Parents tracking their children

[intrestedvic]

I am always reading on threads how people know where their children are due to apple air tags or, apps, or location sharing on a phone.

Not just on mumsnet but in my circle I know lots of parents who use maps or share location with children.

I am a parent to small children currently but I was wondering opinions on this situation. If you track your children and why and if not why not?

😱

It's not about dodgy teens.

It's about teens who want to do something that their parents won't approve of.

Those two statements are not synonymous. And it's the ones with the controlling parents that are tracking their teens that are more likely to be stricter in terms of what they let their teens do.

My teens both have friends who have used burners because they wanted to do perfectly normal teen things that their parents didn't want them to do.

I don't actively track DS, but we have a managing app on his phone (family link) that does act as a tracker.

Rarely use it, but it was nice on his recent foreign school trip to be able to see where he was, and to track him on his way home to be able to pick him up on time from school without waiting for an hour cos he was stuck in traffic!

Or to guilt trip them. All the people saying 'oh I don't make them do it but it just gives me peace of mind and stops me constantly worrying' - I just don't believe that their teens aren't picking up the message that they're constantly unsafe and also responsible for managing their parents' anxiety by constantly reassuring them. It's such an unhealthy message and I disagree that it's no one else's business and we should all just be all 'ah well, live and let live' about some people running their personal relationships through surveillance - the normalisation of this has societal consequences.

Funny thing about this thread is that it is very common for teens to share their location on snapchat with all their contacts. They shouldn't but lots do.

All these posters muttering darkly about damaging teens and their relationship with the parents.

Some teens and young adults CHOOSE to use the apps as they find it useful for lifts etc. Mine also genuinely enjoy checking in and seeing where all the members of the family are (we are a biggish family). Sad that some people have to see everything through a veil of lies and burner phones.

We use Life360 and have a family circle, so all 4 of us (me, dh, 2 teens) can see each others' locations. It has been useful in lots of scenarios, most recently when DS2 left his phone in a taxi and we were able to track it down, or when DS1 unkowingly put his phone in his team-mate's identical kitbag and we tracked it to their parents' car in a supermarket car park on the way home from the match. Both boys are happy to have it - although I sometimes check their location I don't then interrogate them about it, so they don't see it as an issue. They also check my location to see if I'm on my way home from work, or maybe delayed in traffic when coming to pick them up from somewhere. It's incredibly useful.

Like what?

Yeah I think some posters are reading too much in to it. Equally though there is a previous poster who says she wants to know where her kid is at all times until they turn 18. That's a bit far no?

I would imagine there's a happy middle ground which lots of posters seem to have.

I don't track my dc aged 13 and 17 because we live in a very safe area and they have never given me any reason to distrust them

I try hard in general not to judge other people's parenting - and, again, I want to be transparent that I don't yet have teens - but I find the fact that apparently so many teenagers actually prefer to be constantly tracked and, worst of all, that they feel unsafe or anxious if they're not being tracked, to be one of the most disturbing aspects of this thread. Similarly people saying that they and their partner just love being able to know where the other is at all times - that isn't healthy, and it being what they want doesn't change that (though at least it's between two adults in that case).

Two of mine are 23. They are living away from home. They are not tracked by me, I barely look at where they are unless they are getting the train home and I want to check when to put the wine in the fridge. You may not have any experience of that kind of relationship but I'm here to tell you that it exists.

I have two teenagers with tracking. None negotiable for me

No I don't. I don't track them all the time and probably would not know if they turned it off. Location tracking does not work consistently. Their phone may just be off or they are not near a mobile mast. So there are far simpler explanations if it is off.

If it is off for a long time, I will ask. Turns out my son's phone was not working.

No big deal.

We don’t as a rule. And I actively warn my children against allowing people to track them as standard.

DD2 has narcolepsy and will occasionally use tracking as an extra safety device if she is going out alone (which is rare).
She’s already, at 20, had two boyfriends she’d had to dump (and thankfully had the strength to do so) because they got huffy that she wouldn’t allow them to track her all the time.

A lot of the time it’s done, imo, to facilitate laziness and a lack of manners rather than safety. So many people I know use it so they know when to plan tea if their spouse is running late leaving work or if someone is late home. Whereas in our house if you’re going to be late you’re expected to give a heads up yourself, not put the onus on the cook!

Its fair enough if it’s a mutually agreed thing that’s not abused and there would be no flack if one party decided to stop. However, it’s far to open to abuse and overuse for me to want to encourage my kids to have it as something they do every day.

I also think it gives a false sense of security. It shows where a phone is. Not a person.

I have no idea why more parents don’t lecture their teens about not doing that.

We have life 360 but I will go for days, sometimes weeks without looking at it. Really we only use it if someone is out walking or cycling, particularly if they are alone. I am the most checked on person in the family for that reason. It came in very useful when I fell off my bike a couple of years ago. I was concussed so not at my most coherent and was on a fairly featureless country road so the tracker made it much easier for DH to find me.
DS1 who is at University is in the group but has it switched off (which is not an issue) unless he is coming home on the train. His journey involves multiple changes so there's quite a bit that could go wrong and he knows I worry. Switching it on whilst he is travelling saves him from multiple messages from me so he prefers to be tracked!

Like they've broken their phone and don't want to tell their parents.

Like they've told their parents they are staying at school to study but are actually hanging out in the park with their friends (because their parents won't let them hang out with friends after school).

Like they've gone to a friend's house and their parent has told them they must stay in the house because they want to know where they are, but they want to pop out to the local shop to buy snacks.

Like they are meant to be at home in the evening when their parents are at work, but have actually gone to a party at a friend's house.

(all real life examples, by the way)

DS1 who is at University is in the group but has it switched off (which is not an issue) unless he is coming home on the train. His journey involves multiple changes so there's quite a bit that could go wrong and he knows I worry.

But when he's at Uni he could be anywhere, doing anything, with anyone. And you dont worry then. Is it a case of feeling it's then not on your watch? Im not criticising as my mum was the same- when I was home for the holidays she couldn't sleep till I came in but the I was away, she didnt worry about me.

I have 3 "children" who are 27, 19 and 12. My middle one is at uni and set us up on Life360. She likes to see where I am but I do find it reassuring to see where she is too. My eldest is married and also wanted to go on it so she also could see where we were. It is nothing more than slightly convenient (my middle child waits till I've finished work to ring me and I wouldn't ring her if she was on campus) and reassuring (after a night out, I like it when I wake up and see that she is home!). If my 12 year old goes out walking it is nice to see where he is but nobody is tracking anybody as such, there just are occasions when we look.

I feel seen (other than the phone one as hadn't been invented yet).

But I do feel with teenagers that so long as they're not clearly going off the rails, there has to be an element of "what the eye dont see, the heart dont grieve over".

I was pretty much a model teen - never dropped a grade or wagged school, had a few part time jobs where I was super reliable, polite and helpful at home etc.. But yeah, was quite often not where I'd said I'd be (arcade stalking boys instead of the tennis club/ library), did a bit of underage drinking and smoking. I think it's normal. I'm pretty sure my parents also suspected all of this but chose to pick their battles, and it seemed to pay off.

I did have a tracker on my kids school bags and phones when they first started secondary and were newly independent but it didn’t work after a while . I haven’t replaced them .

These days they have a time to be home and tend to touch base with me throughout the day anyway .. recently though I did end up driving about looking for my 12 year old when he didn’t answer his phone ( 4 attempts to call ) when I’d not seen or heard from him in 7 hours .. very out of character .. but he was just having way too fun a time .

That they have their independence and explore and grow is vital and my worry is for me to manage

I'm tracking my two who have iPhones. One's in Bolivia and the other Australia. Quite nice to see where they are - or at least where their iPhones are.

As a pp has said, main use of the tracking when they're in the UK is to gauge when their train's due at the station, as we're only a few minutes away from it.

Ha ha, punishment? They are bigger than me! We don't use Life 360 as a surveillance device.