Forget Big Brother, Mum and Dad are watching!
Calvin posted this on Jun 7th 2007 under Children, Evening Echo Column, Parenting, Writing
We’re heading to the continent on holiday soon. Heading to the continent with a little blonde three-year-old girl who’s just on the cusp of turning four.
I’ve tried over the weeks not to draw too many parallels between our little one and little Madeline McCann, but as our trip draws nearer I’m starting to find some of those parallels inescapable. What the McCanns have gone through, and continue to go through, must be the worst thing imaginable for any parent. It doesn’t even bear thinking about.
You can bet one thing – while we’re away we won’t be letting the girls out of our sight for a second.
Understandably the dreadful events in Portugal have made most parents super-wary. But some parents have started to take parental vigilance to extremes that border on the ridiculous. Forget baby monitors that let you listen to your baby cooing in the other room; they’re positively stone-age compared to the arsenal of modern gadgets and gizmos that worried parents are employing to keep tabs on their charges.
Now you’re just as likely to find a wireless webcam monitoring the nursery – so that Mum and Dad can keep a wary eye as well as an ear on their little ones. Of course, in house surveillance won’t help when you’re out and about, but enterprising parents are adapting other technologies. You’ve heard about the GPS tracking systems that let you pinpoint your car if it’s stolen? Well, you can now get a version over the internet that’s small enough to secret about your young child’s person – and that’s exactly what some parents are doing.
It’s not cheap, and it’s not 100% accurate all the time, but if the child goes missing it will send his or her location to your mobile phone – or you can log-on to a secure website to get their coordinates. The technology was developed for people at risk of kidnap overseas – such as UN workers – but it’s being adapted for sale to worried parents.
Which all sounds pretty clever – but is it really where we want to head? As parenting becomes more “James Bond†than “James and the Giant Peachâ€, manufacturers of spy-like gadgets and surveillance gear are clamouring to supply this blossoming market with all the high-tech jiggery-pokery it demands.
The problem of course, is that once you head down the road of practically perpetual surveillance of your children, where do you stop? Is it OK to use technology to keep tabs on your teenager’s whereabouts, for example, or to make sure your older son or daughter is driving sensibly when they borrow your car? In the US cars are being fitted with spy-cam style systems that keep track of teenage children’s driving habits. Drive too fast or break too hard and the system records video footage of the incident and e-mails the parent to let them know about it.
You can get mobiles that you can ring with a special number so that they answer automatically, letting you listed to what’s happening in the vicinity; you can get software installed on a phone that will secretly copy all text messages sent and received on it to another number; you can even get a device that lets you “recover†all of the deleted text messages from a mobile phone. But just because you can do these things, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
Children need space – space to grow and develop, to learn and take risks. They also need parents to show them a bit of respect and trust. There’s a fine line between concern for your children’s safety and stifling their independence. Surreptitious monitoring is no replacement for spending time with them, engaging with them, listening to them, and, at the end of the day, trusting them. For all it’s appeal keeping tabs on your children by stealth can backfire – and once you lose that bond of trust, you’ll never get it back.
Technorati Tags: Big Brother, surveillence, parenting, technology
