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)

We have the free version of Life360 mostly because it’s useful to see where we all are, so we know when to expect each other home (and can have a cup of tea ready!) My son likes to go out running and my daughter is occasionally out with friends. I don’t look at it all the time. My son went on a school trip to Spain this year and it was quite interesting to see where he was.

My colleague is constantly tracking her son as he walks home from school and worrying about him crossing roads or messing about with friends.

Agree - these days everything on MN is so black and white and extreme ends of the spectrum. No entertaining grey area, the middle ground or any views that don’t conform to these extreme ends of the spectrum. And entirely blind to the irony of their extreme blinkered views being just as ridiculous as the opposite extreme blinkered views.

My kids are early 20s now and I have never tracked them. Well, there is one exception. My DD was going to meet someone in a strange place once and asked me to track her just in case, so for that day I tracked her, and she was fine. Otherwise, no. I would have hated my parents tracking me when I was a teenager or even younger.

Secondary, smartphone free. No need to track - they are where they are supposed to be or life becomes incredibly uncomfortable for them.

To me it is black or white, not once have I ever tracked a child or adult child, I wasn't tracked as a child so why would i need to track one?

And what when technology fails?

So you either track or you dont there is no grey area

My friend and her partner track each other. We went on a trip to visit our friend and she mentioned that her partner messaged to say we were making good time. She laughed but I thought it was weird.

My husband's cousin tracks her 8 year old when she's at the park or out with friends.

We’re share location with FindMy but we hardly ever use it and it’s not a condition of being the kids being allowed out.
My eldest is an adult and stopped sharing location aged about 15 but turned it back on when she went to University. She’d often text and say just walking home on my own or whatever as she felt safer knowing someone could see where she was. She switched it off again when she came home, put it back on when she went travelling. She moved out ages ago but will still share location when she goes for a run on her own or when we watch her in running events it’s handy as we can cheer her on at various points.
The only times I check it are if DD has specifically messaged and said she’s walking somewhere alone or if the younger DC are supposed to have arrived somewhere and are late and not answering their phones.
Once I was looking for my AirPods so opened FindMy it showed DD’s AirTag was in a building site. I knew she’d been meeting up in a nearby city with her Uni mates and was staying over, it was early in the morning and I thought she’d probably not still be out at that time so I waited a while and she hadn’t moved from the building site so I rang her. She was safely tucked up in bed in an AirB&B that was in a new apartment block. It must’ve still been a building site when the map photos were taken!
People make out everyone was just chilled out before there was mobile phones but my parents had all kinds of methods to find out where I was including ringing bus depots and phone boxes, visiting the bus drivers house(!) and driving round my usual walking routes to find me. I was a teenager horror, my own kids are way more reliable.
There was some kind of phone tree when my sister started going out to say when they’d left and arrived places.

I do it for my teenage DCs. Find my phone. If they don’t come home by X time, then I might look and see they’re still at school, ok, they have sports practice or they’re at the train station and train is delayed.

Their school is strict about phone usage so they don’t answer me if I call. I’ll start making dinner for example.

It doesn’t have to be a massive deal, just a practical tool.

Children shouldn't have to put up with being lost, assaulted or in danger. I don't think it teaches resilience at all tbh, it's just potentially traumatizing or worse.

Yes. So we know where they are and can tell when they’re on their way home ect.

By the way it’s not my children I don’t trust it’s other people. There is a lot of weirdos in this world.

I don't see how tracking helps with the trauma here, surely the trauma happens when they are being assaulted not because they are not being tracked. Tracking them doesn't prevent any of these things happening. Well maybe getting lost, but most teenagers are able to use google maps to locate themselves.

in my family we use find my friends. We all use it in case of car accidents. We are not all following each others every movement. If my car breaks down I want my husband to know where I am. If you are not into coercive control then it’s a non issue really.

My kids are 10 and 13 and don't have phones, but even when they do I can't see that I'd be tracking them. Not because of intrusiveness as such (although I do have minor concerns about that) but more because I think it gives a false sense of security. Mine know our mobiles off by heart so can always ask someone to call us in an emergency, and we set times for them to be back if they're out with friends (they walk to the park or round to a friend's). I do of course reserve the right to change my mind in future!

Tracking doesn't prevent children being assaulted or in danger. It only allows you to see where they are when it happens. It gives a false sense of security. They can still get lost, but will do it by turning phones off, leaving them at home etc. It is naïve to think tracking is doing anything beyond seeing where the phone itself is.

Absolutely no tracking. They are young yet anyway but I never want to normalise it for them.

Our family has each other enabled on “Find My”. We don’t use it for “tracking” as such, but sometimes it’s handy from a practical point of view to know where someone is. Examples include
-if they on their way home from work, so I know whether to feed the kids or wait
-knowing where the children are if they are returning from school trips/sports fixtures so I can work out when to collect them.
-child at a sport fixture spread out in the town, so I know where to go to watch them.
-when I broke down on the side of a motorway, it was handy for partner to know where I was and to see when I was on the move again.
-I also think it’s handy in the event of an accident for example so they can be found quickly.

Even though we have it enabled, we don’t check it that often. I don’t need to know where everyone is throughout the whole day. The last time I used it was at the weekend.

Nope although my partner tracks their kids.

We location shared when they were 11-16. The whole family was on it. My kids understood the difference between us sharing as a family for safety (while they were still children beginning to navigate independence), and a partner tracking them for control and coercion. Twice, it meant my daughter who has ADHD found her phone after losing it in town, before it could be stolen. It was handy to see how far they were from home for meal times and such, too.

No because I’d be deeply disappointed if they were always where they should be- I certainly wasn’t. But I don’t necessarily want to know about it.

Exception is skiing when we all have an apple tag in our jackets.

It’s all very well smugly not doing it but when you have the people you love most doing risky things you change your mind.

I don’t track her now but dd2 is scatty and sociable and in her mid teens would roam around with friends and yes we did track her then. Dh cycles miles on his own and has come to grief before. So in those circumstances yes I do track and I don’t think that makes me a mental stalker.

Agree with this. It's also perfectly possible to have nuanced conversations about use of tracking with DC - e.g. the fact it might be OK/beneficial having your parents (who are literally responsible for your safety) tracking you in certain agreed circumstances, but not for the person you're dating to demand it. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. My DC for example understand that DH and I don't routinely track each other, but if one of us is travelling alone we'll do so as we like the reassurance that someone knows our whereabouts - but if either of us stopped being comfortable with this, the arrangement would stop.

Well I suppose if you turn it off it isnt constant.

We do this, although we live separately.

None of us use it to spy on the others, but we wanted to be able to find someone if they went missing. That maybe sounds a bit dramatic, but one person was in a DV situation and another elderly and going for solo rambles.

My whole family are creepy stalkers because when we go on holiday, we track each other on flight radar. My parents coerce me into giving them our flight details, and I coerce them into the same. It's not because it's nice to see that the people you love have got on their way without delay and have landed safely, it's because we're unhealthy control freaks who can't help ourselves