What are yall using to track your kids iphone?

[markstanco 12640]

Reading up on kidguard, life360, etc. Curiius what you are using and if it works for you as advertised. All I care about is location and texting, possibly call logs but not so much.

[fattyflattie 4639]

Wife and I use life360 because her job requires in-home consulting in shady parts of town (joke here). It annoyingly tracks how fast I drive etc as well.  It even tracked my every move on an offshore fishing trip long after I lost service, somehow.  I mean it literally matched my gps plots when I got back, trolling patterns and all.   Cant help with anything more than that, kids aren’t to phone age yet.  It does really dampen the sneaking around to dive bars, which was a favorite past time of mine. 

[RMac5 1551]

My wife has life360 on her phone to keep up with our twins. Amazing how accurate it is, tells you how fast they are driving as well.

 

[George 493]

We use OurPact to set time limits and block apps. Serves as a nice deterrent as simply threatening to lock down the phone generally results in compliance. Haven’t messed with location sharing much...usually just track via find my if I’m curious where kid is at. 

[Jkwellborn 6783]

The phone bill for call logs, find my iPhone for the phone

[dcbc 14565]

Share google maps location.  Must leave phone downstairs to charge at night.  Conversation up front about how the phone belongs to us parents, and we will be checking it often and turning off location or deleting browsing history is grounds for our taking it back.  These are the carrots by which we motivate our boys.  Had a discussion or two with the older boy that I didn't bother his mom with after a perusal of the search history.  Problem hasn't persisted or he's gotten smart enough to selectively delete history, which I doubt, but don't wholly discount.

Did plenty I wasn't supposed to do when I was a kid.  He's a good kid.

Edited December 25, 2019 by dcbc

[EE2B 1565]

He finally found incognito mode in google.

 

[dcbc 14565]

10 minutes ago, EE2B said:

He finally found incognito mode in google.

 

Possibly.  But my experience with his generation is that current technology has always been the norm for them, so much so, that they tend not to deep dive into menus or long hold android icons to reveal such gifts as incognito mode in chrome.  Their GenX parents, on the other hand . . . .

But, yeah, he most likely has outsmarted me.

Edited December 25, 2019 by dcbc

[Hank Scorpio 17731]

Bloodhounds 

[abuelo gringo 323]

Mine are 51 and 49, so I let Google and the CIA do it.

[Armybrat 40942]

My 51 year old tracks me.

[StruggleBus 3922]

14 hours ago, Armybrat said:

My 51 year old tracks me.

Does he get a notification every time you get up to pee at night?

[sachick 1189]

I currently just use the Find My app that comes with iPhones. We’re setup on family sharing so I have to approve all apps that are downloaded. I may switch over to Life360 now that my daughter is starting to drive. For the most part my kids are good kids and haven’t given me reason to be more intrusive in their stuff.

[Landomatic 3813]

On 12/25/2019 at 5:35 PM, dcbc said:

Share google maps location.  Must leave phone downstairs to charge at night.  Conversation up front about how the phone belongs to us parents, and we will be checking it often and turning off location or deleting browsing history is grounds for our taking it back.  These are the carrots by which we motivate our boys.  Had a discussion or two with the older boy that I didn't bother his mom with after a perusal of the search history.  Problem hasn't persisted or he's gotten smart enough to selectively delete history, which I doubt, but don't wholly discount.

Did plenty I wasn't supposed to do when I was a kid.  He's a good kid.

Mostly all of this for us.  Only we don’t track her with any of it.  Have had many ongoing conversations that started when she first got a phone that have basically been based on, “don’t give us a reason to put a tracker on your phone and we won’t.”  And so far, to our knowledge, she hasn’t.  She’s overall a pretty good kid (much better than I ever was).

But, all that aside, the best thing we ever did as parents with regard to the phone (maybe the best parenting move we’ve ever  made) has been “phone never goes in your room EVER.”  Nothing good can come from it.  She can be on it all she wants, just needs to be out where she’s not in the privacy of her room.  Phone lives in the kitchen.  She gets on it in the kitchen or in the family room.  It’s no different than having a boyfriend over.  We could literally come up with zero reason she would need it in her room.  And that’s been the norm for her in our house since pretty much day 1.  Stroke of genius on our part.

It’s almost crazy how simple and basic parenting 101 it has been.  When I hear parents who are struggling with their teens and their phone and I hear about how the kid stays up all night doing shit on the phone they shouldn’t be doing, I just laugh and shake my head.  Best advice I can give any parent with regard to phones.

[luke duke 6420]

Does he get a notification every time you get up to pee at night?

His son would never age at any sleep.

[tbone_ 14215]

Bark for our 13yo. She hates it. Too bad.

[Sandman 3420]

We have Life360. My wife set it up so she'd get an alert whenever the kids entered or left a specific zone, be it work, school, their mother's house or home. Had to turn it off because the dogs would hear the alert and start freaking out because they thought one of the kids had arrived at the house, only to be let down because she'd actually gone to her mother's instead. 

[markstanco 12640]

Bark for our 13yo. She hates it. Too bad.

"Hey sweetheart, if you dont like it, you can give me back your phone and you wont have that pesky tracking device"

[tbone_ 14215]

Yep. Zactly.

 

[StruggleBus 3922]

1 hour ago, markstanco said:

4 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Bark for our 13yo. She hates it. Too bad.

"Hey sweetheart, if you dont like it, you can give me back the phone I let you borrow and you wont have that pesky tracking device"

Fify 

[markstanco 12640]

Fify 

My kiddo knows it's my phone. But yes, good point.

[tbone_ 14215]

That too

[Updawg 2295]

Or they just get a burner phone and leave the tracking phone in a safe zone. Kids aren't dumb

[Prepuce of Doom 21112]

2 hours ago, Updawg said:

Or they just get a burner phone and leave the tracking phone in a safe zone. Kids aren't dumb

Text periodic requests for an immediate photo of where they are. 

[Iceman 2730]

On 12/28/2019 at 3:00 PM, Landomatic said:

Mostly all of this for us.  Only we don’t track her with any of it.  Have had many ongoing conversations that started when she first got a phone that have basically been based on, “don’t give us a reason to put a tracker on your phone and we won’t.”  And so far, to our knowledge, she hasn’t.  She’s overall a pretty good kid (much better than I ever was).

But, all that aside, the best thing we ever did as parents with regard to the phone (maybe the best parenting move we’ve ever  made) has been “phone never goes in your room EVER.”  Nothing good can come from it.  She can be on it all she wants, just needs to be out where she’s not in the privacy of her room.  Phone lives in the kitchen.  She gets on it in the kitchen or in the family room.  It’s no different than having a boyfriend over.  We could literally come up with zero reason she would need it in her room.  And that’s been the norm for her in our house since pretty much day 1.  Stroke of genius on our part.

It’s almost crazy how simple and basic parenting 101 it has been.  When I hear parents who are struggling with their teens and their phone and I hear about how the kid stays up all night doing shit on the phone they shouldn’t be doing, I just laugh and shake my head.  Best advice I can give any parent with regard to phones.

For NYE, we went to a party with 4 other couples.  Two of the moms had their phones out constantly watching where their high school kids were.  I kept my yapper shut, which is a borderline miracle; but holy furk that just felt so unhealthy and unproductive from a parenting standpoint, not to mention the constant interruption of the games/ conversations we were having.  I know their kids are good kids, not having been in trouble in the past and that they treat people with respect.  I don't get the need for constant surveillance.

I'm sure we did it wrong but with our kids, when they got their phones- we told them we were not going to constantly watch over them, but we had to always have the passwords and they had to produce the phone immediately if we wanted to look at it, as we were footing the bill. There was no expectation of privacy. I think from about 7th grade through high school we checked 2-3 times on each kid.  It was never a big deal.

You either trust your kids, or you don't.  That sends a galactically important message to them.

[AnTiM 1675]

Judging by what I have seen on the news, most kids already know how to bypass pretty much any tracking system.

[Your Mom 4860]

I’m another non-tracker dad. I threaten sometimes but have only checked it a couple of times in the last 3 years.  My parents never swiped the nudie mags from under the mattress when I was a kid. They never listened in on my phone calls.  And I turned out to be an educated, productive, upstanding poster on this fine website... wait...  

My kids get good grades, have respectable friends, and get good reports from teachers. They’re doing everything I ask of them. My older one is highly dedicated to the sport he competes in and gets up in time for 6:30am practices for it 6 days week year round. He usually puts himself to bed long before i would have told him to.  He’s on the right path and he has earned some privacy. If he’s into a little mischief online now and then or has a colorful browser history it’s no worse than what I got away with as a teenager. 

 

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3868]

On 1/4/2020 at 12:31 AM, Updawg said:

Or they just get a burner phone and leave the tracking phone in a safe zone. Kids aren't dumb

My kids just recently told me this is what their friends whose parent is a major cybersecurity expert do mostly for their real social media accounts and not for the dummy ones set up for that parent to track.

Edited January 23, 2020 by ShaggyBevo RIP

[crash_davis 23122]

I think some parents forget what they and their friends were like when they were kids. Whenever I want to go apeshit on my kids, I take a minute to remember all the shit that we did and then I'm not so angry. At least they are not dead, which we should've been based on the immense number of stupid shit that we did.

And it's good sometimes for kids to rebel against authority. Do you want Ferris or Cameron as a kid?

[tbone_ 14215]

Ferris for sure.

The difference is the hyper sensitivity to punishing mistakes and the fact that dumb shit you do can stick with you forever.

To wit, the 13 yo son of a friend of mine who is now facing child porn charges because another 13 yo girl sent him tit pics. True story. That wasn’t a thing for us as kids.