12 ms·

It really saddens me to see a culture where parents feel like they have ownership over their children. Children are people. They ought to be given autonomy over

It really saddens me to see a culture where parents feel like they have ownership over their children. Children are people. They ought to be given autonomy over themselves, their proprerty, and their privacy. Helicopter parenting is profoundly psychologically damaging and should be illegal. It's child abuse.

leokennis 8y ago
I totally get your point. However, losing track of young (1-4 years) kids in IKEA or an amusement park is a very real thing. Not using “new technology” to mitigate this issue seems like a waste.
- jak92 8y ago
  I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. Sure, it was "scary" for a few minutes, but ultimately 99.9999% will be reunited. No need to keep a permanent record of every movement.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    I'm betting not all parents even consider these things might be making a permanent record. They just want something to find the kids if and when they're lost.
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    I remember purposefully hiding in the hollow center of the circular racks of clothing at the department store as a small child.
    - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
      I do, too. I also remember a few times (both as a young, scared small child, and as an older embarrased teenager) losing track of my parents and having the employees call "Will Mrs. Carrotson please come to the service counter" over the intercom...and I hear similar messages when shopping now as an adult. That said, I'm a lot more fearful of what could happen if my toddler was found by someone other than me in the center of the clothing rack. To be clear, I have little fear of a criminal harming or absconding with my child, I'm much more afraid of what happens when a well-meaning bystander thinks they need to call CPS to make sure that my kid is taken care of.
      - Mirioron 8y ago
        Yeah, it does seem like CPS is the boogeyman. They're pretty much the last people you'd want involved with your kid.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    > I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. I do too; except I remember being so scared of being lost that I kept better track of my parent
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I don't see it. Both IKEA and theme parks are well equipped to deal with this. Speaker systems, clearly recognizable employees, etc. "Attention visitors, little Luke can't find his parents, can the parents of Luke please come to the infodesk?" (My youngest turns 4 tomorrow and we've visited IKEAs and theme parks many times without trackers)
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    You've gone to multiple, distinct IKEAs?
    - skrebbel 8y ago
      Actually, yes :-) Fixed the grammar, thanks.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
      Yes, how will know which one has the best meatballs, I'm a fan of number #37, but #43 is a close second.
    - janpot 8y ago
      We have two of those in Brussels...
    - wingerlang 8y ago
      Not the guy but, is that odd?
      - skrebbel 8y ago
        It was a comment on my weird grammar (that I have since fixed) and pretty on point :-)
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. kzzzt can the parents of the missing child please report to customer service to pick up their child kzzzt
  - jbigelow76 8y ago
    Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. Somebody else losing their kids in an IKEA is no big deal. To the parent of the lost kid, for the duration the kid is missing, it's probaby a big fucking deal.
    - windexh8er 8y ago
      Losing and being temporarily separated are two very different things. Most everyone likely has a "separation" story. Most don't have a long-term loss / kidnapping story. I personally see the solution as both potentially useful and egregious as implemented. Selling an unaware parent a product with strawman promises that have hidden agendas are not good for anyone. This type of technology will be legitimately useful how many times and at what cost (monetary and privacy)? If, as a parent, you have a tool that you depend on to fulfill a certain task - then part of the selling point is that it offloads the given task at some level. So... Are you more diligent about keeping tabs on your child with this? Probably not. Instead, most of us have learning experiences from becoming separated from our parents. I'm not sure the gist is for a parent to say to their child: "you have this watch so leave it on and I will be able to find you" - but regardless of how a parent describes the watch to the child I'm sure that's a portion of the root idea. Does this diminish the precedence of the situation before it happens for the child? Potentially. It also gives unknowing consumers false confidence at varied levels all while being illegitimate about the entirety of the "product". Don't get me wrong, technology is great for many things. However it's oft over used and diminishes from some life skills. I'm overly scrutinizing of technology use in my children's life and err on the side of as little consumption through technology. Creation using technology is what I support. But far too often parents conflate the two and, simply, have no clue the negative impacts they're supporting.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      Then honestly, that's a shitty parent.
- mgfist 8y ago
  I'd go even further in the opposite direction than other responders and say this can be a good thing. Your child getting lost in ikea is a safe way for them to learn the dangers of getting lost and also a safe challenge to overcome. Similar to how falling and hurting yourself in a playground is a safe way to test boundaries and experience challenge. Imagine you're 5 and you get lost in ikea and get scared to death. Nothing bad will happen because it's ikea, but you'll learn that getting lost is terrifying and you will be a lot less likely to do it again. Kids need to be safely challenged, or else they won't know how to respond to it when it happens for real. Not having challenges makes kids narcissistic and lowers their empathy. Helicopter parenting is turning our kids into the worse kinds of people.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    IMO, the problem isn't "the kid got lost in IKEA". The problem is "the kid was abducted in IKEA". We've got pretty good systems in place for dealing with kids who are merely lost. Dealing with kids who are abducted is another story, and a tracker definitely helps there. It's a sad reality that we have to worry about that situation still.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      No, we don't have to worry about this situation, and using them to justify this technology is wrong. Child abduction by a non-parent is exceptionally rare. Each year there are around 200 of them, of which 90% make it home safely. That means that your child's risk of being abducted is about 0.00027%. That's absolutely no basis to justify this awful technology on, and no reason for you to worry as a parent. Not to mention: the abductor could just take your spyware watch off of the kid. source: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person...
      - zestyping 8y ago
        I'm trying to understand how you got 200 from this report. On page 2, I see this paragraph about the Missing Person Circumstances (MPC) field in their database: "Of the 647,435 records entered in 2016, the MPC field was utilized in 315,995 (48.8%). When the MPC field was utilized in 2016 entries, 303,237 (96%) were coded as Runaway, 2,107 (.7%) as Abducted by Non-custodial Parent, 303 (.1%) as Abducted by Stranger, and 10,348 (3.3%) as Adult - Federally required entry." So it looks like one should take the number 303 for "Abducted by Stranger" and perhaps, since only 48.8% of records had this field populated, extrapolate to about 620 cases. Does that sound right, or should it be 200 based on a different reasoning? Of course, 620 cases is still a pretty small number. I just wanted to understand where your numbers came from. How did you get the figure of 90% making it home safely, and how did you calculate the probability of 0.00027%?
madez 8y ago
Sadly many parents don't view their children as humans with independent rights. I realized that very quickly when I voiced in a debate that removal of parts of the genitalia of children without medical indication should be illegal. The parents are not okay with letting their children decide that when they are grown up.
tvanantwerp 8y ago
I personally would feel more comfortable letting my kids run off and play without my direct supervision if I knew I could check where they were via GPS. Not a fan of these specific and clearly broken products, but I like the idea in the abstract.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  Teach your kids about dangerous things outside, introduce them to the community and teach them how to ask strangers for help. Then they'll be in good shape even when the battery dies or a storm comes in. Tracking their every move is unethical and wrong. You have no right to infringe on another person's privacy and personal autonomy like that.
  - LitFan 8y ago
    > Teach your kids about dangerous things outside, introduce them to the community and teach them how to ask strangers for help. I intend to do this. I also plan on giving my kids cell phones when they're old enough (School age, is my current assumption), and will ask them to share their locations with me. However, To say that parents have no right to infringe on the privacy or personal autonomy of their children is incorrect. I'm legally responsible for the well being of my kids. I'm legally required to ensure my child is safe at all times. This can involve leaving my child with another guardian, but for various reasons I'm not about to trust the school. I can be sent to prison for a maximum of 2 years and fined $50,000 if I break these laws. Being absent from my children's lives for 2 years would damage their development. I can present all this information to my children and ask them to decide if they want me to know where they are at all times. You could make the argument that they're not mature enough to give me that permission.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      What's the worst that's going to happen? They'll dart out into the road and get hit by a car? That could happen just as easily if you're around and haven't taught them road safety, and if you have then you needn't be around. Abducted by a stranger? In reality this almost never happens, and you should teach your kids about safe ways to interact with strangers. Slip and bust open their knee? Teach them how to deal with wounds and they'll learn from the experience. Worse - a broken arm? Teach them how to get help when you're not around. You can't be there 24/7, so you should prepare them for when you're not. And if they're prepared, you don't have to be there all the time. This is good for them and good for you.
greedo 8y ago
Utterly ridiculous. Parents have a responsibility to supervise their children. This is clearly defined by law in most countries, and for good reason; children are not emotionally ready to exert self-autonomy. They lack the cognitive skills and experience to do so. They lack the legal ability to exert control over their property, to engage in contracts, etc etc. Now should parents monitor every moment of their children's life? No. But they have a duty and responsibility to supervise their children. Children should be given expanding freedoms as they mature, but this (again) needs to be supervised.
deweller 8y ago
> Children ... ought to be given autonomy over themselves, their property, and their privacy No no no. My 10 year old child definitely should not have adult-level autonomy. It is my responsibility as a good parent to train my child by limiting aspects of their life. My children do not have unsupervised access to the internet. They do not have unlimited screen time. They cannot go on social networks and make friends with random people. It is my job as a parent to not abuse my position as a parent. But I would fail my children greatly if I gave them autonomy over many aspects of their life. As they prove themselves adept at self-regulation, growing wisdom and good judgement then, and only then, do I grant them more autonomy.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  It's fair to say that there's a balance to be struck here, but I think that strapping a spying device on their wrist is far from that balance. Most parents grant them that autonomy you're talking about way, WAY too slowly. Would you let a 5 year old walk a couple of blocks down to the corner store to buy milk alone? If your answer is no, you're on the "too slow" side of the spectrum in my opinion.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    I tend to be fairly permissive, but having a 5-year old walk a couple blocks (by definition, crossing at least one street and likely multiple) is not on the right side of the risk spectrum for me. I suspect this depends largely on the local traffic situation (controlled intersections vs not, crosswalks vs not, prevailing traffic speeds and density, etc).
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      Your kid can dart into the street even when you're with them. You should teach your kids about traffic safety at an early age, and ideally have made this particular trip with them several times before so that they (1) know how to behave and (2) don't get lost and (3) have been introduced to the shopkeep and others in the neighborhood. It's pretty easy to gradually ramp up to this and to continue ramping up to more indepdendence at a much faster pace than most parents do.
skybrian 8y ago
This is trivializing real child abuse and a lot of other complicated things about parent-child relationships with superficial "rights" language. Kids are not just little adults.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  I went through this and the other kinds of abuse growing up, and so did people close to me. Psychological abuse is still abuse and it has a profound impact on the rest of your life.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    Sorry to hear that! Unfortunately this abstract stuff is basically vagueposting: it might help you feel better but not a whole lot gets across to the reader. I'd like to hear your story sometime but I don't want to invade your privacy.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      I kept it vague for the same reasons that you don't want to invade my privacy. Despite being vague it does serve the purpose I intended it to: dispelling your argument that I don't understand abuse or that I'm "trivializing" "real" abuse.
      - brlewis 8y ago
        The original comment that says anything short of "autonomy over themselves, their proprerty, and their privacy" is child abuse still does trivialize real abuse. I think you still have time to edit that comment to be more specific about the kinds of non-autonomy you think of as abuse.
username223 8y ago
I find it hard to believe that this product exists. Can any of you imagine what it would have been like to grow up wearing a GPS tracker? What's next -- internet-connected chastity belts?
cmurf 8y ago
This is one possible ideological argument. There are many successful alternatives based on culture, clan, tribe, and family units making these decisions, rather than primarily parents. There are highly individualistic ideologies and highly communal ones, and a continuum between them. It's easy to criticize any extreme example, but right vs wrong is just binary logic and isn't that interesting or relevant. The consequences are what matter, and those are complex, much of which are neither good nor bad. Ownership of children is baked into most language. The language reflects the relationships. My child. My mom. My sister. My dog. I wouldn't call that psychological damage but I would call it programming. I also wouldn't call it either right or wrong, it merely is so, and there are consequences that follow. A good deal of that is stability. Brave New World is but one example of disrupting these units and relationships.
qwsxyh 8y ago
A lot of things we do to children is child abuse and is swept away without concern. All the while the attitude that "children have no rights and I should be able to parent them the way I like" is prevalent, it's never gonna stop.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  What's the practical alternative to parents parenting the way they like? The choices we make for our kids are almost surely different than the choices you make for yours and the many "theys" for the many "theirs". I think that's a feature of the system, not a bug. That some parents make terrible choices is on them, not on society, IMO.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    A comprehensive "this is how children are raised" law is not practical, but banning tracking your children with GPS is certainly possible (and Germany did it, per TFA). The more subtle parts are done with community engagement and gradual cultural shifts.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      > banning tracking your children with GPS is certainly possible (and Germany did it, per TFA) From TFA, I don't read the German ban as being a prohibition on GPS-based tracking, but rather on secretive audio eavesdropping being the problematic functionality.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        Ah, so it seems.
mac01021 8y ago
I want my child to have as much autonomy as possible early on. Like before the age of 10 if she can ride her bike across town to her friends house or get on a bus to the mall or playground or library, I will be very happy. The the automobile traffic terrifies me. Having the ability to see when she's safely off the road, or if she's stopped in a place that seems like it could be an accident could be the difference between me choosing to afford her all that freedom or not. Also, I won't ask her to habitually carry any kind of traffic device without giving here equivalent visibility into my movements.

leokennis 8y ago

I totally get your point. However, losing track of young (1-4 years) kids in IKEA or an amusement park is a very real thing. Not using “new technology” to mitigate this issue seems like a waste.

jak92 8y ago
I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. Sure, it was "scary" for a few minutes, but ultimately 99.9999% will be reunited. No need to keep a permanent record of every movement.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I'm betting not all parents even consider these things might be making a permanent record. They just want something to find the kids if and when they're lost.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  I remember purposefully hiding in the hollow center of the circular racks of clothing at the department store as a small child.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    I do, too. I also remember a few times (both as a young, scared small child, and as an older embarrased teenager) losing track of my parents and having the employees call "Will Mrs. Carrotson please come to the service counter" over the intercom...and I hear similar messages when shopping now as an adult. That said, I'm a lot more fearful of what could happen if my toddler was found by someone other than me in the center of the clothing rack. To be clear, I have little fear of a criminal harming or absconding with my child, I'm much more afraid of what happens when a well-meaning bystander thinks they need to call CPS to make sure that my kid is taken care of.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      Yeah, it does seem like CPS is the boogeyman. They're pretty much the last people you'd want involved with your kid.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  > I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. I do too; except I remember being so scared of being lost that I kept better track of my parent
skrebbel 8y ago
I don't see it. Both IKEA and theme parks are well equipped to deal with this. Speaker systems, clearly recognizable employees, etc. "Attention visitors, little Luke can't find his parents, can the parents of Luke please come to the infodesk?" (My youngest turns 4 tomorrow and we've visited IKEAs and theme parks many times without trackers)
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  You've gone to multiple, distinct IKEAs?
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    Actually, yes :-) Fixed the grammar, thanks.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    Yes, how will know which one has the best meatballs, I'm a fan of number #37, but #43 is a close second.
  - janpot 8y ago
    We have two of those in Brussels...
  - wingerlang 8y ago
    Not the guy but, is that odd?
    - skrebbel 8y ago
      It was a comment on my weird grammar (that I have since fixed) and pretty on point :-)
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. kzzzt can the parents of the missing child please report to customer service to pick up their child kzzzt
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. Somebody else losing their kids in an IKEA is no big deal. To the parent of the lost kid, for the duration the kid is missing, it's probaby a big fucking deal.
  - windexh8er 8y ago
    Losing and being temporarily separated are two very different things. Most everyone likely has a "separation" story. Most don't have a long-term loss / kidnapping story. I personally see the solution as both potentially useful and egregious as implemented. Selling an unaware parent a product with strawman promises that have hidden agendas are not good for anyone. This type of technology will be legitimately useful how many times and at what cost (monetary and privacy)? If, as a parent, you have a tool that you depend on to fulfill a certain task - then part of the selling point is that it offloads the given task at some level. So... Are you more diligent about keeping tabs on your child with this? Probably not. Instead, most of us have learning experiences from becoming separated from our parents. I'm not sure the gist is for a parent to say to their child: "you have this watch so leave it on and I will be able to find you" - but regardless of how a parent describes the watch to the child I'm sure that's a portion of the root idea. Does this diminish the precedence of the situation before it happens for the child? Potentially. It also gives unknowing consumers false confidence at varied levels all while being illegitimate about the entirety of the "product". Don't get me wrong, technology is great for many things. However it's oft over used and diminishes from some life skills. I'm overly scrutinizing of technology use in my children's life and err on the side of as little consumption through technology. Creation using technology is what I support. But far too often parents conflate the two and, simply, have no clue the negative impacts they're supporting.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    Then honestly, that's a shitty parent.
mgfist 8y ago
I'd go even further in the opposite direction than other responders and say this can be a good thing. Your child getting lost in ikea is a safe way for them to learn the dangers of getting lost and also a safe challenge to overcome. Similar to how falling and hurting yourself in a playground is a safe way to test boundaries and experience challenge. Imagine you're 5 and you get lost in ikea and get scared to death. Nothing bad will happen because it's ikea, but you'll learn that getting lost is terrifying and you will be a lot less likely to do it again. Kids need to be safely challenged, or else they won't know how to respond to it when it happens for real. Not having challenges makes kids narcissistic and lowers their empathy. Helicopter parenting is turning our kids into the worse kinds of people.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  IMO, the problem isn't "the kid got lost in IKEA". The problem is "the kid was abducted in IKEA". We've got pretty good systems in place for dealing with kids who are merely lost. Dealing with kids who are abducted is another story, and a tracker definitely helps there. It's a sad reality that we have to worry about that situation still.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    No, we don't have to worry about this situation, and using them to justify this technology is wrong. Child abduction by a non-parent is exceptionally rare. Each year there are around 200 of them, of which 90% make it home safely. That means that your child's risk of being abducted is about 0.00027%. That's absolutely no basis to justify this awful technology on, and no reason for you to worry as a parent. Not to mention: the abductor could just take your spyware watch off of the kid. source: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person...
    - zestyping 8y ago
      I'm trying to understand how you got 200 from this report. On page 2, I see this paragraph about the Missing Person Circumstances (MPC) field in their database: "Of the 647,435 records entered in 2016, the MPC field was utilized in 315,995 (48.8%). When the MPC field was utilized in 2016 entries, 303,237 (96%) were coded as Runaway, 2,107 (.7%) as Abducted by Non-custodial Parent, 303 (.1%) as Abducted by Stranger, and 10,348 (3.3%) as Adult - Federally required entry." So it looks like one should take the number 303 for "Abducted by Stranger" and perhaps, since only 48.8% of records had this field populated, extrapolate to about 620 cases. Does that sound right, or should it be 200 based on a different reasoning? Of course, 620 cases is still a pretty small number. I just wanted to understand where your numbers came from. How did you get the figure of 90% making it home safely, and how did you calculate the probability of 0.00027%?

madez 8y ago

Sadly many parents don't view their children as humans with independent rights. I realized that very quickly when I voiced in a debate that removal of parts of the genitalia of children without medical indication should be illegal. The parents are not okay with letting their children decide that when they are grown up.

tvanantwerp 8y ago

I personally would feel more comfortable letting my kids run off and play without my direct supervision if I knew I could check where they were via GPS. Not a fan of these specific and clearly broken products, but I like the idea in the abstract.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Teach your kids about dangerous things outside, introduce them to the community and teach them how to ask strangers for help. Then they'll be in good shape even when the battery dies or a storm comes in. Tracking their every move is unethical and wrong. You have no right to infringe on another person's privacy and personal autonomy like that.
- LitFan 8y ago
  > Teach your kids about dangerous things outside, introduce them to the community and teach them how to ask strangers for help. I intend to do this. I also plan on giving my kids cell phones when they're old enough (School age, is my current assumption), and will ask them to share their locations with me. However, To say that parents have no right to infringe on the privacy or personal autonomy of their children is incorrect. I'm legally responsible for the well being of my kids. I'm legally required to ensure my child is safe at all times. This can involve leaving my child with another guardian, but for various reasons I'm not about to trust the school. I can be sent to prison for a maximum of 2 years and fined $50,000 if I break these laws. Being absent from my children's lives for 2 years would damage their development. I can present all this information to my children and ask them to decide if they want me to know where they are at all times. You could make the argument that they're not mature enough to give me that permission.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    What's the worst that's going to happen? They'll dart out into the road and get hit by a car? That could happen just as easily if you're around and haven't taught them road safety, and if you have then you needn't be around. Abducted by a stranger? In reality this almost never happens, and you should teach your kids about safe ways to interact with strangers. Slip and bust open their knee? Teach them how to deal with wounds and they'll learn from the experience. Worse - a broken arm? Teach them how to get help when you're not around. You can't be there 24/7, so you should prepare them for when you're not. And if they're prepared, you don't have to be there all the time. This is good for them and good for you.

greedo 8y ago

Utterly ridiculous. Parents have a responsibility to supervise their children. This is clearly defined by law in most countries, and for good reason; children are not emotionally ready to exert self-autonomy. They lack the cognitive skills and experience to do so. They lack the legal ability to exert control over their property, to engage in contracts, etc etc. Now should parents monitor every moment of their children's life? No. But they have a duty and responsibility to supervise their children. Children should be given expanding freedoms as they mature, but this (again) needs to be supervised.

deweller 8y ago

> Children ... ought to be given autonomy over themselves, their property, and their privacy No no no. My 10 year old child definitely should not have adult-level autonomy. It is my responsibility as a good parent to train my child by limiting aspects of their life. My children do not have unsupervised access to the internet. They do not have unlimited screen time. They cannot go on social networks and make friends with random people. It is my job as a parent to not abuse my position as a parent. But I would fail my children greatly if I gave them autonomy over many aspects of their life. As they prove themselves adept at self-regulation, growing wisdom and good judgement then, and only then, do I grant them more autonomy.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
It's fair to say that there's a balance to be struck here, but I think that strapping a spying device on their wrist is far from that balance. Most parents grant them that autonomy you're talking about way, WAY too slowly. Would you let a 5 year old walk a couple of blocks down to the corner store to buy milk alone? If your answer is no, you're on the "too slow" side of the spectrum in my opinion.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  I tend to be fairly permissive, but having a 5-year old walk a couple blocks (by definition, crossing at least one street and likely multiple) is not on the right side of the risk spectrum for me. I suspect this depends largely on the local traffic situation (controlled intersections vs not, crosswalks vs not, prevailing traffic speeds and density, etc).
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    Your kid can dart into the street even when you're with them. You should teach your kids about traffic safety at an early age, and ideally have made this particular trip with them several times before so that they (1) know how to behave and (2) don't get lost and (3) have been introduced to the shopkeep and others in the neighborhood. It's pretty easy to gradually ramp up to this and to continue ramping up to more indepdendence at a much faster pace than most parents do.

skybrian 8y ago

This is trivializing real child abuse and a lot of other complicated things about parent-child relationships with superficial "rights" language. Kids are not just little adults.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
I went through this and the other kinds of abuse growing up, and so did people close to me. Psychological abuse is still abuse and it has a profound impact on the rest of your life.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Sorry to hear that! Unfortunately this abstract stuff is basically vagueposting: it might help you feel better but not a whole lot gets across to the reader. I'd like to hear your story sometime but I don't want to invade your privacy.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    I kept it vague for the same reasons that you don't want to invade my privacy. Despite being vague it does serve the purpose I intended it to: dispelling your argument that I don't understand abuse or that I'm "trivializing" "real" abuse.
    - brlewis 8y ago
      The original comment that says anything short of "autonomy over themselves, their proprerty, and their privacy" is child abuse still does trivialize real abuse. I think you still have time to edit that comment to be more specific about the kinds of non-autonomy you think of as abuse.

username223 8y ago

I find it hard to believe that this product exists. Can any of you imagine what it would have been like to grow up wearing a GPS tracker? What's next -- internet-connected chastity belts?

cmurf 8y ago

This is one possible ideological argument. There are many successful alternatives based on culture, clan, tribe, and family units making these decisions, rather than primarily parents. There are highly individualistic ideologies and highly communal ones, and a continuum between them. It's easy to criticize any extreme example, but right vs wrong is just binary logic and isn't that interesting or relevant. The consequences are what matter, and those are complex, much of which are neither good nor bad. Ownership of children is baked into most language. The language reflects the relationships. My child. My mom. My sister. My dog. I wouldn't call that psychological damage but I would call it programming. I also wouldn't call it either right or wrong, it merely is so, and there are consequences that follow. A good deal of that is stability. Brave New World is but one example of disrupting these units and relationships.

qwsxyh 8y ago

A lot of things we do to children is child abuse and is swept away without concern. All the while the attitude that "children have no rights and I should be able to parent them the way I like" is prevalent, it's never gonna stop.

sokoloff 8y ago
What's the practical alternative to parents parenting the way they like? The choices we make for our kids are almost surely different than the choices you make for yours and the many "theys" for the many "theirs". I think that's a feature of the system, not a bug. That some parents make terrible choices is on them, not on society, IMO.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  A comprehensive "this is how children are raised" law is not practical, but banning tracking your children with GPS is certainly possible (and Germany did it, per TFA). The more subtle parts are done with community engagement and gradual cultural shifts.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    > banning tracking your children with GPS is certainly possible (and Germany did it, per TFA) From TFA, I don't read the German ban as being a prohibition on GPS-based tracking, but rather on secretive audio eavesdropping being the problematic functionality.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      Ah, so it seems.

mac01021 8y ago

I want my child to have as much autonomy as possible early on. Like before the age of 10 if she can ride her bike across town to her friends house or get on a bus to the mall or playground or library, I will be very happy. The the automobile traffic terrifies me. Having the ability to see when she's safely off the road, or if she's stopped in a place that seems like it could be an accident could be the difference between me choosing to afford her all that freedom or not. Also, I won't ask her to habitually carry any kind of traffic device without giving here equivalent visibility into my movements.