Thank you all for your thoughts. I knew, of course, that some of you would say this was helicopter parenting, but that’s not what I was asking. I really was asking for suggestions on specific apps. I appreciate the Waze suggestion. I’ve used it myself but was unaware that you could invite people to track you. I’ve asked my D if she would download it and invite me to track her for the trip home, and then she could “uninvite” me when she arrived.
Just to repeat, I do not track my D’s whereabouts in general.
I use flight trackers for my kids ’ flights so I can’t play Superior Parent here :-). I think the biggest thing is to tell the kid - it’s no rush. Better you take your time and arrive safely.
"They’re almost at the gate. Time for me to call the gate house to let them in.
Yikes! Traffic is horrible. The rest of the family should eat now and we can warm up leftovers when they get here. (As opposed to holding dinner for 10 more minutes.)
Oh, good. They're still on the freeway. I'll call and ask them to pick up a gallon of milk when they pass the corner store."
I would not like it if my spouse could track where my car was at all times. Sometimes I like to just take a different route to work for a change of pace. Or stop off at a coffee shop or store. Or go get my nails done. I wouldn’t like it if he could see where I was and then say - oh I see you are near x, please pick up the milk. If he wanted to call me and ask me to pick up milk, that’s different. But that’s just me.
Flight tracker is fun to watch. I don’t use it because I’m anxious or in a panic, I just think it’s fun to look at!
OP, the other thing I would suggest is when you know your D has left, find a task to do to help the time fly by so you’re not worrying. Go to the gym. Pop in a movie or go to the movie. Clean the bedrooms! Doing something active helps the time go by faster. Before you know it, she’ll be there.
I wish I had known about the tracker when my D drove to her internship last summer, a 7 hour drive. She called from time to time but the drive between the last call on the road and the arrival was much longer than I expected. I rightly assumed she was ok just taking longer to get to the destination in the backroad but I was worried for the last hour or two.
Pizzagirl, it’s not just you. I don’t want to be tracked, because sometimes I do stop for a sausage biscuit on the way to work, one of my few guilty pleasures.
I wouldn’t want to be tracked either and I’d silently judge people who track their spouses. It’s completely a knee jerk reaction to working in domestic violence for a while. If it works for you, go for it.
And I get the accidents. I almost lost my dad to a car crash and I myself flipped and totaled my car in an ice storm while driving back to college my sophomore year. But honestly as long as you’re not in an extremely rural area, someone is going to see trouble way before you do and call for help unless you’re watching them constantly ( in which case what if they’re just stuck in traffic?). For every other scenario I can think of, I’d think texting or calling the passenger would be just as if not more effective.
Even now as a 50 yo woman - when I travel internationally, when I get to my hotel on the other end I text or email my spouse and business partner to say I’ve arrived safely in Timbuktu.
My S is doing a 3 hour drive on Wed night and I expect (in the sense of “what I think will happen,” not in the sense of “I am issuing a marching order”) that he’ll call when he is about to get on the road, and maybe call again when he is at some landmark, say, a half hour away. It would probably make me worry MORE if I saw real-life tracking of his car – if I saw it stopped, for example, I might imagine that he was upside down in a ditch when maybe he’s just stopped in traffic or construction, or pulled over to the side of the road for an innocuous reason.
When my D flew back and forth to school, she did text us when she landed at her other location and when she arrived back on campus. That felt reasonable.
I have not tracked my son when he and his GF have driven places on breaks like Florida,Missouri or New York. I figure since he is not alone he should be ok. If they are driving at night I ask that he text me when they get to their location.
My husband has suggested that I could use WAZE to track him so I would know when he was stuck in traffic on the way home from work. Atlanta traffic is horrible and it’s hard to time dinner when depending on traffic it can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours for him to get home. So far I haven’t done it but I am thinking about it.
“Even now as a 50 yo woman - when I travel internationally, when I get to my hotel on the other end I text or email my spouse and business partner to say I’ve arrived safely in Timbuktu.”
My husband does that. He also texts me where he parked the car in the parking lot at the airport just in case anything happens.
I use waze but I don’t have one of those little icons (well if I do I forget!) and dunno if family members do or not.
DH usually texts me at some point when he arrives in a far away place. Not always right away. The thing I ask of him is to have some ID on him when he runs. He says he keeps it in his phone case. I hope so.I’ve known of 3 sitution where someone was injured. killed or otherwise died while running and they had no ID on them. That shouldnt happen. True in a gym too , though these dasy most folks have thier phone with them and it has some ID of some sort.
I use flight tracker so I know if flight is on time or delayed so I can know when to leave for the airport, not because I’m worried about something happening to the plane.
I admit to texting S ( had another kid in car) when they drove straight through to south Florida from Maine in middle of February and didn’t leave Maine until after 6pm on last day of midterms, so we’re driving on very little sleep. They were fine, but I was up all night. I took a sleeping pill for their return trip a week later.
I can see using a tracker if the child were alone on an eight hour drive but three hours with a friend? I guess, if you knew your daughter were going on a weekend trip, driving three hours with a few friends, would you ask to track her road trip then? If not, what’s the difference? I would ask the child to text when she leaves, when she arrives at some milestone town and to call if she gets into trouble. If traffic is bad, and the trip stretches into its fourth hour, the friend can text you. If the traffic is light, they can surprise you with an early arrival.
One time I was on an airplane flying out of Singapore back in the 80a when they put on the main screen our flight progress. We saw the little plane move, and then circle around. Then circle around again. And again and again and again. It was NOT reassuring to see this without any commentary or explanation. After some time, the captain came on and explained the situation. They turned off the screen as we circled for the next hour and landed. Sometimes, it’s better not to see.
I know if I asked my child (in person) if I could track her three hour drive, my child would give me a weird look, tell me not to worry, pat me on the head and walk away.
I wouldn’t ask my kid to consent to being tracked on a three-hour drive because I think such a request would convey – and model – misplaced anxiety. I grew up with an overly anxious mother who fretted about everything, especially physical risks. Skiing, horseback riding, surfing and swimming in the ocean, hiking – just about any physical activity – was met with so many dire predictions and catastrophizing about all the things that could go wrong that it greatly affected my ability to enjoy those activities. I’ve worked very hard to get over those anxieties and haven’t completely done so, but I try very hard not to transmit those sorts of anxieties to my daughter. Telling her that I need to track her movements so that I can assure myself at any given moment that she isn’t lying dead on the side of the road falls into the category of modeling inappropriate anxiety in the way that “let me know when you’ve arrived safely” does not.
THIS^^ As parents, we should be letting go. If we have fears and/or anxieties, that’s on us. We need to work on ourselves and not be putting that burden on our children.
Wow, it’s fascinating to read this thread. Our kids drove from LA to SF and back without checking in with us at all. They also drove from CA to Washington DC over many days and only called us as they felt moved to do so. We have never considered any form of tracking our kids and they have always figured they could call/text us as they see fit or have any passenger in their vehicle do so.
I would not have wanted my folks to track me (nor my kids), so I would not do that to them. Our family doesn’t even check in daily or even weekly when we all get busy. We are still close and know that we have each other’s back. I don’t see why it’s terrible if you don’t know the second your loved one will arrive at your home and why a phone call to someone else in the car isn’t sufficient if there is a delay or an issue.
OTOH, if OP and OP’s kids like tracking one another, so be it. I think my kids would be quite indignant, and would have been back when they were in college as well.
When my kids are driving any distance I like to know when they leave so I know when to expect them. They also know to call/text when they arrive at their destination when they are flying. I would not track them.
However…H does. He worries far more about these kinds of things than I do. I think it’s a difference in the way we were brought up. My family is much more independent, travels more, my sister moved to Europe by herself (twice) as a young woman, my dad’s business required frequent travel to the far east. I don’t remember H’s mom or sisters ever traveling alone.
My DH drives all over the place for his job, so he will often send me a Waze link so I know where he is at the time. He is a techie guy though so I think he just likes using it
My older D is a sophomore in college; we don’t ask to track her at all (she isn’t very mobile anyway, she doesn’t have a car). I do occasionally have her check in if she has a concert late at night, just a text that she got in safely.
However, I am struggling with this somewhat with my almost 17yo D. She got her license in September, and tomorrow wants to drive herself and a friend 13 miles to a mall in a neighboring city to meet up with their friends. It will be her longest solo drive yet, to an area she isn’t all that familiar with, so I’m trying to find a balance between my anxiety and her spreading her wings. If anyone has any advice on this one I’d be glad to hear it!
Which e-mail address would you like that receipt to go to?
On the main topic; it’s hard to believe that some technology minded young entrepreneur hasn’t created an app to market to kids that detects when your phone is being tracked.
It could alert you by emanating a faint “helicopter” rotor sound…
I am a pathological worrier, similar to @nottelling’s parent. I hate it that I’m like that. It’s torture sometimes. So for me, tracking my kid on a 3 hour trip would only increase my anxiety. If I saw no movement for 10 minutes, I’d probably be freaking out; meanwhile my kid is simply using the bathroom at Dairy Queen.
We do have all this technology available to us. But sometimes, you have to ask yourself: Just because I can, does it mean I should? The answer to that isn’t always immediately clear or easy.
