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Teen Tracking Systems
Spying on Your Teens
By Laura Cone
But it's more than some "people" who don't like the idea; some experts don't like the tracking of teens either. Carleton Kendrick, a family therapist in Millis, Mass., and co-author of Take Out Your Nose Ring, Honey, We Are Going to Grandma's: Hanging In, Holding On and Letting Go of Your Teen (Unlimited Publishing, 2003), says the issue boils down to a person's parenting philosophy. Kendrick has a 29-year-old daughter and 27-year-old son. "Are you trying to control your kids or are you trying to build relationships with them?" he says. "All these attempts to spy on kids – whether it's GPS in cars, whether it's cameras hidden in radios in kids' rooms, whether it's checking on who has called them on their cell phone and reading their diaries, their blogs – are astonishing to me in a cautionary way."
Kendrick, who also cautions parents against testing their teenagers for drugs, says spying has no basis in the family. He believes spying on your teenagers increases rebellion. He says childhood is about hanging on and letting go for both children and parents. He acknowledges that some parents resort to tracking devices because they are frightened of a changing world.
"Certainly in small-town America where I grew up, it was kind of hard to get away with things, because people knew you," he says. "By the time I walked home from school in the small town of Plymouth, Mass., if I was up to any shenanigans, three or four of my mother's friends would have seen me. By the time I hit home, even if I had a story cooked up, the story was in the dumper because I had already been observed. Kids are certainly on their own a heck of a lot more in the after-school hours, and this is when most kids are going to do dope, have sex and do the things parents are worried about."
