Helicopter parents set new track record
FROM THE HART | Child monitor might give mom and dad a false sense of security with external controls
This weekend I forgot my cell phone when I went out to do a few errands. It was fantastic! My kids couldn't bug me every eight minutes with "Where are you, when are you coming home, and can you please get to the store for 'fill in the blank?' "
I thought of that when I heard about the new Little Buddy Child Tracker by Insignia. Here's Best Buy's description of Little Buddy: "Keep tabs on your child at all times with this small but sophisticated device that combines GPS and cellular technology to provide you with real-time location updates."
Yikes -- talk about too much information. What if my children could turn the tables and find me more easily than they do now?
OK, that's not really a serious concern. My others are.
First, what a waste of money. All the child or teen has to do is leave the device at school or a friend's house while he skips "out of bounds." To the extent he does that, it's useless. If a parent has to secretly attach it, he has much bigger problems than Little Buddy can solve. And potential abductors? Who knows how they might be able to hack into the technology and tracking system to use them to their own advantage?
But let's say none of these things happens. Is tracking a child's every move a good idea? Little Buddy is a tool, and there might be some uses for it that really make sense. Teens and cars suggest one possibility I might be interested in.
Any objection I have, by the way, has nothing to do with concerns about children's privacy. I don't think they deserve much privacy. Period. Nor does it have to do with a need to "trust my kids." There are a whole lot of reasons we shouldn't "trust" our children. Mainly, it starts with the fact that they are our children. Which means that for the most part they are foolish. It's our job as parents to try to train them out of that.
But in the main what Little Buddy does is to bring parental helicoptering to new heights. For starters, it's surely going to make already nervous parents unnecessarily psycho as they "watch" their child's every step and misstep.
Worse, it might give some parents a sense of false security, because they put their faith in external controls. I think many parents reverse the right time to do this. Today when children are very little, it's choices all day long. A tantrum happens without consequence. Spanking is out. And on it goes.
The child gets to middle and high school having very little experience with having had external controls imposed in such a way that he's learned self-control. Suddenly, parents think "uh-oh" and now they want to start limiting his "choices" and imposing outside controls because it's the only way they know to keep him safe.
In contrast, if more external controls like discipline and limiting choices are applied very early on, they can be better used to help the child develop self-control. These things need to be coupled with a moral sense of right and wrong. Not just "make good choices that lead to good consequences" but "here's what's right and what's wrong and why -- regardless of any consequences in the moment." That helps prepare a young person to have more external controls fall away, and for him to be given more choices, as he gets older and proves himself more trustworthy. It also gets him ready for the real world.
In short we can give our children "roots and wings" as a friend of mine puts it, and help our kids develop into responsible, self-controlled adults. Or I suppose we can get ready for a world full of Big Buddy Trackers.