No no no.

My 10 year old child definitely should not have adult-level autonomy.

It is my responsibility as a good parent to train my child by limiting aspects of their life. My children do not have unsupervised access to the internet. They do not have unlimited screen time. They cannot go on social networks and make friends with random people.

It is my job as a parent to not abuse my position as a parent. But I would fail my children greatly if I gave them autonomy over many aspects of their life.

As they prove themselves adept at self-regulation, growing wisdom and good judgement then, and only then, do I grant them more autonomy.

Working with "problematic" kids I came to a few conclusions, all of which I obviously can't know to be correct, but still. The first and foremost was approximately this: One should almost never assume what children can, and can't do. The individual differences seem to be wider than the oceans, and the only way to really know is to teach, trust, and fearless observation.

Most kids will know if you don't trust them, I've seen some 6 years old be "mortally" afraid on an adventure course for kids, as long as their parents were in view. When they could no longer see their parents, their courage grew by the second, and they did their small zipline with the proudest smile one can imagine.

It's quite scary, as a parent, to observe the power we wield. That our fears can directly create fear in our children, even if we try to hide them. These parents were supportive and encouraging, but they had their own fears, fears which they couldn't hide well enough, and the kids knew instantly, and instinctively.

Most parents grant them that autonomy you're talking about way, WAY too slowly. Would you let a 5 year old walk a couple of blocks down to the corner store to buy milk alone? If your answer is no, you're on the "too slow" side of the spectrum in my opinion.

It's pretty easy to gradually ramp up to this and to continue ramping up to more indepdendence at a much faster pace than most parents do.

Imagine you're 5 and you get lost in ikea and get scared to death. Nothing bad will happen because it's ikea, but you'll learn that getting lost is terrifying and you will be a lot less likely to do it again.

Kids need to be safely challenged, or else they won't know how to respond to it when it happens for real. Not having challenges makes kids narcissistic and lowers their empathy. Helicopter parenting is turning our kids into the worse kinds of people.

We've got pretty good systems in place for dealing with kids who are merely lost. Dealing with kids who are abducted is another story, and a tracker definitely helps there. It's a sad reality that we have to worry about that situation still.

Child abduction by a non-parent is exceptionally rare. Each year there are around 200 of them, of which 90% make it home safely. That means that your child's risk of being abducted is about 0.00027%. That's absolutely no basis to justify this awful technology on, and no reason for you to worry as a parent. Not to mention: the abductor could just take your spyware watch off of the kid.

source: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person...

"Of the 647,435 records entered in 2016, the MPC field was utilized in 315,995 (48.8%). When the MPC field was utilized in 2016 entries, 303,237 (96%) were coded as Runaway, 2,107 (.7%) as Abducted by Non-custodial Parent, 303 (.1%) as Abducted by Stranger, and 10,348 (3.3%) as Adult - Federally required entry."

So it looks like one should take the number 303 for "Abducted by Stranger" and perhaps, since only 48.8% of records had this field populated, extrapolate to about 620 cases. Does that sound right, or should it be 200 based on a different reasoning?

Of course, 620 cases is still a pretty small number. I just wanted to understand where your numbers came from. How did you get the figure of 90% making it home safely, and how did you calculate the probability of 0.00027%?

https://www.creditdonkey.com/kidnapping-statistics.html

Then I went to the source to verify that the information was there, but didn't re-run my numbers. I apologise, that was lazy and misleading.

Kids are much much more likely to face abuse from a family member or close friend than they are to be abducted. The sheer rareness of Amber Alerts (not to mention their effectiveness) are a good indicator of that fact.

(My youngest turns 4 tomorrow and we've visited IKEAs and theme parks many times without trackers)

Fixed the grammar, thanks.

No need to keep a permanent record of every movement.

I also remember a few times (both as a young, scared small child, and as an older embarrased teenager) losing track of my parents and having the employees call "Will Mrs. Carrotson please come to the service counter" over the intercom...and I hear similar messages when shopping now as an adult.

That said, I'm a lot more fearful of what could happen if my toddler was found by someone other than me in the center of the clothing rack. To be clear, I have little fear of a criminal harming or absconding with my child, I'm much more afraid of what happens when a well-meaning bystander thinks they need to call CPS to make sure that my kid is taken care of.

I do too; except I remember being so scared of being lost that I kept better track of my parent

kzzzt can the parents of the missing child please report to customer service to pick up their child kzzzt

Somebody else losing their kids in an IKEA is no big deal. To the parent of the lost kid, for the duration the kid is missing, it's probaby a big fucking deal.

I personally see the solution as both potentially useful and egregious as implemented. Selling an unaware parent a product with strawman promises that have hidden agendas are not good for anyone. This type of technology will be legitimately useful how many times and at what cost (monetary and privacy)?

If, as a parent, you have a tool that you depend on to fulfill a certain task - then part of the selling point is that it offloads the given task at some level. So... Are you more diligent about keeping tabs on your child with this? Probably not. Instead, most of us have learning experiences from becoming separated from our parents. I'm not sure the gist is for a parent to say to their child: "you have this watch so leave it on and I will be able to find you" - but regardless of how a parent describes the watch to the child I'm sure that's a portion of the root idea. Does this diminish the precedence of the situation before it happens for the child? Potentially. It also gives unknowing consumers false confidence at varied levels all while being illegitimate about the entirety of the "product".

Don't get me wrong, technology is great for many things. However it's oft over used and diminishes from some life skills. I'm overly scrutinizing of technology use in my children's life and err on the side of as little consumption through technology. Creation using technology is what I support. But far too often parents conflate the two and, simply, have no clue the negative impacts they're supporting.

I still wouldn’t put trackers on my kid. And we were never those parents that leashed our kids. But I don’t judge parents that do.

When we went to things like the state fair, I’d write my cell # on my kids palm and gave them instructions: “if you get lost, ask a woman for help.”

It’s still damn scary losing your kid though.

Now should parents monitor every moment of their children's life? No. But they have a duty and responsibility to supervise their children. Children should be given expanding freedoms as they mature, but this (again) needs to be supervised.

Ownership of children is baked into most language. The language reflects the relationships. My child. My mom. My sister. My dog. I wouldn't call that psychological damage but I would call it programming. I also wouldn't call it either right or wrong, it merely is so, and there are consequences that follow. A good deal of that is stability.

Brave New World is but one example of disrupting these units and relationships.

I intend to do this.

I also plan on giving my kids cell phones when they're old enough (School age, is my current assumption), and will ask them to share their locations with me.

However, To say that parents have no right to infringe on the privacy or personal autonomy of their children is incorrect.

I'm legally responsible for the well being of my kids. I'm legally required to ensure my child is safe at all times. This can involve leaving my child with another guardian, but for various reasons I'm not about to trust the school.

I can be sent to prison for a maximum of 2 years and fined $50,000 if I break these laws. Being absent from my children's lives for 2 years would damage their development.

I can present all this information to my children and ask them to decide if they want me to know where they are at all times. You could make the argument that they're not mature enough to give me that permission.

You can't be there 24/7, so you should prepare them for when you're not. And if they're prepared, you don't have to be there all the time. This is good for them and good for you.

She still wants her mommy to kiss her knee when she scrapes it, my priority is not teaching her to clean and bandage a wound.

That doesn't address the legal concerns.

There's your problem right there. Community is way eroded these days. Kids have activities scheduled every waking minute, or sit inside on networked games, and neighborhoods are revolving doors.

I found one that's not like that but it was hard. It's not the default state of things like it used to be.

[0] I actually have no kids.

That some parents make terrible choices is on them, not on society, IMO.

From TFA, I don't read the German ban as being a prohibition on GPS-based tracking, but rather on secretive audio eavesdropping being the problematic functionality.

The the automobile traffic terrifies me. Having the ability to see when she's safely off the road, or if she's stopped in a place that seems like it could be an accident could be the difference between me choosing to afford her all that freedom or not.

Also, I won't ask her to habitually carry any kind of traffic device without giving here equivalent visibility into my movements.