Does everyone track their children?

[CaNGCNk]

Is everyone tracking their child now? I had a few people surprised on another group because I said I don’t agree with tracking my children. In school they were talking about. I can see the appeal for a younger child a toddler maybe or a child thats a runner. But are we all just tracking our school age children now? (even if that doesn’t apply)

No wonder we have so much an anxiety in the UK.

What do you mean by appropriate for a toddler

who actually does that? Toddlers don’t need tracking?

the world has gone bonkers

Mine are 12 and 14, no smartphones and no tracking.

I've put an air tag in my year 5's backpack as he has just started walking home alone, he says he like having it. But when he is older an more independent it'll be up to him if he wants to be tracked or not!

My eldest DD would disable the tracker so no for her and basically never went out. My youngest DD uses life 360 as she went out with friends last year so if we needed to pick her up she wouldn’t have had a clue where she was. It’s also handy that I can see when she reaches a certain point on the bus home so I can head out to collect her without waiting around too long, she’ll still message me as well. My husband and I track each other as he could be stuck in traffic and his work van doesn’t have blue tooth and even though I use the cars sat nav, I’ll panic if it sends me a way I don’t know so I know I can pull over and ask him for help

Think tracking is a very emotive word with a suggestion of negative behaviour. We have an app called family 360 that we’re all on, so yes I can see where my son is, but he can also see where I am, and his dad. This way if he’s waiting for us and we’ve not arrived he just looks on his phone to see how far away we are. We have alerts that send a text when he’s reached school, his training gym etc. He’s totally fine with it and actually says it makes him feel safer. He’s almost 13. I don’t think it’s a negative for our family to know where each other are…

We track our DS's phone and hope that it is with him. For context, he is 14 and has a long journey to and from school which involves cycling across town to catch a train into our county town and then cycling across the city centre to reach his school. It is a specialist technical college that he chose to join in year 10.

We track his phone for multiple reasons.

Cycling through the busy city centre traffic is quite dangerous so it's reassuring to be notified when he has arrived safely at school in the mornings.

He's also autistic and sometimes makes odd detours to bike shops, forgetting to let us know what time to expect him, so we track him on the return journey so we can see which train he caught and know when to put the kettle on/start making dinner 🙂

His social communication style and relationship difficulties have also lead to him being bullied on the street in our hometown so it's helpful to be able to locate him in a hurry if he's being threatened.

If he's cycling out in the evening to meet his Dad, it's reassuring to know that he has arrived safely.

All in all, we find tracking his phone useful on a daily basis.

All our DCs are adults now and the whole family are on Find My Friends. My BF & I share too. It’s useful, reassuring and a security tool.