Since my boys have gone to university, I’ve found myself thinking much more about the whole idea of tracking our teenagers.
Life360 and other location tracking apps have become such a normal part of parenting that I think we can sometimes forget to stop and ask ourselves what sits underneath our need to know where our children are.
The reasons are usually very understandable. We want to keep them safe. We want to know where they are. Sometimes they tell us they like us knowing too. And when the world can feel like an increasingly frightening place, having that little circle on a screen can feel reassuring.
I can completely understand the temptation.
In fact, there is a part of me that would absolutely love to know where my boys are now they are at university. There is something comforting about being able to see where they are when they are no longer living at home. It can feel like a little connection to them when they are physically somewhere else.
But the more I have thought about it, the more I have questioned whether knowing would actually make me feel any calmer.
Knowing where they are isn’t the same as knowing how they are
This is perhaps the bit that has made me stop and think.
If I knew where my boys were, I would have information, but I wouldn’t necessarily have any context.
I would know the location, but not what was happening there. I wouldn’t know whether they were having a brilliant evening with friends, whether they were feeling lonely, whether they had simply gone somewhere for a coffee, or whether there was something they were struggling with.
And I wonder what I would do with that information.
If I saw they were somewhere I didn’t recognise, would I start wondering why they were there? If they were out later than I expected, would I message them? Would I check again? Would I find myself looking at the app simply because I could?
I know myself well enough to recognise that there is a possibility that knowing their location could actually give my anxiety more information to work with, rather than taking it away.
I might think I was reassuring myself, when actually I was creating more questions.
When reassurance becomes something we rely on
I recently came across a BBC article by Kirstie Brewer about parents whose children had gone to university, and it really resonated with some of the things I had been thinking about. BBC News: Parents, tracking and university life
What particularly stayed with me was the way some parents described becoming involved in university Facebook and WhatsApp groups. What had initially been useful for practical information had, for some, started to fuel anxiety. One parent described checking his son’s location to make sure he was going out enough and finding friends.
That really made me stop.
Because it made me think about how easily information can become reassurance, and how easily reassurance can become something we rely on.
You might not have been worried about your child making friends until you read that another parent’s child isn’t making friends.
You might not have wondered whether your teenager was spending too much time in their room until someone else raised the question.
You might not have felt the need to check where they were until you had the ability to check.
Suddenly, there is more information available to us than ever before, but I’m not sure that more information necessarily makes us feel more secure.
Sometimes it might do the opposite.
What happens when we already know?
There is something else I find uncomfortable about tracking.
If I already know where my child has been, what they have been doing or what time they came home, what happens to the conversation when they return?
Perhaps I don’t need to ask.
Perhaps they know I already know.
And that makes me wonder whether something is lost.
Part of building a relationship with our teenagers and young adults is allowing them to choose what they tell us. To come home and tell us about their evening because they want to share it, rather than because we already have the information and are asking them to fill in the gaps.
There is a difference between being interested in their lives and monitoring their lives.
And I don’t think that difference is always as obvious as we might imagine.
The BBC article also included the perspective of a psychologist who raised concerns about constant checking, tracking and intervening. The suggestion was that while these things may soothe a parent in the short term, they can inadvertently communicate to a young adult that we aren’t sure they can cope without us.
That made me think about what we are communicating when we track.
Not what we intend to communicate, because I think the intention is very often love.
But what our young person might experience.
The uncomfortable part of letting go
As our children get older, they are supposed to become less dependent on us.
That is what we’ve been preparing them for all these years.
We want them to make decisions. We want them to experience freedom. We want them to learn how to navigate situations without us immediately stepping in.
And yet when that actually starts happening, it can be incredibly uncomfortable.
Because independence doesn’t just mean that they can do more for themselves.
It also means that we know less.
I think that is the part that can be difficult to admit.
There is a particular vulnerability in not knowing where your child is, who they are with, what they are doing or whether everything is okay. When they were small, we could see so much of their lives. We knew where they were because we were taking them there. We knew who they were with. We knew when they were home.
Then, gradually, that changes.
And perhaps tracking can become a way of holding onto a little piece of that knowledge.
Of course, safety matters
I don’t think this is as simple as saying that parents shouldn’t track their teenagers.
There are situations where there may be very specific and genuine reasons for knowing where a young person is, particularly where there are safeguarding concerns or a known risk to their wellbeing.
Every family is different, and there are circumstances where safety has to come first.
For me, this isn’t really about deciding whether tracking is right or wrong.
It’s about becoming curious about why we are doing it.
What are we hoping it will give us?
Are we responding to a genuine safety concern, or are we trying to soothe the discomfort of not knowing?
And perhaps those two things can sometimes feel very similar.
What am I actually looking for?
This is the question I’ve been left with since my boys went to university.
Because part of me would still love to know where they are.
I don’t think that part of me has disappeared just because they have grown up. I am still their mum. I still worry about them. I still want them to be safe.
But I also know that having access to their location wouldn’t necessarily give me what I’m really looking for.
What I want is to know that they are okay.
And a little dot on a screen can’t really tell me that.
In fact, without context, it might leave me with more questions than answers. It might make me want to message when perhaps they are busy living their life. It might make me more aware of the things I don’t know rather than reassuring me about the things I do.
And there is something quite important in recognising that.
Because as our children move towards adulthood, perhaps our job isn’t to know everything.
Perhaps it is to build a relationship where they know we are there if they need us, while also trusting them to have a life that we aren’t part of every minute of the day.
That doesn’t always feel easy.
There is a part of me that would still like to look at that little circle and know exactly where my boys are.
But maybe learning to live with not knowing is part of my journey too.
They are learning how to become independent.
And I am learning how to let them.