Confessions of a Shutterbug

I think cell phone GPS is yet another way to satisfy parents' pathological need to control their kids' every move.


The simple locators aren't so bad, but monitoring the speed the phone is traveling at? You've got to be kidding me. We were told one story where the mom checked the website and saw that her daughter was traveling like ten miles over the speed limit in her car. The mom then proceeded to call up the daughter and threaten to come pick her up if the girl didn't slow down. If you're old enough to drive by yourself it means that you have to be at least sixteen. A mom watching her sixteen-year-old daughter's every single move? Sounds obssessive to me. Seriously, what's the point where you actually let your kids make decisions by themselves without you influencing every move they make? How will these children ever learn to make good decisions for themselves when all their life their mother has been watching them and forcing them to always act the way she wants? My mom always points out, and I agree, that parents can't always be there telling their kids what to do. Sure, you can control them in elementary and even middle school, but as for high school you're fighting an uphill battle. By the time you consider sports games, driving, parties and many other situations, there are a ton of instances where kids' decisions are completely out of your control. You physically can't be there for every choice they make unless you decide to follow their every move. Even if you keep them home from any social event they're ever invited to, you still have the problem of college. And the rest of life? Are they going to live in your basement the rest of their lives, never getting their own job or having to build a life of their own? Sounds like a pretty sad existence to me.


If I was that teenager, I'd be pretty ticked off. Yes, it wasn't a great decision on her part, and especially wasn't doing much to improve the bad reputation teenage drivers have. But this must have not been a regular happening if her mom would call her for ten miles over the speed limit. And since her mom fully knew how to check the speed of the car, she must have been pretty used to checking on her daughter's driving speed. So, like I said, if she got into such trouble for being ten miles over, it must have been out of the regular. So the girl must've had a pretty good driving record.