Reply to Do you use trackers with your college kids?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Do you use trackers with your college kids?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our family— 2 parents, 2 college kids— all have Find My Phone activated. My kids are allowed to turn it off when they are at school. But, I don’t think they ever have.

That said, my promise to them— which I have kept— is that I won’t stalk them. So, I don’t check where they are unless there is a good reason.  Like, once DD forgot to text when she got back to school and I checked to see that she was back safely rather than texting because her notifications were off and it was late at night.

But, I can go an entire semester and not check where they are. And I’m not sure what I’m going to see that can’t been unseen or is too intrusive. They spend the night in another dorm?  Ok, they are in college. And I don’t have the class schedule memorized and have never checked to see if they are in class. If they aren’t, there isn’t much I can do anyway.

It’s actually more useful at home and I ask them to keep it on when they are home. I can check how far away they are from home when they are driving, etc. And it has useful when they study abroad, and text communication is tougher. I have an itinerary for DD studying in Eastern Europe this summer. But they are doing multiple side trips and the ability to know what country she is actually in is nice.  And it was especially nice for safety when she did a week of solo travel before meeting up with her program. If she alone in a foreign country, knowing her location in case of emergency seems important.  And when she was in transit to the program, having it was reassuring. Now that she’s with the program, I don’t expect to check much.

Also, my kids can track DH and I and we can track each other, but DH and I are honest with each other about where we are going. I can’t imagine he’d regularly track me. And I see no reason to track him unless I get a “driving in focus” message and I’m looking for an ETA for some reason.  Plus, I don’t care if DH and my kids know where I am.  I usually tell them before I leave the house.

I guess it depends on how you use it. It can be a useful tool you occasionally use for specific reasons.  If you are regularly checking to see if your kid is in class or back in the dorm at midnight, I can see how it could make you nuts. [/quote]

You _think_ you sound reasonable, but in fact you’re just as fretting and worried as the others who track the whereabouts and movements of their adult relatives.

As one example: why is it “nice” to see and know where your adult daughter is in Europe?  [i]Why not wait until she decides she wants to tell you what she did/where she went? [/i] If she’s in distress…. she’ll contact you.

She’s not the star of  Taken III, and you aren’t Liam Neeson.

You have anxiety issues like the rest of them but pretend you don’t because Europe or something.[/quote]

You may have missed the part where my 19 year old daughter spent a week, alone, hiking in Iceland. So yes, in addition to texting  when she made it back to the hostel each evening, we made sure find your phone worked. Because solo hiking in a rural area in a foreign country isn’t risk free, especially for a woman.  And if she was injured, or got lost, or was assaulted, and couldn’t make it back to the hostel, she had no travel buddy, so no one would know.   And yes, if it was midnight in Iceland, and she hadn’t checked in, and her phone wasn’t at the hostel and she wasn’t responding to calls or texts, it would be nice to know where she was, so we could try to get her help.

And heck yes, this solo travel plan made me anxious. I fully cop to that.  Because having something go wrong on campus is different than having something go wrong in the wilderness in a foreign country when no one in that country knows you exist/ would know you were gone.   I think most parents would be anxious under those circumstances.  But she has a good head on her shoulders, has travelled with me extensively and is an adult, so we didn’t discourage this trip or try to stand in her way.  Time to take a deep breath, put a smile on our faces and tell her to have a fantastic time.  But if the technology is there to find her if something did go wrong, why in the world would we not use it?

She has now joined her college group in her host country, and I’m back to seeing little need for Find My Phone. I will hopefully have no need to track her location again.  But give me a break. I’m 50, and if I were traveling solo and hiking in a remote area of a foreign country, I would set up a similar system with my spouse. Because having someone know where you are in case something goes wrong is just smart traveling. And if there is no travel buddy, that someone is us.  And I do want her to travel while she is young and has few responsibilities.  And I’m proud that she  pushed herself to do it alone. But I also expect her to be smart about it and to use the same precautions I would. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics