My wife and I are having a debate about whether we should insist that my son activate the Life360 app on his iphone.
He is a freshman and my wife is concerned about if he is leaving his dorm and attending classes. My son refuses and feels that at 18 years old, he should be trusted enough to not be followed around by this app. Our older daughter happily activated the app on her iphone. My wife feels a level of comfort in being able to check and see that she is in the chemistry building, etc…
I’m siding with my son. I feel that he deserves the trust and is old enough to not be followed around electronically if he feels this app is too intrusive.
My wife wanted to throw this one out to the CC community. She feels this is commonplace.
If your wife is THAT worried about your son, maybe he shouldn’t be going away to college.
If he is going to a residential college…I would not insist he do this. It’s pretty invasive, in my opinion. Your wife needs to trust that your son will do what he is supposed to do.
Really…its none of her business where he is 24/7 as long as he is doing his college work too.
Time to cut the apron strings. What should have happened is a plain talk about min GPA you’d accept before tuition cut off occurs. Unless kiddo has mental or physical health issues, this is way intrusive IMHO.
I will give you another good reason not to do it. It is not accurate. My husband and I use it and the location can “stall” and keep someone in the same spot even when they are long gone. I have been known to be absolutely convinced he was dead on the highway because his spot did not move. Your wife might be led to believe your kid was out eating lunch skipping class when he was actually sitting in the lecture.
No. One of the best things about having your kid away at college is not knowing where they are and what they are doing. I always worried way more about S when he was home and going out late, coming in late, etc. I honesty loved not knowing a thing when he was at college and now that he is out in the working world,
Absolutely not. If there are other worries besides the normal 18 yo going off to college like executive functioning, this app won’t help. At a minimum it smacks if stalking and SMothering - let him go.
Oh - and I am worrier extraordinaire and wouldn’t dream of it. Life happens and I have to trust my daughters to do the right thing.
Just say No. No doubt if we insisted it was on son’s phone, he would leave the phone in his room.
No one should be tracking their college age son everywhere he goes, every minute.
We trusted our kids to get themselves to class and gradaute from college. Our condition of getting them phones and phone plans was they they would have a conversation with us on said phones, preferably weekly. That was as much as we though appropriate. YMMV. I wouldln’t have wanted my parents knowing where I was 24/7, so why would I want to know where my kids are 24/7? If they’re old enough to be away at college, they don’t need 24/7 tracking.