<p>grandscheme, OP is self-supporting and not living at home. She is not being supported by her parents other than their insistence that she use their phone plan. That doesn’t sound like person (who is nearly 21, not 18) who needs constant monitoring. FWIW, if my D was that irresponsible (and she was at first) with driving, she would not have a car, plain and simple. In fact, they wouldn’t even be driving one of MY cars. No one NEEDS a car-that is a right, not a privilege. My older kids never had cars until they could pay for them and any tickets were their problem, as was insurance. </p>
<p>grandscheme, kitestring doesn’t have GPS so it’s less useful. </p>
<p>StaySafe is the app equivalent of kitestring but it also has GPS. It can also work if the phone is off- not sure if that’s true for kitestring. </p>
<p>At a young age I gradually started to be towards myself and do things alone without my parents consent. My parents gain trust on me that I can go anywhere and still be safe. Now when they ask where have I been,my mom knows that that bothers me because it is really none of my mom’s business. But if this was a year ago, then I would have told her where I’ve been at.
I will be a high school senior, and soon my mom is going to hear from for a long time. Even though she is mom who has looked after me, she still wants to continue that but she knows herself that soon I will be away. I’m still dependent on her though.
My point is that it is going to take some time for your parents to get the message that you want to your own life. But you have to start showing signs that you want to be on your own or else if you do it instantly then your parents could be affected. </p>
<p>The OP lives on her own, pays her own bills, and is a few years out of high school. How on earth else is she supposed to show signs that she wants to be on her own? </p>
<p>Did we lose the op?</p>
<p>Seems so. Dang, I wish they still had registration dates by names. Didn’t realize the OP made her account just to post this. </p>
<p>I don’t get why she was okay to not have her own cell phone, but is P.O.'d they want to keep track of her.</p>
<p>To the OP - get your own cell phone, and download the app to your cell phone on their plan, and leave your “family” cell phone in your room 24/7. That way, they’ll get that you don’t want to be tracked or think you are home all day.</p>
<p>I do agree however that it is good to have someone looking out for you. Is it possible there is an ex- in the picture that we don’t know about? Or she is living off-campus so they are worried? I have cell-phone tracking on our house phones, and they actually text if someone is looking for you. So she would know if they are keeping tabs on her, and if there was an emergency, they could find her. It’s not like you can see someone’s location 24/7 without them knowing (at least with Verizon).</p>
<p>The only other comment is that if her parents are strict, especially in a religious sense regarding young unmarried women, they might be truly upset and want to track her. If she does not agree with their religious choices and/or philosophy on adult children, she should reduce her ties with them.</p>
<p>Interestingly I learned over the weekend of two RL friends who use a tracker for their HS kids. Both are conservative religious types with kids who are rarely away from their parents except for school (which are NOT public schools). They are top students, volunteer their time, are in many church activities-exactly the kinds of kids you rarely worry about, but their parents feel they need to be tracked. And the kids are fine with it. For me, it’s the OTHER kids-the ones who ARE getting in trouble that if anyone is tracked, would be the targets for this kind of app. And certainly not in college. If they’re away at college, they’re already worthy of my trust.</p>
<p>sseamom, it’s more safety than trust. When I went to college, I did some stupid stuff, like took a subway to a concert by myself with no ticket, and bummed a ticket off someone. At that point, I had to decide whether to hang out with them, people I just met, or go back to school. I took the subway back really late, and went back to school. I do think if anything happened to me on the other side of a huge city, I’d want my parents to be able to find me (or my body).</p>
<p>But that’s just me. My son doesn’t mind to be tracked, considering how much I’ll be paying for his new iPhone. If not him, gotta get that phone back!</p>
<p>I downloaded an ap like this a couple years ago for my family members. At the time, by son was about 14. We were going to Disneyworld, and my motivation for the ap was so that he could have the freedom to go whereever he wanted, and, also, to find each other in a crowded space. It worked well for that. But, he didn’t like the ap, and so, we deleted it. We live in central Indiana, and there was a young woman from NY who disappeared from the Indiana University campus about 2 years ago. She was last seen with two young men, who allegedly let her walk home alone in the wee hours of the morning while she was stumbling drunk. This type of disappearance type story seems fairly common in this part of the country–another young lady disappeared after work in the local Walmart, and was found a week or so later in a latrine in a state park. It seems every week or so, I read a story about somebody finding body or human skeletal remains in a field or along a creek bed. So, I think parents read this story, and they worry. My parents were an old style helicopter parents back in the day when there were no cell phones. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and attributed their behavior to care and concern, and not prurient interest in my private life. You bottom line, you can’t control other people, but, you can reframe their behavior in a more positive light.</p>
<p>
I wouldn’t mind if my parents wanted to track my phone. I have nothing to hide. And it’s because of this willing openness I have with my parents that they don’t worry about me doing things that make them feel I need to be tracked.
If my parents ever wanted to track me for any reason, it would be for safety, not because of trust issues. Likely the same with these kids.</p>
<p>While some on this thread have said that OP giving into her parents would encourage them, I see the opposite as happening. To be fair, I am biased here because I have never seen truly overbearing parents, only parents who were labeled overbearing by entitled children who deserved their trust issues (and adults who believed said children, because they only heard one side of the story). </p>
<p>Seems odd to worry about tracking a phone (Android device manager comes preinstalled on many popular phones anyway - and can locate a lost phone - and thus presumably locate the person holding the phone implicitly). Ideally family members shouldn’t have anything to hide from each other. Since we live in a world with little or no digital privacy, worrying that family members can find out each other’s location seems minor in the big picture. I think parents appreciate knowing that their kids are reminded about this when carrying a phone (perhaps it is another incentive to act responsibly), but realistically parents are mostly too busy to track a kids location and aren’t going to ever need to unless others signs of irresponsible behavior emerged.</p>
<p>She’s 20/21 years old and paying her own bills. Sorry, but any “irresponsible” behavior is on her at this point. She’s not a kid. </p>
<p>Do you help your parents?</p>
<p>Do you help your adult children?</p>
<p>Do you put limits and conditions on that?</p>
<p>Everyone puts conditions on their relationships, it is not about being a kid or not. If you don’t want a specific condition, tell the person requiring the condition and the person can decide what they want to do about it.</p>
<p>The phrase “unconditional love” is poppycock - do you want to be set up to be a victim of domestic abuse, cheating, lying, stealing, etc. etc. etc.? I would still love my kid if he was a drug addict, but I would put conditions on him in regards to contact to my other kids and living in my house.</p>
<p>What on earth does “unconditional love” have to do with a GPS tracker? </p>
<p>Honestly, once your an adult, I think you should pretty much have the same set of rules/expectations for your parents as you do with your SO. If you wouldn’t let your SO do something, your parents shouldn’t be allowed to either. I don’t think any of us would support a tracker on an SO, just as we wouldn’t allow physical or emotional abuse, drug addictions, lying, etc. </p>
<p>Yes, I help my adult parents. Probably more than 99% of people my age considering I’m currently paying their bills. If anything, they’re my dependents. I still would never, ever ask them to put a stalker app on their phone. They’re adults even if they’re not financially independent adults.</p>
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<p>Yes, I am aware. When I worked at a DV shelter we would tell our residents to not bring their phones with them- we would provide them new ones because of the tracking issue. However, IMO, there’s a huge difference between the GPS tracker that you would need to contact the company for or take additional steps to obtain and one that you voluntarily download on your phone for someone else to track you at their request. </p>
<p>My parents are gone, but I have two adult children. I love and support them unconditionally. Physical conditions like not allowing them to borrow H’s fancy sports car or lending them large sums of money, have nothing whatsoever to do with how much I love them. And loving someone unconditionally doesn’t mean you are a doormat for domestic violence or anything like it. None of this has anything to do with tracking apps and knowing where your adult children who do live at home are at all times.</p>
<p>The “what if they’re in a ditch?” argument holds no water because it’s very rare for someone to just go off the radar completely, with or without a phone. It just seems like it happens all the time because the media plays up that sort of thing and we hear about it if it’s next door or 3,000 miles away. That doesn’t make it common. </p>
<p>My comments and advice for the young person are geared for the long term, not the short term here and now. Assuming this person wants to have a continuing relationship with her parents, then, it is not helpful to engage in antagonistic behavior. While this young person certainly is quite independent, she still may need her parents help in the future. There is more than one way to resolve this family issue. It seems to me that stomping one’s feet and telling the parents to ‘buzz off’ is not an effective or useful approach, when there are others available.</p>
<p>If you have ever been a parent, you would understand the point of view of a concerned parent. We do not know the whole story, or the individuals involved. To automatically assume the parents are ‘over bearing’ and ‘over controlling’ would be foolish. We only know what the young woman has told us. Only her point of view.</p>
<p>Any dispute can be resolved in a calm and cooperative fashion. It seems to me that this issue does not call for the hostility that seems to permeate some of the comments on this website.</p>
<p>Long ago when I was very young, my grandmother worried about me riding my tricycle on the sidewalk outside of our home. She was from another country, so I just assumed she was being ridiculous. Later on, as a young adult, I reflected on that, and realized that at one point, there was a car that jumped the curb and ran up a lawn and into a house on our block. Also, my grandmother was a survivor of a war that had been fought in her country of origin. Her village had been attacked by the enemy, and she had to march long distances to escape the bombings, and had to do so with my mother strapped to her.</p>
<p>My point is there is always more than one side to any situation, and unless we know the reasons for these parents to make this request, it does no one any good to judge that request.</p>
<p>I always thought this website was intended to help people.</p>
<p>Your parents are not your SO, and I would expect to have a very different relationship with my SO then with my parents. Parents certainly should respect the independence of their adult children, but they are still parents. I don’t think that it’s right to simply forget that once you grow up, as if you were entitled to all the tools your parents gave you to get to where you are now. Where’s the gratitude? It’s expected that independent children would have some boundaries with their parents, but those are very different boundaries then one has with their SO, which is a completely different relationship.</p>