Parents track kids from cradle to car
GPS, webcams make surveillance as easy as child’s play.
Etan Horowitz, Sentinel Staff Writer
A SECTION; FINAL; Pg. A1
June 24, 2007
Copyright Orlando Sentinel 2007
The call Keith Andree got from his 16-year-old son was hard to believe.
“Dad, I’m stranded on an island in the middle of the Indian River,” Brian Andree yelled into his phone recently.
With his son’s midnight curfew approaching, the Melbourne dad wondered whether the call was a ploy for Brian to stay out late with his friends. So from his computer, he tracked the GPS coordinates of his son’s phone and confirmed Brian was, indeed, on an island near Malabar.
Years ago, parents such as Andree had few options to verify that their kids were at the library or a friend’s house and not at a party or somewhere they weren’t supposed to be.
But as GPS, webcams and home-monitoring equipment have come down in price, today’s parents are employing a high-tech arsenal to keep tabs on their kids.
Both Sprint and Verizon offer phones with Global Positioning System tracking for parents or anyone who wants to quickly locate someone. And the services do a lot more than display a location.
Verizon’s Chaperone service lets parents track the speed of the car their child is traveling in. It also allows parents to set geographic boundaries and receive notifications if their child’s phone leaves those boundaries. Sprint’s Family Locator allows parents to set “safety checks” to make sure their kids arrive at school or appointments on time.
GPS-tracking services are also marketed to companies that want to make sure their employees aren’t slacking off.
Keith Andree insists that he didn’t get Sprint’s Family Locator service for Brian and his 12-year-old daughter, Megan, because he doesn’t trust them. It’s just another tool to keep them safe and to ease his nerves when he gets that parental “sixth sense” that they aren’t telling the truth, he said.
“I want the peace of mind and security to know where they are if something goes wrong,” Andree said. “I think my kids know I am looking after their welfare.”
Starting young
For other parents, the monitoring starts when their kids are in diapers.
On a recent afternoon, Rachel McDonald, 34, sat in the office of her Baldwin Park home with 1-year-old daughter Kendall on her lap. With a few clicks of her computer mouse, she pulled up a slow-motion video image of her 3-year-old in her weekly tumbling class.
“Swing your arms just like Camryn is doing,” McDonald told a fidgety Kendall. “Want to see Camryn do a somersault?”
McDonald is one of about 40 parents who pay $25 a month to watch live video of their children at the Children’s Academy at Loch Haven in Orlando.
Webcams in day-care centers have been around for a few years, but they are becoming more common, according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit organization that accredits day-care centers. In Central Florida, at least eight day-care centers offer webcams.
Most of the cameras don’t offer streaming video, but the quality is generally good enough to pick out individual children.
For new moms and dads returning to work, the cameras help ease the separation anxiety, several users said.
“It’s the best thing ever,” said Robert Kidary, 42, of Winter Park. Kidary and his wife have two sons at Loch Haven whom they check in on from work. “I like knowing that I can check up on the kids at any time and see what’s happening and see the teachers.”
Fun — and discipline
Some parents, such as McDonald and her husband, initially signed up for the service because they wanted family in other states to be able to watch their children.
Last year, both of Camryn’s grandmothers were able to log on and watch her birthday party.
McDonald has found that the camera helps her be more involved in her daughter’s life. When she picks Camryn up from day care, she can ask specific questions, such as “Did it hurt when you fell off the balance beam?” instead of just: “How was your day?”
The camera can also help with discipline. When Camryn is resisting a nap at home, McDonald sometimes pulls up her daughter’s class.
“I’ll say, `Look, they are taking a nap, so it’s time for you to take a nap, too,’ ” McDonald said. “It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try.”
Other parents like to see how their children behave when they are not around.
And constantly being on camera keeps workers under parental supervision as well, several parents said.
“My older one can talk and tell me if something is going on, but my younger one can’t,” said April Stringer, 36, a paralegal who has two daughters at Loch Haven. “It makes me feel a little better knowing that the teachers and the staff know that people are watching.”
When her children are older, Stringer could buy a home monitor to keep an eye on them — and their baby sitters.
AT&T offers a system that streams live video of the house from a computer or cell phone and even lets users remotely turn lights on and off.
Brad Bridges, AT&T’s assistant vice president for business development, used the system when he was in New York to make sure his 13-year-old son in San Antonio was doing his homework. Bridges logged on and saw his son sitting with his schoolbooks . . . in front of the TV.
“I called him and said, `Don’t you think it would be a good idea if you turned the TV off so you could get your homework out of the way?’ ” Bridges said.
Not cool for kids
That kind of monitoring would probably infuriate Brian and Megan Andree. They say they hate the Sprint Family Locator. And their friends ridicule them for having it.
Brian admits that the locator may have helped keep him safe when he was on the island. He and his friends had paddled a kayak to the island, but by the time they wanted to head back, it was dark and the waves were rough. His dad told him and his friends to stay on the island overnight.
But even after surviving “the worst night of my life,” Brian still doesn’t like the locator.
“My first reaction was, `Oh, no, Big Brother is going to get me now,’ ” he said. “I knew instantly it was an invasion of my privacy.”
Linda Rumsey, director of the Children’s Academy at Loch Haven, doesn’t think her students will object to GPS monitoring the way Brian and Megan do. Some of the children get upset when their parents don’t watch them.
“I don’t think our kids are going to have the same privacy issues that we had because there is no privacy anymore,” she said. “That era is gone.”