[yeowMeng]

Honest question: when you didn't want your parents knowing where you were - did you make good choices?

The truth for me; If I had listened to my parents, I would not be as cool. But If I had listened, I would be healthier and getting older - I realize health is happiness.

[GuiA]

Friends and I would frequently sneak out of school during lunch breaks etc. This was during day time in a very large, safe city, (with ample access to public transportation, police officers, etc) and gave our teenage brains the freedom and independence that school so eagerly took away from us.

If my parents had received a push notification the moment I left school, my teenage years would have been utterly miserable, instead of just mostly miserable.

To be honest, I hope my kids do the same when they're that age. I'd absolutely yell at them if I found out because that's how it's supposed to be (and that's how they get better at not being caught), but deep inside I'll be glad they did. It's part of growing up.

That being said, I understand why Americans and their car-centric, gun heavy cities wouldn't agree with this, except maybe in a city like NYC. Which is why I won't be raising my kids in the US. I expect the public infrastructure of where I live to guarantee my kid's safety, and not to have to rely on helicopter parenting to give me peace of mind.

[sangnoir]

> This was during day time in a very large, safe city, (with ample access to public transportation, police officers, etc)

Knowing your kids location isn't something you always need, but when you do, you need it badly. Anything can happen in a 'large, safe city' - such as being run over. Parents knowing where you are when you don't turn up at home at the agreed time is OK with me.

My other question is: are you a parent yet? When you become a parent, your brain gets rewired, you start worrying about things you never worried about before.

[POTUS]

>such as being run over.

Ahhh here's the thing though, in such a case you don't really need their location right that second. There's nothing you can do. They will be taken to a hospital and will be taken care of. Of course you would love to be there for you children the second they are in pain, just like when they fell on their face when they just started walking, but you don't need to. As a parent you have to accept that from when your kids get into their teenage years they will start to become independent, they will have experiences (good or bad) without you and they will be just fine. Or they won't be fine. But you certainly couldn't have prevented them getting run over, getting robbed, abducted or raped by having constant access to their location.

>you start worrying about things you never worried about before.

And you always will worry, trust me. Even when your kids turn 30, you still worry. You have to try to look at this objectively instead of with your feelings, people start being independent and there's nothing you can do about it. You will have to learn to let them go. What's next, do you want body function trackers installed so you can check their heart rate to see if they're still alive or their glucose level to see if they have already had their lunch yet?

[mentalpiracy]

Anecdote about independence nearing 30: I went home to see my mom for Thanksgiving. Ended up staying a week longer than intended after getting the flu, at her suggestion - and I wasn't fit to complain. Few days later and feeling better, instead of a return train she insists on driving me back home (3 hours one way). Like, mom you're awesome and I love you but honestly - NOPE - to the point of a full first-middle-last name dressing down that I was her child goddammit and that was the end of it.

My point to GP here is this: growing into adulthood is a give and take in both directions. You have to give your newly emerging mini-adults enough space to fail, recover, adapt, and learn - and yes, potentially get injured too, as horrible as that mere chance might seem.

If you don't do this, you're interfering with their chance to learn resiliency and self-reliance.

And anecdotally, they'll maybe be less likely to willingly stick around as adults and allow you to indulge your parental worries, once in a while.

[wrsh07]

> To be honest, I hope my kids do the same when they're that age. I'd absolutely yell at them if I found out because that's how it's supposed to be (and that's how they get better at not being caught), but deep inside I'll be glad they did. It's part of growing up.

Uh I think your reward function is broken.

Why punish them if they're being safe and doing something you actually want them to do? Why not communicate with them to figure out the rationalization behind the rule and enforce the right thing?

I'm afraid I don't really understand why inconsistent logic means knowing your kids location is bad.

[dismantlethesun]

> If my parents had received a push notification the moment I left school, my teenage years would have been utterly miserable, instead of just mostly miserable.

Incidentally you can just leave your phone at home, or turn it off.

[NoGravitas]

Do they get a push notification if you turn it off?

My first thought was "leave it in your locker". Though there are separate security concerns with that.

[CoryG89]

They can still get the last location collected before the phone was powered down.

Also, now days a teenager without a phone, might as well be at home.

[hobofan]

Highly depends on what you mean by bad choices. I couldn't name one "bad" decision I made then that has a negative impact on me today.

I did wander and skatboard in a lot of locations that were closed off, or we were not supposed to be, which isn't something your parents would usually want. Doing that I made a lot of great connections with people I wouldn't have met in my otherwise pretty sheltered life.

I think it's more important that such a system could easily destroy a lot of good experiences for the children and less important that it prevents bad ones (which can also be valuable experiences).

[jdmichal]

Honest question: Looking back now, do you feel like those restrictions were overzealous? Or were the restrictions valid, and simply nothing bad happened the times you broke them?

[hobofan]

The places I had in mind while writing this were mostly old abandoned properties that were closed off due to insurance reasons. The owners usually don't mind the activity in itself but once they knew we were there, they had to send us away (again, insurance legalities). They worst thing that could have happened would be that they call the police and the police would report it to our parents.

I don't think my parents ever took note of it, but if they would have known, where I was I guess they would have been a lot more strict about it. And that would be understandable, because who wants to get a call from the police?

So no, nothing "bad" would have happened, just a bit of hassle.

[jdmichal]

Thanks. Just to explain where I'm coming from, I'm trying to mentally tie this discussion to the ones that happen around children being independent in public. This discussion is interesting, because people seem to be framing themselves as if they were the child, where in the other discussions I usually see framing based on being the parent.

[erispoe]

I made some bad choices. But thew ability to make choices is also how I learned to become an adult.

[lmm]

I think it's easy for people who grow up cool to underestimate how important that social experience is, and how damaging it can be to not have. I feel like I've spent much of my social time in my 20s making up for the stuff I didn't learn in high school, and it's a lot harder to go through the experimentation stage when your peer group has already long since passed it.

[FroshKiller]

Yes, and I suspect the same is true a lot of the time for a lot of people, because parents are still people, after all--just as prone to make bad decisions, to have biases and prejudices, to not really know their own children.

[austinjp]

Would you be healthier, happier? How can you know? You may have rejected them and their advice completely and ended up far worse off.