy doing so as appears the case here isn’t acceptable unless there are other issues at play.

Whilst I have my two teens (18 & 15) on Find My Friends, i don't track them constantly. Occasionally I'll check whether DS has made his train home from school or DD's location when i'm picking her up from a night out. However we did all agree on this and they in turn track me & DH if we're late picking up or when one of us is working away.

@lyralalala

Uni kids being home every single night? That would worry me. Not a single late night out or party?

I hope that’s more that they’ve just taken to leaving their phones behind because young people should be out late having fun

I barely went out during my four years of uni, just didn't enjoy it and felt like a waste of money

Rufustherolling....exactly. If the children are at home I worry more about that child ie Son 24 than younger son who is at Uni . Definitely the further away they are the less I worry because I don’t have a clue what they are doing on a daily basis!! I would never have used a tracker when they were younger...they text to let me know where they were and my mum didn’t have any means of contacting me when I was a teenager and it just wasn’t ever an issue. I think the tracker idea is more about the parents anxiety being an issue.

She is potentially up to something. Otherwise why would she worry about it.
That sounds abusive to me.

We are a tracking kind of family. These that don't want to, don't bother. Those that do, usually arrive somewhere to find tea piping hot because someone was able to see how far away they were. Different strokes, for different folks.

I found the tracker app useful for DS to be able to have more freedom than I would have been happy with without the app.

DS wanted to go to a concert at 16 a long way away in a big city. If he didn’t have the tracker app I would have said absolutely no way at all. Wait one or two years. At the time we were negotiating stopping the tracker app anyway which I agreed to turn it off, but still kept mine on so he could see where I was.

However I let him go to this concert if he turned the tracker on for the duration. Again, we talked and I explained it was for my peace of mind, emergencies, rather than lack of trust. I said it was simply because his experience of the world was less than me, and things can happen in big cities at night far from home. And that I wanted him to be as safe as possible. I was happy to be labelled over protective by him, happy to be over protective, my parents didn’t care what I did at that age. DS totally understood where I was coming from.

As it turned out it was very useful! Him and his friends were waiting at the wrong place for the bus home, at 1.30am in a rough part of the city! Which they weren’t aware of. They described where they were totally wrongly, so if I hadn’t had the tracker I wouldn’t have known. I was able to tell them exactly where to go quickly and they just got the bus in time. It was the last one back.

Thank goodness! I wouldn’t have wanted to think of them out at night and it could have been very risky.

So there is also the other side, if we are able to know where they are, they can have greater trust and freedom as it is a very useful backup.

I agree that intent and consent are important. We have the whole family on the tracking app except my adult DD who lives elsewhere. Neither of my boys (17 and 14) object. The 14 year old goes for long bike rides on his own and I like to be able to track him then. I am not sure I would be happy to let him go as far as he does alone without the ability to track him. DH tracks my bike rides too. I think its a sensible safety precaution and most of my cycling friends use some kind of tracker.
Under normal circumstances my sons have a 20+ mile journey to school on a less than completely reliable bus service so the tracker has come in handy a few times when we've got the "the bus has broken down, can you come and get us" call, or if its not turned up/they've missed it we can tell them to start walking and know where they have got to in order to pick up.
I think most of my children's friends do something similar once they are going to secondary school on the bus and going out independently but then the distances they are travelling are quite large. If my son is riding 30 miles to his friend's house I don't think there's anything unreasonable or controlling to want to be able to see how he is getting on.He'd far rather be tracked than have to stop to answer a call or to call me. If we lived in a town and he was walking down the road to the corner shop I am pretty sure I wouldn't bother though.

If my family were out on long bike rides and could possibly have an accident then yes, 100% I would have a tracking app.

But then I think it’s interesting that posters say that their kid is lost or needs picked up and the app tells them where they are. Is it not more important to teach your children to know where they are and be able to communicate that rather than rely on a electronic pin on a map? It’s lazy.

Is it not more important to teach your children to know where they are and be able to communicate that rather than rely on a electronic pin on a map? It’s lazy.

That gave me such a flasback to people saying the same thing about calculators. I wonder if every generation has complained that modern technology is making the youth lazy?

following on from this I checked that my daughter didn’t mind us all being on a group find your phone she is 17 - she looked at me said Mum you trust me and I’ll tell you where I go anyway, it’s never felt like your checking up on me we just have it as a family thing and you’ve never checked that I’m not where I’m not meant to be.she doesn’t feel controlled by it. We all have the choice on snapchat etc

I’ve said she can switch off if she wishes - she said she can’t be bothered as she knows it’s not a control thing. She said some parents do use it as control and their normally the kids who are quite controlled by their parents and sometimes up to no good anyway! She said it’s just easier to be honest!

Yes, we all track each other and everyone is fine with it. My 16 year old goes out most days with his friends and knows that sometimes I’ll check to see where he is so I don’t have to freak out when he doesn’t respond to my texts. But this is because we’ve experienced some really devastating events recently, there have been several suicides and one accidental death across his friendship group.

Due to recent events we’ve had a lot of in-depth chats about what he and his friends get up to and have not been surprised it involves a bit of drinking and smoking weed. We’ve had lots of chats about the risks involved with this but understand that’s what teenagers do. He agreed to have the tracker on so that no matter what state he’s in we can find him. This does not mean we’re sanctioning him to go out and get wrecked, but we don’t want him to be too scared to come home or not contact us if he needs help. At the moment he needs to spend more time with his friends and that is fine with us, so is out for most of the day.

What I’m saying is that it’s a bloody fine line between giving a teenager freedom and keeping them safe. Recent events have really shaken us up, but it’s really important that teenagers gain experience navigating the world and making decisions that can have very series consequences. But, because he’s 16 I do think it’s a bit of an infringement on his freedom, if he was 13 I would not be happy if he refused a tracker in exchange with more freedom. Because of recent events he fully understands our anxiety and is happy to reduce that worry, I think it shows maturity that he gets this.

@WilliamTheToad

Is it not more important to teach your children to know where they are and be able to communicate that rather than rely on a electronic pin on a map? It’s lazy.

That gave me such a flasback to people saying the same thing about calculators. I wonder if every generation has complained that modern technology is making the youth lazy?

That was my first thought also.I remember my teachers saying that when we first were allowed calculators at school,and the oft quoted "Well you're never going to carry a calculator with you everywhere are you? Right, I'd better go and do some laundry. I can't find a dolly tub and mangle anywhere though so I shall just have to use that lazy machine. My grandmother must be rolling in her grave.