Making a Child Locating System 1092
celtic_hackr writes "Well, I never thought I'd be an advocate for placing GPS devices on people. However, since it took less than three days for my local school district to misplace my daughter, I have decided that something needs to be done. By the school district's own admission it has a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. Fortunately, my daughter was located, with no thanks to the local school district. Therefore, I would like input on a way to be able to keep track of my child. I know there are personal tracking devices out there. I have nothing against these systems. But I want more than this. My specification are: 1) a small unobtrusive device I can place on my daughter, 2) an application to pull up on any computer, a map with a dot indicating the real-time position of my child, 3) a handheld device with the equivalent information, 4) [optional] a secure web application/plug-in I can install on my own domain allowing me to track her from anyplace in the world, 5) a means of turning it all off, 6) a Linux based solution of the above. I believe all the pieces for making such a system are out there. Has anyone built anything like this? Is there an open source solution? How would I go about building my own? Has anyone hacked any of these personal trackers before, to serve their own purposes? How does a tinfoil hat wearer engineer such a device to make sure Big-Brother isn't watching too? Can these devices be locked down so only certain devices can pick up the GPS location of an individual locator? What other recommendations do you have?"
Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said- verizon has an application for cell phones that lets you track your children- it's on get it now. I'm sure other carriers have something similar.
Cell phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy your daughter a cellphone and have her use Google Latitude? Set up speed dial to call you, your wife, etc.? Just kicking ideas around...
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh-boy, cue debates on how much surveillance for your child is really necessary.
I'd say just let him be a parent and decide what's necessary. He knows his daughter better than we all do.
Placing children on the wrong bus? (Score:5, Insightful)
I say make them fix the problem instead of forcing you to shell out money to cover it up for them.
Drive her (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just drive her to and from school yourself? That would provide additional time with your daughter as well.
You wouldn't have to trust the school to not lose her on the bus system
You don't need a subcutaneous lo-jack.
GPS + SMS. (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably don't want it continually transmitting. Easiest way would be to it respond to a 'ping'. http://www.mightygps.com/smsgps.htm [mightygps.com] looks to fit the bill perfectly. There are probably cheaper Chinese clones. [chinavasion.com]
Get it a SIM card and you'll be able to track her anywhere there's AT&T Signal (so you're equally fucked anyway). Google Maps API kicks ass. It's not hard to write some code to take that SMS and turn it into a dot on a map.
-
However I agree with the other posters. Your kid's fine. How many kids have they PERMANENTLY lost? So the kid gets on the wrong bus. Teach your daughter English and she should be able to find out where she is at any time.
Reminds me of the mother who caught a ton of flack for letting her young son find his own way home (he asked to) from a big store in NYC.
The people that want to rape and molest your daughter statistically are yourself or one of your brothers(-in-law)
Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Teach them their phone number and give them a bracelet or something with their address on it.
You should also probably stop watching television. Give up on the news especially. It's just scare mongering crap.
Oh and watch Finding Nemo. It's got some lesson in there about being an overprotective parent.
You're solving the wrong problem (Score:5, Insightful)
However, since it took less than three days for my local school district to misplace my daughter, I have decided that something needs to be done. By the school district's own admission it is a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. Fortunately, my daughter was located, with no thanks to the local school district.
The problem isn't that you don't have a tracking device for your daughter. The problem is that your local school district isn't doing its job correctly and regularly putting kids on the wrong bus. Instead of posting on Slashdot for a technical solution, a far better solution would be a call to your local news organizations about how the school district is getting kids lost on their bus system and admits to doing that regularly. Raise a stink at school board meetings, PTA meetings, and so forth. Get other parents involved. You're talking about a school district's incompetence endangering not only your own child but all the children in the district.
Pretend, for instance, that you get a perfect tracking device for your daughter. That sorta solves your problem, in that you can go and pick up your daughter from wherever she was left, but doesn't solve your neighbor's problem, and doesn't solve the problem of what happens to your daughter when she's standing around in a strange neighborhood.
Re:Cell phone (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems more beneficial to a child to be able to learn how to read street signs and give directions to themselves, instead of relying on technology and parents to find them.
This is why Home Schooling is better (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not entirely facetious. If the school can't even pay enough attention to your child to make sure that she gets on the correct bus, what makes you think they are paying enough attention to make sure that she is learning anything?
Wrong Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't believe in this widespread approach of dealing only with the symptoms of problems. I might consider it (though wouldn't like it one bit) if it were a material object, but the fact that this is a human being should be all the more reason to address the actual problem. The irresponsibility of the school system and the fact that it has taken its obligations lightly is the actual core problem here. A tracking device only provides an incentive for letting them off the hook when they should have to answer for their failures. Yes, that would be much harder to arrange and would probably require political pressure from other like-minded parents, but it would be so much more worthwhile in the end.
It's amazing really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
you're assuming the guy in the article is honestly trying to track his daughter. one of the clients i work for is a bettered womens advocacy group and shelter. they have horror stories all the time of guys who do the same thing to their wives, ex wives girlfriends etc. its easy enough to rig a cellphone thats GPS enabled to create a tracking device and discreet survailence tool. if you ask me, the whole thing is shady. perhaps its my paranoia light flashing because of my client, i can understand your concern, but 10s of thousands, nay 10s of millions of kids make it thought the school system every year without their parents needing to freak out like that.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't mean to be a flame, because as a fellow parent (of toddlers, no less) I understand that it can be an extremely stressful and fear-inducing thing to lose track of your child. But I agree with the parent: get some perspective on things by waiting for a bit before subjecting your daughter to Big-Brother-like monitoring.
Not only do I think you are overreacting, you are sending the wrong message to your school-age daughter. She doesn't need 24-7 tracking, she needs lessons in dealing with unexpected situations. Instead of jumping directly to an electronic device, teach her what to do if she gets lost... the same strategy that's been used successfully by parents for many, many years: find a "safe" adult (police officer, female adult with kids) and tell them that she's lost. If she's old enough to attend school, she's old enough to learn her phone number and address.
Besides, if she's anything like most kids, anything you "attach" to her (short of a steel shackle) she is going to remove and leave behind or lose. :-)
Again, I understand your reaction (on one level) but I think you're overreacting.
Re:Drive her (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope I broke the needle on your sarcasm meter.
Re:Drive her (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your kid will hate you for this should you ever try to do it. And I wouldn't be surprised if you had to do a lot of explaining to child welfare agencies.
Re:You're solving the wrong problem (Score:3, Insightful)
My point (which a lot of other posters are making) is that OP's biggest mistake is thinking that the correct thing to do here is come up with a technical solution to figuring out where his daughter is. It's one of those instances where the engineer's "find a technical solution" instincts are not what's really needed: what's really needed is working the levers of politics to make the school district do their friggin' jobs.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to make light of that situation, but I picked up the phrase "fear fuels the economy" from somewhere and if you look around, it does. Watch the news? How many times are they telling you about something dangerous or about how so-and-so is horrible and bad for you. For every fear, there's a market to be sold to. Yes, bad things happen, but in terms of history, we are living in one of the most safest times ever.
Don't try for a workaround. Try for a solution (Score:4, Insightful)
You're like someone installing a firewall when an unpatched service allows arbitrary connections, instead of patching the service.
Your school places your daughter on the wrong bus, that's the problem. Not that you can't track her. Solve the underlying problem instead. Either storm the principal's office and fire up a storm, get the PTA (if existant) to do something about the problem (since it's a "recurring problem" you're certainly not the only parent in that situation, get in touch with the other parents) and if everything fails, get another school to teach your kids (which is probably a sensible idea anyway, if they're not able to get your daughter in the right bus and didn't manage to teach her to choose the right one, it's likely they don't manage to teach her anything else either).
You're looking for the solution for the wrong problem. The problem isn't that you can't find your daughter. The problem is that she isn't where she should be in the first place. Don't cure the symptom, cure the sickness!
Educate her (Score:5, Insightful)
This happened to me when I was a kid. The school thought that I had signed up for Hockey, but hadn't. They sent me across town to hockey practice.
Instead of freaking out, I got there and started playing hockey. Then I called my mom and told her to come and pick me up.
Why? Because I didn't have psychotic over-reacting parents. I was smart enough to go "there is a problem here, I should fix it."
And I did.
Teach your daughter this same thing. Make her memorize your phone number.
escape (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Perhaps she was trying to get away from you.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
He knows his daughter better than we all do.
He also knows his school district better than we do. These decisions are never made in a vacuum.
I would question pursuing the Linux or Open Source solution if others do the job better. It's the safety of your kid that matters here - not your own political correctness.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because if one bad thing happens to one of seven billion people anywhere in the world, then it makes perfect sense to focus all your energies on making sure it doesn't happen to you.
More and more proof that the human brain just wasn't meant to comprehend societies as large as ours. The in-built statistical heuristics break down completely and start recommending the most irrational things.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
How about teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that you and many other people are missing the real problem. Elementary school children can be as young as four at the start of kindergarten. Elementary schools are just too big these days!.
One elementary school in my town has several thousand students. That is just insane.
Schools should start small and grow in size. The elementary school should be in your neighborhood. The idea of shipping kindergarten kids like UPS packages to child warehouses is the problem.
Of course to build more but smaller schools costs money.....
How old is this child? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are we talking about a five year old? Eight? Ten? Fifteen?
The range of options varies with age. None of which involve tracking your child to a three-foot radius, btw.
By age 8, your kid should know which bus they're supposed to be on. (Probably earlier, but for the sake of argument.)
If younger, then you should be addressing it with the school.
Please don't think of the children. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember folks, it's been said over and over and over again... First it will be tracking criminals, then it will be tracking children for their safety, then it will be tracking the general populous because they grew up with it.
With technology come vigilance on how it's used and how it could *potentially* be used.
Humanity, sliding down that slippery slope since 1984.
Google Latitude (Score:4, Insightful)
Prepaid cellphone with long standby life in the pocket of her backpack or book bag.Recharge the battery a couple nights a week.Manage the lattitude account yourself to ensure only appropriate monitoring.
Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just think of when your kid gets old enough to realize you're tracking her every move. Do you think that's going to go over well with her? What if you want to keep it on her to make sure she's not going to any "unacceptable" parties? There's a BIG consequence in doing something like this, in the parent/child relationship.
I'd go w/everyone else and say "Get her a cell phone". There are plenty out there for kids that lock down so they can't call foreign countries and text 1000s of times to her friends. Simple. If she's in trouble or lost, she can call you. No need to go CIA on her.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in kindergarden, they went with the low-tech system. Every kid had a name tag that they had to wear all day. It had their name, grade, teacher, and bus number. Teachers aids were by the buses and would verify the bus number on the tag matched the bus. If they kid got on the wrong bus, they were turned away and walked to the right one.
How much does it cost for a 3x5 index card and a safety pin? A whole lot less than an electronic tracking system, and recurring cell bills for your kid.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
That's great for trips to Disneyworld etc (though I don't put their name), not what you'd want to do everyday for school. I'm assuming the child is a kindergartner; I'd be hesitant to geo-tag her unless the wrong bus thing happens again. A simple name tag on her lunchbox/backpack might be enough; the driver could then call you.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats interesting. I dont think that human heuristics beak down. We simply have not learaned to live in a world of so much information and technology yet. And the funny thing is, no mater how hard we try, we never will be, so, we keep on trying...
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid, we had an even simpler and even lower technology plan, which was, never go anywhere without "Matt" and "Dawn".
If your bus stop has only one kid whom uses it, then move out of the retirement village.
Another ultra low tech strategy that worked well at various times in my youth, and currently works well for me as a parent, is "buy a house two blocks from school". It is of course uphill both ways in the snow, but, at least its a short walk.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
Not paranoid enough. Your index card system relies on teachers, teachers aides, drivers -- the original poster wants to rely on nothing but technology.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, is it really that crazy of an idea for the kid to carry a cell phone (with or without GPS)? Nowhere in the post does it say how old the child is. I think some of the people jumping on this "overprotective parent" bandwagon are thinking this kid is some 12-13 year old kid. They might change their tune if (as the parent post points out) it's a 4 yr old girl/boy.
Wow. Just... wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
As a parent with a mentally disabled child, you are talking about a situation that is more challenging and complex than the situation the rest of us are discussing. Apples and oranges.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:'Insightful' my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my god! Put on the wrong bus. The horror. As if the driver, when he/she got to the end of the route, wouldn't have noticed "hey, I've made all my stops and there is STILL a child on the bus. Perhaps I should do something about it".
I had a similar bus mishap when I was in kindergarten, and that's exactly what happened. I was waiting and waiting for my stop. Eventually the bus driver asked me where I was supposed to be and handled the issue. She got me back to where I was supposed to be let off. No GPS tracking necessary. Instead, my mom retold me what I needed to do to make sure I was on the right bus. After being a bit scared that time, I learned rather quickly and it never happened again.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Only one of the two solves the original problem; the technology-based tracking system is useless in ensuring the kid gets on the right bus, while the index card system should generally work.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Here's an idea.
Next time you go to the mall with the family, teach your daughter to talk to strangers.
What? No way! Strangers are BAD. BAD EVIL people who want to randomly inject her with drugs so she'll become an addict and a regular client.
Next time you go to the mall with the family, teach your daughter to talk to the right strangers. Mall clerks at security booths. Other parents. Security guards. Bus drivers. If you can teach your daughter to become street smart, she will be able to take care of herself when you're not around. She'll be safe even if you are unable to access your handheld, or the internet is down, or the power goes out...
Helicopter parents (Score:2, Insightful)
There comes a time in everybody's life where we have to recognize that we cannot (nor should we) control every aspect of our child's life. Every time a child leaves the care of his/her parent, both are presented with opportunity. The child receives an opportunity to navigate a situation independently, learning to evaluate and rely upon their own abilities. The parent receives an opportunity to begin that process of "letting go", in addition to developing faith in the child's ability to care for himself/herself.
While I agree that it is painfully horrifying to confront the "what could happen" scenarios, subjecting a child to a constant police state environment will cause numerous forms of blow-back, both for the child and the parent.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear hear!!
Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
When I was a kid, I roamed all over the neighborhood, and ones near us. When really young, I had to call home on a neighbor's phone every couple hours or so to check in. If both parents were working, I called Mom at work.
Geez..with all these new 'needs' for tracking kids, and apparent law changes or whatever, I imagine my parents and most of my peers parents would be sued by the state these days for child negligence for how we were raised.
And let's not forget we as kids weren't drugged by our parents like they are today. Amazing we learned in school and survived at all, truly.
Re:Placing children on the wrong bus? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just what you ask for yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
You're upset that your daughter was lost, and everybody understands that. But you must consider what it means to have what you ask for become a trend, and to have the infrastructure built to make it easy to do.
Perhaps when your child is 6 nobody will claim she has any rights, and you are free to lojack her. But then we will have to ask the question, when does she gain some dignity and rights, at what age does it become a bad idea for you to do this? At what age should it actually be illegal for you to do this? We have not had to ask that question until you do it.
Location services all beg the question of what to do when one person is in power over another and can demand location data. You can over your young child, and more debatably over your older child. Can employers ask it of employees? On their breaks? Can husbands ask it of wives? Not demand it, you understand, but ask, as in, "Honey, what's wrong with me knowing where you are? Think how handy it would be. Don't you trust me? Don't you love me?"
This is the world you will help build. But it gets worse. You see, there will be flaws in the system. Not just hackable security issues, but mistakes. After a custody battle, somebody will forget to turn off the non-custodial parent's access to the location data on the child. This will assist in many kidnappings. (As you may not know, the vast, vast, vast majority of kidnappings are by relatives. The random stranger that everybody is afraid of barely exists.) Perhaps not in your case, but in many people's in this world you are creating.
A better idea? Teach your child, if lost, to approach a suitable adult, and hand them a card or show them her bracelet, which has your cell phone numbers on it. We tell children not to talk to strangers, but we forget to mention that means not to talk to strangers who approach *you*. It is perfectly fine to talk to strangers the child selects for help, more than fine, it's the right thing for her to do. Or sew the number in the lining of her coat, or shoes, or lunchbox or whatever. If you really think it's bad for her to approach strangers, teach her to identify police, teachers, people in uniform etc, but tell her that if she can't find one of those to approach any nicely dressed person.
She'll be fine.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. I knew my address AND my phone number from kindergarten, it's no harder than memorizing your own birthday.
Teaching the (normal non-disabled) kid how to deal with REALITY is protecting them. Failing to teach them to memorize their phone number and address and how to deal with getting lost and just slapping a GPS on them is failing as a parent.
Re:Blackberry and Latitude (Score:4, Insightful)
I discourage her from asking strangers on the street
Unrealistic threat assessment. The odds of a random person she approaches being evil are almost infinitely lower than the odds of someone whom approaches her being evil. Or, given the ratio of male to female predators, just tell her to ask a female, any female.
she's afraid of the police
Sadly, a realistic threat assessment for people of any age, not just kids.
compromised on convenience store attendants. It wasn't a perfect solution
Why? I think that's perfect. The odds of a random store clerk being evil are very low. In any transaction of evil, everyone knows she's on the surveillance camera, so thats kind of a downer for that plan. Most service clerks would love to help, hoping you'll say or write something nice to the boss or the newspapers. Its easy for you to find the store, gas stations are not exactly hidden from the street, and you've probably been there before so you know exactly where it is. Short of a donut store or a police station, I can't think of a more likely place to find a cop, hopefully a good one. Tell the kid, walk in the store, stand in front of the camera, and don't leave until you arrive. Away from the unfamiliar street means low odds of car accident. Most convenience stores are basically the same around the world, so no matter how lost she is, she'll be in semi-familiar surroundings, reducing panic and the bad decisions resulting in panic. Very hard to do better....
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, it is bald-faced lie. Bald is a synonym of bare.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
Much higher birth rates.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
Child predators are almost a myth, and certainly not a meaninful risk. Children are abducted by relatives, especially the losers in custody battles. Being abducted by a stranger is about as likely as being struck by lighting (unless you live in Florida, then lightning is the bigger risk).
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:1, Insightful)
You are incorrect: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_the_correct_term_'bold_face_lie'_or_'bald_faced_lie'_or_another_variation [answers.com]
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious why his daughter wouldn't have known she was on the wrong bus, and simply been driven back to the school where an administrator could call her parents. Once she knew she was "lost", she should have explained to the bus driver, who could then call into the school. The school should then call the parent(s) to let them know when they can pick her up from the campus.
I'm not seeing why this should be a big deal unless both his daughter and the administrators needs special assistance.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
You are absurd!
Kids, as well as teens and adults, NEED privacy. They also need to be protected, but that doesn't obviate the need for privacy.
The problem is how to respect their need for privacy while sufficiently protecting them in an environment that's unconscionably dangerous. The best solution would be to make the environment safer, but that's a bit difficult for one individual to do. Work toward, yes, but be reasonable about what you expect.
So you need to take reasonable measures to protect your children while still respecting their privacy. For someone under 12 a locator seems a quite reasonable method. It's not perfect, and won't defend against malice, but it's reasonable. Something like a remotely readable GPS system that's accessible by phone. I suspect that such things are available, but I'm not certain. WiFi trackers are used for tracking animals, and some are pretty small, but many locations are without live WiFi networks accessible to random passers-by. So a cell phone connection seems the right answer. This probably means that there isn't an open source solution, since the number of open source cell phones is miniscule. But it also means that there is probably a extant solution...if you look in the right place.
Re:congratulations. you're a fear-addled fool (Score:3, Insightful)
>uh... how about no? how about you are irrational and fear addled?
The irrational and fear addled response to your child getting on the wrong bus is to think that GPS tracking has to get involved instead of a little common sense parenting.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:5, Insightful)
A child is about a 1,000 times more likely to be killed by drowning in a neighbor's pool than abducted by a total stranger. 10,000 times more likely to be seriously injured or even killed playing school sports. And 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning.
Parents need to stop watching CSI and Criminal Minds and Law & Order.
Re:You're solving the wrong problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally the problem solves itself within the first couple days. This isn't a vast conspiracy of incompetence, it's a kink that gets worked out at the start of every new kindergarten class.
Getting on the wrong bus also makes the kid more aware of what bus he/she needs to be on to get home (did for me, i got on the wrong bus my first day in kindergarten... who wouldn't want to be on bus #1??)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:1, Insightful)
"Invented" really is a good word for it.
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, yelling might be "appropriate," but it's very unlikely to actually help the situation at all.
However you justify it, yelling at some random school employee that answers the phone is about as useful as yelling at the guy busing tables because your food is cold. Sure, he'll probably do something to try to help (talk to the waitress/manager/whatever), but you're still a douche.
And yes, before you ask, if your kid is missing and you latch on to the first person you find and start yelling at them, you're a douche. If your kid is missing, yes, emotions are going to be running high, but that seems like the most important time imaginable to remain level-headed and rational to try to locate and get them back safely as quickly as possible, no?
--Jeremy
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:3, Insightful)
This story seems to imply that the "man in a white van" was some pedophile or serial killer or whatever.
But there is a 99% or more chance that in fact he was the kid's father, or uncle or something, and that this incident was related to some family drama about child custody or the like.
Fear, fear and more fear (Score:4, Insightful)
I thank God I grew up before cell phones and this 24/7 parental obsession. My son has several friends in those last few years of parental control and it's driving me nutz. We can't even get together and watch a movie uninterrupted.
One friend, his parents will call to tell him they're leaving his dinner in the fridge. Then call to tell him that the potatoes were over cooked, then call again to ask about next weeks soccer game. And it's literally every 10-20 minutes. If he doesn't answer, they call, call again and again... We'll stop the movie while he takes the call only to find out it's his mom wanting to tell him that next Saturday he has to go to Grandmas or something just as meaningless. If he complains "I'm in the middle of a movie!" She'll bark back "Too bad!, that's why we pay for unlimited cell usage, blah, blah, blah... so we can get a hold of you when we have too. Emphasis on "when we have too" is mine as it's apparently very subjective.
It's absurd. And, yes, I'm a father.
If I can't go a night not knowing where my son is, I didn't do my job as a parent. The world is not that scary nor dangerous. My son has a cell and knows how and when to dial 911 if he needs too. And I can certainly go a night not following a red dot on some tracking web page. I am sorry sir, but your fear is way over the top. Of course, as with anything else, that's just my opinion. Is is however a fear that you do share with a lot of other parents. Fear of what I wouldn't know as I don't share it.
Even in this case of a younger female home late from elementary school because she got on the wrong bus. I still don't see the need for this level of panic or overreaction. But, that's just me. I suspect my son appreciates the levelheadedness of the home he grows up in. I expect his friends do as it's here they all congregate.
-[d]-
You found the kid, yes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Smother (Score:2, Insightful)
As a parent I'd rather trust my children and they'd rather have me trust them.
That's right blame everyone else... (Score:1, Insightful)
"However, since it took less than three days for my local school district to misplace my daughter, I have decided that something needs to be done. By the school district's own admission it is a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. "
Yeah... I can already tell you're going to be one of those asshole parents.
Grow the hell up. Put a dollar in change in your child's hands and a piece of paper with important phone numbers to reach you, it's what my parents did for me and it worked just fine. Problem solved and I didn't even need a cell phone.
Helicopter Parent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy Crap! Calm down (Score:4, Insightful)
> They might change their tune if (as the parent post points out) it's a 4 yr old girl/boy.
My four year old boy got separated from us in the local supermarket. Due to some strange quirk of the mind (who can fathom the mind of a four year old boy?) he decided we must have left without him, rather than, say, we were in the next aisle (which we were). So he headed out of the main doors and wandered around for a bit looking for us. When he was picked up by the local Community Support Officers, despite being in a state of some distress, he was able to tell them his parents names and where he had been when we got separated, so that they could help him find us. Which they did.
Children, even small, wooly-headed children, are much more capable than they are often given credit for. Teaching your child how to behave in an unexpected situation and crediting them with the intelligence and capability to look after themselves is the best way to ensure they make it through life safely. It's not the only way, but its far and away the most effective.