How to get around teen freezing Life 360

[Anonymous]

I am surprised how many people track their kids. I haven't really thought about it. I was the "bad" kid growing up but I am not sure my parents tracking me would have changed anything.

In get the anxiety about not knowing for sure where your kids are but when does it stop? If you feed the anxiety now won't It just continue when kids are in college or out of college?

[Anonymous]

Lynn Lyons is a psychologist who works with anxious families. She has a podcast (Clusterflux) and books. I went to a webinar with her once. She's very against apps like Life 360. They are mechanisms for communicating anxiety to your child, because you are anxious about them. It's just not worth it.

The idea that the world is dangerous is so pervasive. I have a six year old who likes the show Robicar Poli. Literally all they talk about on the show is how dangerous everything is. I've started discouraging her from watching it.

I also have a teen who doesn't yet have a phone. No interest in tracking him.

If you teen is violating the rules and can drive, by all means, take their keys. Take the phone that you pay for if behavior gets poor. But stop stalking them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you learn to have confidence in your kid? You're raising a good kid, right? Assume your kid is doing thd right thing.

We told our kids as teenagers we trust you -- unless you somehow give us a reason not to. They never gave us a reason.

I have never used a tracking app on any of our kids. I consider it too invasive.

It sounds like the OP are ready trusted her kid

[Anonymous]

OP I am there with you. My kid sneaks out and I can’t control it. They freeze locations, get around our security system, and now I am scared they are getting around the drug tests. The problem is they hang with other kids with poor family lives that don’t have rules/curfews and think they shouldn’t either.

I am considering boarding school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few of you are answering the question.

Many of you have acknowledged that there are situations in which this type of oversight may be necessary- proven untrustworthy, specific location that child shouldn't go to but does, overall challenge. Let's just assume already that OP is not a perfect parent and does not have a perfect kid. They are trying.

OP, you did get one good piece of advice- air tag. And no this is not "secretly" tracking if the kid already knows they have Life 360.

And advice to take the phone away is not all that helpful if you have a teen who puts themselves in dangerous situations. Taking the phone away means you lose the ability to not only locate, but also contact your kid or have them contact you.

Now you want to hide AirTags on your teens? That’s even worse.

Why?

You are GPS tracking your kid like a pet without their knowledge. It’s creepy.

[Anonymous]

Most teens don’t need it. Some do. I don’t judge

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few of you are answering the question.

Many of you have acknowledged that there are situations in which this type of oversight may be necessary- proven untrustworthy, specific location that child shouldn't go to but does, overall challenge. Let's just assume already that OP is not a perfect parent and does not have a perfect kid. They are trying.

OP, you did get one good piece of advice- air tag. And no this is not "secretly" tracking if the kid already knows they have Life 360.

And advice to take the phone away is not all that helpful if you have a teen who puts themselves in dangerous situations. Taking the phone away means you lose the ability to not only locate, but also contact your kid or have them contact you.

Now you want to hide AirTags on your teens? That’s even worse.

Why?

You are GPS tracking your kid like a pet without their knowledge. It’s creepy.

It’s not without their knowledge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few of you are answering the question.

Many of you have acknowledged that there are situations in which this type of oversight may be necessary- proven untrustworthy, specific location that child shouldn't go to but does, overall challenge. Let's just assume already that OP is not a perfect parent and does not have a perfect kid. They are trying.

OP, you did get one good piece of advice- air tag. And no this is not "secretly" tracking if the kid already knows they have Life 360.

And advice to take the phone away is not all that helpful if you have a teen who puts themselves in dangerous situations. Taking the phone away means you lose the ability to not only locate, but also contact your kid or have them contact you.

Now you want to hide AirTags on your teens? That’s even worse.

Why?

You are GPS tracking your kid like a pet without their knowledge. It’s creepy.

It’s not without their knowledge.

That also doesn’t make any sense. You have them carry an AirTag but tell them? OP asked for ways to stop kids from hacking tracking ability. If they know they have the AirTag they can easily leave it at a friends and then go wherever they want.

[Anonymous]

If you can’t trust your teen not to do that then you can’t trust them to have a phone anyway

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am surprised how many people track their kids. I haven't really thought about it. I was the "bad" kid growing up but I am not sure my parents tracking me would have changed anything.

In get the anxiety about not knowing for sure where your kids are but when does it stop? If you feed the anxiety now won't It just continue when kids are in college or out of college?

We have family tracking. I track my husband and he tracks me too. As for the kids, I don’t plan to when adults unless they want to keep it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few of you are answering the question.

Many of you have acknowledged that there are situations in which this type of oversight may be necessary- proven untrustworthy, specific location that child shouldn't go to but does, overall challenge. Let's just assume already that OP is not a perfect parent and does not have a perfect kid. They are trying.

OP, you did get one good piece of advice- air tag. And no this is not "secretly" tracking if the kid already knows they have Life 360.

And advice to take the phone away is not all that helpful if you have a teen who puts themselves in dangerous situations. Taking the phone away means you lose the ability to not only locate, but also contact your kid or have them contact you.

Now you want to hide AirTags on your teens? That’s even worse.

Why?

You are GPS tracking your kid like a pet without their knowledge. It’s creepy.

It’s not without their knowledge.

That also doesn’t make any sense. You have them carry an AirTag but tell them? OP asked for ways to stop kids from hacking tracking ability. If they know they have the AirTag they can easily leave it at a friends and then go wherever they want.

For a difficult teen you don’t tell them, and the point is to see if the air tag is tracking at the same places as Life360.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lynn Lyons is a psychologist who works with anxious families. She has a podcast (Clusterflux) and books. I went to a webinar with her once. She's very against apps like Life 360. They are mechanisms for communicating anxiety to your child, because you are anxious about them. It's just not worth it.

The idea that the world is dangerous is so pervasive. I have a six year old who likes the show Robicar Poli. Literally all they talk about on the show is how dangerous everything is. I've started discouraging her from watching it.

I also have a teen who doesn't yet have a phone. No interest in tracking him.

If you teen is violating the rules and can drive, by all means, take their keys. Take the phone that you pay for if behavior gets poor. But stop stalking them.

No. Lyons is entitled to her opinion but that’s all it is. Her opinion.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of people commenting haven’t used life 360. We’ve had it as a family for years. Teen can track us too. It’s really nbd and our teen is fine with it. We are not super strict parents and they mostly tell us what’s going on (not naive enough to think we know everything).

OP we have had a few issues with it freezing that we’re resolved with rebooting the phone. It’s happened to me and DH as well so we know if wasn’t teen. If you believe teen is purposefully freezing it I’d give 1 warning and then loss of the phone for 3 days. Next time a week and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about telling your kid that if they do that again, they lose their phone for a week.

This is what I would do. I don't have Life 360 on my kids but we do use Find My Friends and if I find they've turned location off I'll reach out to them and tell them to turn it back on. If they don't, or it happens regularly, then they know their phone is in my possession for a period of time.

Caveat: I fortunately don't have kids who are getting into trouble, or have any issues where I may need to closely monitor them.

But you do it anyway. Why do they bother turning it off if they have no issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I am there with you. My kid sneaks out and I can’t control it. They freeze locations, get around our security system, and now I am scared they are getting around the drug tests. The problem is they hang with other kids with poor family lives that don’t have rules/curfews and think they shouldn’t either.

I am considering boarding school.

One of the reasons I am backing off tracking my teen is that I went to boarding school at 14. My parents had no clue where I was, what I was doing. I smoked on the fire escape, snuck out and got high in the woods, snuck into boy’s dorms after hours. By all means send your kid to boarding school - they’ll have more freedom and you’ll worry less because you will know less.