I Want to Track My 8 Year Old Child.. Help Me.

[jtara]

HappyDude, I'm with you on this one!

The school is just plain wrong, IMO. Things are different. I could put a dime in a pay phone. I could ring any doorbell, and whoever answered would help. (We knew where the guy who was rumored to load his shotgun with rock salt - if that's even possible - and knew to stay off his lawn and not ring the doorbell...) Hell, does anybody know any phone numbers to dial if they DID find a pay phone? (Haha, I said "dial"...)

Reading between the lines, I don't think "tracking" is the first priority, that was unfortunate wording. BECAUSE his daughter isn't allowed to carry a cell phone to school, which she could use to phone home, the only alternative he has is some tracking device that isn't a cell phone.

It takes 50-100 years for society to catch-up with technological changes. Automobile - early 1900's. Adequate national highway system - 1950's-1960's. We aren't there yet with cell phones. School administrators freaking out over distraction from cell phones, while totally blind to the fact that they are depriving students of an essential communication tool in modern society for which the alternatives used by prior generations NO LONGER EXIST.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

The school doesn't allow students to bring phones.

So what, you can just turn it off? The kid is at school, why would one want to track her there anyway?

 

[maflynn]

The school is just plain wrong,

The schools in my town, prohibit phones. Middle school students can having them but must be off and in the locker, kids going to grades 1 - 5th are not permitted to have phones unless there's a special reason as defined by the parents. The school administrators have rightly discerned that phones are a distraction to learning, whether in the classroom or in recess.

For the OP's stated desire to track their child, in the case of a horrible event, do you think its likely the child will still have the phone on them? Do you think the person taking a child will make sure the child has no means to contact her parents or call 911? Its a scary thought to think someone could scoop up a kid, and as a parent, I share the same thoughts, instead of relying on technology, there are other avenues to help lower the risk and the risk is low as it stands. While I'm not diminishing the heartache of those parents dealing with it. This is not a common phenomenon, but that doesn't mean we parents should be lax.

My kids didn't get phones until they were much older, and now as teens they are starting to treat those phones with level of care that they ought too.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

A surprising lack of empathy and abundance of assuming the worst intentions in this thread. A parent wants to know where their eight-year-old is so they aren't abducted. Long post, occasional all caps, and tone aside, that's all there is to this.

@Scepticalscribe, the sarcastic post you mentioned was in reply to an equally sarcastic dismissal of the OP's fears that his child might end up as the missing children in photographs do. Hyperventilating over that seems a far more appropriately proportioned response than being frightened to death of the word "track" in this context.

@Tech198, I assume the the kid will "eventually" find out when their parent tells them like the first post says.

I was initially very off put by this thread because of the tone, but long-term, that kid is going to leave the GPS/phone with a friend whenever she wants to get up to standard teenage disobedience. And when she doesn't, it'll be peace of mind knowing her last location in case of an emergency.

Or when his daughter hits a certain age, the OP can just shut it off. It'll take all of two seconds in iOS Settings.

No, it is not a lack of empathy; it is the tone and vocabulary and mindset of the OP's post that I take issue with.

"Hyperventilating" over a kidnap story?

I think his reactions OTT, as @Ntombi has noted, and excessive. The concerns may well be legitimate, but the way in which they are expressed are excessive and conducive to inculcating a climate of fear and paranoia.

Instead, kids should be given the confidence and tools - the old don't talk to strangers stuff - that will allow them to identify threats and help them to navigate the world safely.

Yes, I don’t imagine tracking my little girl when she becomes a teenager and I know I gotta ‘cut the ambilical cord’ at one point too.

However, one of her schoolmates rides her bike or scooter to and from her home and she got hit by a car crossing the street. This little girl will sometimes come over so they can play instead of her having to bike or scooter from school and the girls parents pick her up from our house. I found out that the day this little girl got hit by a car that the little girl still continued her bike ride to school and called her parents from the schools office and the parents asked how hurt she was to which the little responded she had just a few scrapes and the parents told her to stay in class and they would see the injuries not until the evening when the parents got home from work.

People parent very differently and when I heard this story from the little girl I couldn’t help but try to coerce the mother to tell me what happened that day and their stories almost pretty much lined up. If anything remotely close occurred like that with my little girl I would’ve instantly left whatever meeting or lunch I was in and RUSHED to my little girl no matter what. Sadly, I learned the mother couldn’t leave work or she would’ve been fired. And admittedly the mother doesn’t live in the nicest part of town. I honestly think the little girl comes over at least once a week for food, but that’s a whole different topic. If work threatened me with getting fired for seeing my little girl, especially after any sort of emergency, I would gladly flip them off and walk away from said business.

Again, that verb bothers me.

What right had you to "try to coerce" anyone into anything?

Yes, the work situation - a whole different story - is dreadful, agreed, but if parents are prepared to accept the word of a kid that the kid got a "few scrapes" (corroborated by others that it is, in fact, a few scrapes) and that if further action is needed they will see to it in the evening, what is your problem?

With those sort of reactions in the thread, I'd be amazed if your kid didn't think to keep some stuff from you because of the likely consequence of emotionally excessive eruptions; well, different times, and my parents were a lot more hands-off, but, suffice to say, there were times I didn't pass on stuff, because dealing with the stuff was sometimes easier than dealing with them. Some of it they found out about at the time, some of it they didn't - not until they were told, years later.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Wasn't there a black mirror episode about this

Yes. I thought of it too. It did not end well for the mom in that episode.

 

[eyoungren]

OP mentioned that everyone parents differently. True.

My daughter is 10. I find it hard to believe that by age 18 she might be responsible with a phone. She doesn't take care of her stuff. Consequently, even though all her classmates have better phones than I do, she isn't allowed to take her phone to school.

She attends a school that allows cell phones, but they must be off or on silent in their backpacks during class. Her phone is my wife's old phone. WiFi only and she's only allowed to use it at home.

I know where she is between 7am and 2:30pm because I drop her off and pick her up. The school has a phone. She has actually used it to call us at different times when she needed to. The school is gated and you can't get in without surrendering your driver's license at the front desk.

My son is entirely different. He's been responsible since we gave him a 4s at 13. I know where he is all day too, because I also drop him off and pick him up at his bus stop (or my wife does).

He has a phone because we needed to be able to get a hold of him. At the time, he was in the same school as his sister so it meant being able to get ahold of both of them.

My son has ridden the bus to school since preschool. He's in 10th grade now. Old hat by this point.

By next year or so my wife will get her teaching credential and will be teaching in the school district my daughter attends. This means my daughter will ultimately end up at the school my wife will teach at.

I don't need to track either one of them. I know where they are and I can get a hold of them. And they can get a hold of me if they need to.

But my 10 year old daughter who is irresponsible and not capable of paying attention in class is not taking a cell phone with her to school.

 

[Gutwrench]

I didn’t notice anything posted that places this kid in any extraordinary risk category.

So, monitoring your daughter via her cell phone seems pretty much the obvious and most reasonable solution.
[doublepost=1544622127][/doublepost]

This is not a common phenomenon, but that doesn't mean we parents should be lax.

Hard to disagree with that.

 

[jtara]

So, monitoring your daughter via her cell phone seems pretty much the obvious and most reasonable solution.

But it violates the school policy.

This whole thing started because the "Presidential Alert" caused a bunch of cell phones stowed in backpacks to go off in a classroom. The school policy requires the parents then to go to a meeting and 'splain to retrieve the cell phone.

THE SCHOOL DOES NOT PERMIT CELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM. PERIOD. THE SCHOOL DOES NOT PERMIT THE OBVIOUS AND MOST REASONABLE SOLUTION.

In fact, OP stated that the school bans children from 'bringing cell phones to school' at all.

A bunch of parents apparently thought it was "reasonable" to violate the rule, figuring they wouldn't get caught, and it would make both the parents and children feel safer. They did get caught, and it caused a kerfuffle.

That - and a bad nightmare after too much ice cream before bed and too much Facebook Fake News(c) - is what led OP to seek alternative solutions

If the kid isn't allowed to take a phone to school, at least he wants to be able to know where she is, and so the search for something that is not a cell phone that can accomplish that.

Allowing phones either shut off or on silent (as is the policy at MaFlynn's kids school) seems reasonable. Note that an alert will go off even if the phone is on silent. But OP's kid's school is more restrictive than that.

My, the reading comprehension level here is low!

 

[Gutwrench]

But it violates the school policy.

This whole thing started because the "Presidential Alert" caused a bunch of cell phones stowed in backpacks to go off in a classroom. The school policy requires the parents then to go to a meeting and 'splain to retrieve the cell phone.

THE SCHOOL DOES NOT PERMIT CELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM. PERIOD. THE SCHOOL DOES NOT PERMIT THE OBVIOUS AND MOST REASONABLE SOLUTION.

In fact, OP stated that the school bans children from 'bringing cell phones to school' at all.

My, the reading comprehension level here is low!

I don’t interpret the following as the op unequivocally saying the school has outright banned phones on school grounds, but rather prohibits them from being turned on, in use, or in view. Therefore the school will confiscate any phone seen or heard because it’s a distraction [conclusion added].

I recall being at the school a few months back during that Presidential Alert and it freaked the teacher out because the school policy is no cell phones so the policy is if a phone rings the student cannot get it back unless the parent visit the school to retrieve it.

So, keeping that interpretation in your mind, using the phone’s location feature is the most obvious and reasonable solution.

 

[jtara]

but rather prohibits them from being turned on, in use, or in view.

How can a phone that is not turned on track location?

 

[Gutwrench]

How can a phone that is not turned on track location?

How necessary is it to track a student from classroom to classroom? Perhaps homeschooling is the only choice then.

 

[0388631]

How necessary is it to track a student from classroom to classroom? Perhaps homeschooling is the only choice then.

Might I recommend a cage?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

.....

My, the reading comprehension level here is low!

No.

The reading comprehension of those who took the trouble to reply is more than perfectly adequate.

What struck me was the tone of the OP and the vocabulary used; while to express some degree of concern is reasonable, the use of words such as "hyperventilate" when reading about a kidnap story, or "coerce", when demanding information about what everyone had agreed were "scratches" as a result of a fall from the mother of the child who had suffered the fall, strike me as excessive and somewhat troubling and consumed by fear.