AIBU to think child tracking implants would be useful until age 12?

[LucyLocker]

Is it a thing? I was just thinking. When my kids were born, if there had been the option to put an implant tracker in their arm, let’s say for £100, I’d have done it. I’d propose all trackers are removed at age 12, to allow teens more responsibility and freedom, but before that age - why not? I can’t think a scenario my kids need to be somewhere I don’t know about. If kids were microchipped it would solve kidnappings. And estranged parents could know where their kid was.
What do you reckon?

People would just get lazy.
My mum got one of those keyrings that beep so you can find lost keys when they first came out. She made no effort not to lose them after that.

I lost DD2 a couple of times; she was a runner as a toddler and completely oblivious when she was older. I lost her once on the way home from school. She was a couple of feet in front of me, and I was watching her. I looked away for a couple of seconds when DD1 asked me a question, to look at DD1 and answer her question. When I looked back, DD2 was gone.

She'd ducked into the park, deciding to walk home a different way, and being oblivious, she just assumed we had seen and would follow. By the time she realised we weren't behind her, she was almost home, so she thought she might as well just keep going. Meanwhile, DD1 and I had gone back to the school, into all the shops, checked the play area at the park...

On another occasion, she caused an entire hotel to go into lockdown. She'd come back from the kids club and was having a tantrum that they'd turned off the hot chocolate machine early. Because of the tantrum, we were not the only ones watching her. All of a sudden, she made a run for the reception and then vanished. No one saw which way she went when she ran into reception, and the CCTV only covered the exit. We knew she had not left the hotel, but even with dozens of people scouring the hotel for her, we could not find her. Eventually, the staff made her a hot chocolate, and everyone went around the hotel calling out to her that her hot chocolate was getting cold, and she appeared as quickly as she had vanished. To this day, we still don't know where she was hiding and she cannot remember to tell us.

The school also lost her when she went to London in Y6. She wandered into a shop without thinking of telling anyone. It took them 20 minutes to find her.

If you've never lost a child for a short time, that's probably more luck than anything else.

Putting a tracker in DD2 might have been tempting if it were an option, but I doubt I would have actually gone through with it.

Not a new idea - it was a plot point on the 2013 TV series "Crossing Lines" when a Russian oligarch's son was kidnapped and the kidnappers just cut out the tracker

Kidnappers would just cut tracker out. Haven't you watched films?

Can't remember now but they were under social services at the time because school refused to have them because he used to attack the staff and during working / school hours he was awarded 3 carers at home to look after him ( by now a teenager ) so maybe them .

That sounds like a very draconian answer to what is basically a you problem.

If you have massive anxiety about your child's safety then you need to deal with that via the medical route, for yourself.

How dystopian.
So when a woman is trying to leave her violent partner, she has to consider also how to remove a tracker from her children.

Insanity

I can’t imagine the look on their faces when asked of a microchip could be installed in their child.

Given SS involvement, perhaps they weren’t surprised

Have there? "Lots"? Happening to ordinary kids? In the UK?

None with that story line! Any recommendations?

Put the little kid on reins or one of those bungee things on their wrist, then.

Those sound like scary situations @Frequency. Must have been horrible.

No woman with children would ever be able to leave an abusive partner.

You leave your abuser, and work out contact with the kids in a contact centre or in a neutral handover location, or not at all. It might go through court if he seeks access but it might not. You can still leave him and he has no right at all to know where you live, even if you have his kids living there.

With your idiotic idea, women wouldn’t be able to leave and keep themselves safe and he would always know where they were, until they were able to go to court and have his “rights to access the tracker” removed. But if you bring in tracking of children, then it would be a very very high bar to remove a parent’s right to access the device. I’d imagine very few victims of domestic abuse could prove it to a high enough standard that his right to track would be removed. So abusive men will always be able to track where their ex lives.

One thing that saves women’s lives is that parents actually have no legal right to know the home address of their child when they live with the other parent. Access handovers can be done anywhere, they have no legal right to know where the child lives. No one needs to prove abuse or danger.

You bring in tracking and that’s gone instantly. You’d have to prove you were in danger to remove his right to track - courts take months if not years so women would be in danger the entire time, and the burden to prove it would be so high that most couldn’t.

The most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when she leaves. And she wouldn’t be able to leave and have his tracking rights removed in the same day.

Your idea will get women killed.

Also no electronic system is totally hack proof. Imagine the potential consequences when someone get access to this data!!!

The hotel was scary. Even though we knew she hadn't left the hotel, we also didn't know who else was staying in the hotel, and the entire building was involved in looking for her, so the entire building knew there was an unsupervised 5yo hiding somewhere.

The other times were more annoying than scary; I was well used to her antics and assumed she'd gone into a friend's play without thinking to ask/tell anyone rather than having had anything horrible happen to her.

I always used to warn her that one day she would get lost and/or fall and hurt herself, and no one would look for her because they were so used to her vanishing.

Please don’t worry, @Striveforcompetence, I have no powers to pass legislation.

The technology isn’t there yet, thankfully. Microchips in animals don’t provide GPS tracking, they need to be scanned by a vet. Anything with GPS would need a battery, which would probably be too big to fit into a baby’s arm. And the battery would need recharging every few weeks. So you’d have a wire with a little recharging port hanging out of your baby‘s arm. It would almost certainly get infected. Dystopian indeed.

But the fact that you didn’t even think “ability to track would be a boon for abusive men” is that worries me. Because you won’t be the only one - people cannot look beyond the end of their own nose so we get absolutely idiotic suggestions like this permeating through society.

Oh boy, this is dystopian in the extreme. Hunger games vibes…..

This. Jeez. 🙄

Yes, I was going to suggest OP watched this, a very good example of the dangers of this sort of technology

Sure until someone figures out how to hack them, stalks your child, takes them and then blocks the signal so you think they’re dead when they’re not…

Tech is never infallible OP. Don’t rely on it.

If you've never lost a child for a short time, that's probably more luck than anything else.

Well likely yes as some kids are bolters and don't understand or follow instructions.

However I also had rein back packs and insisted kids held pushchair and hands so they learnt to stay close and also had them watch out for each other - beacause I had three by myself and days out would be buses and train stations. It was ataught to them. If they did try and run off they quickly learnt it was a very bad idea - meaning they had to earn trust back. School were same a child wandering off - they wound't get to go on next school trip as too risky to take them.

Also seen parents do they I just took eye off them - and clocked they actaully been ignore the kid for more like 10 minutes.

Obviously there will be situation and kids that no more can be done to keep them in sight and most kids lost are fine in end - but for the vast majoirty the fear is useful emotion - it's unpleasant and forces adults to consider how to avoid in future.

If you mute the fear with assumption you can track them - nothing changes and even if you know where they are doens't mean they are actually safe.

That is the risk.

Have you any idea how long that court process takes !

We can't even get people to chip their pets how the heck would you implement this ?