Just picked up 15yo daughter from boy's house

[Butterfly44]

My daughter had a planned sleepover tonight at a friends to celebrate their birthday. Dropped her around 6pm and before I slept tonight I checked on her location for reassurance and saw she wasn't there! I called her to then get an elaborate story but turns out she was at a boy's house (same age). I picked her up and she's now home but very angry and doesn't think there's anything wrong. (Nothing happened, aren't I allowed friends who are boys etc) I'm upset she lied, and need advice on how to handle it in the morning. Feeling a bit heartbroken that our relationship feels fragile right now. She's normally a lovely girl and doesn't want for anything. 😥

I have nothing to hide from DH, no secrets, but I would absolutely hate him to know exactly where I am all the time, what time I’m leaving work, what route I take to the station, whether I’m popping in the pub with colleagues for a quick drink on the way home etc … suffocating and absolutely no need for it.

And as for tracking my DD, who is at uni, that's verging on abusive behaviour. She’s an adult spreading her wings, moving away from her family as she should be.

I don’t understand how so many parents have ended up behaving like this …. It’s seriously weird and disturbing!

@SticksOutLikeDogsBalls

Am I the only person who thinks that having a locator app on a 15 year olds phone is an absolute breach of her privacy?? At 15 if my mother did this to me, I would seriously never speak to her again!

15 year olds don't get that much privacy over where they go, IMO. 16+ maybe so, definitely 18+.

I doubt OP is following her to school or bugging her WhatsApp etc, just ensuring her safety and whereabouts are known.

We live very rurally - five miles from the nearest public transport stop and corner shop type rurally. We all like the fact family members know where we are in case of car/ cycling/ long walk accidents apart from anything - if my car stops moving on the drive home from a late shift on snow and ice at 11pm then I've had an accident and want someone to investigate - otherwise nobody might drive along some of those roads til morning. I like that my daughter can check where I am if she's standing by herself outside the station in the dark and I'm delayed because a tree's fallen across the road or someone's hit a deer and I've had to take a longer route - safer to check the tracker than phone someone who's driving. I can check whete the teens are when they cycle to/ from sports and go and find them in the event they've had an accident.

Stalking involves causing fear or distress and lack of consent is intrinsic, stalking usually culminates in forced contact. Knowing where your non adult children are and letting them know where you are is not stalking, and I seriously wonder about the agenda of posters who try to frame it as such.

Presumably the parents who seem to think that enforcing boundaries with children are the same ones who think that it’s a breach of privacy to keep them safe on the internet, and who are then horrified when they discover they’re being groomed online.

She’s 15 she is not an adult. Where do we start saying to kids that they can come and go as they please and it’s none of our business? 15? 14? 12? Maybe once they start secondary?

Meanwhile the numbers of young teens being groomed online into meeting up with strangers and who lie to their parents about where they are until they become victims is growing all the time.

There are posters here who say that they essentially were allowed to do what they wanted when they were teens and who take from that that their parents didn’t actually care.

Whether people like it or not, teenagers actually prefer to have boundaries and are glad to know that

At 13 I had the location app on my DS’ phone. The exchange for that is that he could locate me as wel. When I fell seriously ill with sepsis and was rushed to hospital he was able to use that app to locate which hospital I’d gone to, because it wasn’t one local to me. Were it not for that app they might not have known where I was for days because by the time I got there I was unconscious and placed on life support for 3 days. And pretty out of it for a few days after that.

There is a vast difference between a husband stalking his partner and a parent wanting to know where their underage children are.

That’s a pretty extreme example though!

@BigSandyBalls2015 abusive behaviour? Is this aimed at me? Did you miss the bit where I said that my daughter put the app on my phone? I had no idea it even existed but she and her friend use it with each other and she wanted to put it on my phone too.

None of us have ever had a locator or even thought of it and definitely not for my ds. He is just 16 and very mature and sensible, I know he is where he says he is and who with. I can phone him any time. He always arrives home on time and keeps me in touch with his plans, especially if he's running late. I guess that the big difference is that right now, Op's daughter can't be trusted to be where she claims to be so is proving that in this case a tracker is absolutely needed.

We all have locator apps (adults and teens), no breach of privacy as it’s not secret. Useful to see if people are on their way home/still at a party or whatever.
Maybe your DD’s male friend is just a friend. And if not I’d have the safe sex/consent talk. My teens often ended up at a different house to the one they were going to and would call to say they’re there to be picked up if relevant. If there was proper deceit going on then I’d have an adult chat…

Trackers on phones are a very useful safety feature.
No 15 year old is entitled to complete privacy. That's parenting.
Regardless of whether the DD is sexually active or not is besides the point. She has been dishonest and has been caught out lying. That's the problem.

As a parent it is my duty to know where my child is. If my 14 year old DD is unusually late back from school or out with friends and doesn't pick up when I call or respond to texts then I will have a look to see where she's at out if concern. There have been instances where she has been sucked into going somewhere when with a group on a sleepover that she wasn't completely comfortable with and wasn't strong enough to walk away. I was able to message her and guide her out of the situation which we talked about afterwards. It's not all about spying it's about parenting.

For those saying it's just about safety. Why is this generation of young people so much sadder and more anxious? Could it be because they are tracked and monitored to within an inch of their lives? Obviously it seems helpful to guide them to get out if a situation but essentially at some point they need to make mistakes in order to learn from them

waterrat they're not sad and anxious because their parents are looking out for them; they're not in my experience particularly sad and anxious as general experience, but some are sad and anxious because social media tells them they are (self fulfilling prophecy), some are because of the insane inappropriate expectation that almost all of them will go to university and get a graduate job - the weird twisted narrative that not to do this is to fail, and not to get the top possible grades (which logically barely anyone should get - it used to only be a couple of %) is to underachieve and be mediocre. Couple that with the increased pressure of social media to be you-nique whilst simultaneously exactly the same as everyone else, to perform your identity instead of just be yourself... There's a lot of pressure - its not coming from being safeguarded!

I've seen posters on MN try to shame parents for not letting their 15 and 16 year olds stay out until the early hours without telling their parents where they are. Its the posters trying to push the agenda that parents should be ashamed of themselves for keeping tabs on their young teens (on and off line) who's agendas are very questionable, not parents who are looking out for their non adult children.

The original poster's 15 year old is a type 1 diabetic who's blood sugar her mother was monitoring via an app on her phone and that was what raised the alarm bells which led her to check location software. Would it be better if she'd seen her daughter's blood sugar become dangerously low and not known where she was, so she could slip into a diabetic coma but have privacy in doing so, at the age of 15, in your view?

@SticksOutLikeDogsBalls

Am I the only person who thinks that having a locator app on a 15 year olds phone is an absolute breach of her privacy?? At 15 if my mother did this to me, I would seriously never speak to her again!

We all have life 360 on our phones. It enables me to allow my teenagers independence safely. If they didn't have it I would be much less inclined to let them go out places on their own, and if they did, would be wanting them to ring me /text me to let me know what they were doing. My 15 year old has discovered this this week as she used up her data and her life360 isn't working. So she has had to make an effort to keep in touch so I know where she is. While I pay for the phone I make the rules and the main reason I pay for the phone is for safety, them being able to contact me in an emergency or vice versa. No teenager has an "entitlement" to a phone paid for by their parents, whatever they might think!

Staying at a boys house overnight at 15 absolutely not. My SD is 15 and lives with me this would 100 not be ok and the lying makes it worse.
I've always said to her I would rather hear something I'm possibly not going to like or be happy with rather than a lie and if I do fine d out you lied then your trust is gone and your world will become very small so it's better to be honest and have a discussion about things. We may allow it we may not but ally least no trust is lost for the next things she wants to do