The site: https://relaygo.com/
If I'd give her the walkie-talkie then my wife would call her every 10 minutes and ask her where is she. Tracking her with a GPS would keep me calm but I don't think it will help my daughter.
The only time I freaked out was when she removed the watch and she didn't come home on time: I went out to look for her and in the meantime, she went home. Realizing that she may go home on another path I went back home and found her watching TV. Honestly I think that those devices are meant to keep the parents calm, not for the sake of the children.
I think you're absolutely right that our product may do more to help parents feel secure letting their kids roam, rather than actually making them safer. Still, if it gets kids out more and helps parents feel more comfortable, I think that's a win.
Anyway, the device looks nice and is a step in the right direction to overcome the fear of the parents.
Good luck with your business.
i fail to see the practical difference. if would-be predators are staying home, it is still safer for kids to go play outside.
I don't have children yet so I'm probably way out of turn when I say I like the "be home for dinner" method after a certain age.
Sometimes we'd come home scraped up and dirty, but we'd be okay. My mother was about 10 feet away when my brother broke his arm.
It's just such a game of chance. It's probably best not to train for fear, though. (as a general philosophy, not addressing any anecdotes here)
If kids are safer because they are staying at home, then we can’t criticise parents for not letting them out to play by themselves. That would be like saying Donald Trump doesn’t need bodyguards since very few presidents have been attacked.
I suppose because I'm not a parent, I don't have that built in level of worry / paranoia, though I "fondly" remember how fearful my own mother was, but I don't get it. Isn't the point of letting your kid venture out to help them establish and explore freedom and boundaries?
You tell your child not to stay out past the street lights, not venture past certain landmarks, and then let them roam. If they comply, great! If not, they learn actions have consequences.
If I were a kid, I'd make sure to conveniently forget / power off / not charge / lose that thing as much as possible.
Those consequences may mean that everyone is looking for them whole night. Or severe injury. Or you having to deal with cops due to trespassing.
Or that they will bully other kids and you won't be there to learn it happened and deal with it.
There are consequences as in "teacher is angry for 5 minutes" and then there are consequences.
Also, if my kid would intentionally loose devices like that, that kid would have less freedom and later then the kid I could trust.
Similar with bullying and worry about potential bad influence group.
Some of which are potentially fatal.
Why don't we put pads on the kids, helmets, head gear and mouth pieces
Then we could pad the floor and walls, put cameras inside bathroom stalls
NOFX - Separation of Church and Skate[0]
Or they die, which kinda sucks.
Look, I'm generally in favour of kids wandering about the place like I did when I was a kid, but even back then we had a tragically high number of kids getting themselves crushed under farm equipment, falling from heights and landing hard, getting exposed to hazardous materials, or drowning in pits full of animal shit.
It's simply disingenuous to act as if the worst that can happen is a wee scrape and a lesson learned.
> but even back then we had a tragically high number of kids getting themselves crushed under farm equipment, falling from heights and landing hard, getting exposed to hazardous materials, or drowning in pits full of animal shit.
I think it's a bit odd to act as if kids are routinely parading around industrial zones. It sounds as if you and I grew up in vastly different parts of the world.
I do wonder if it is a particularly American thing to take the wild exception as the norm like this.
My mom was often worried, but she set just a few hard rules: Come back inside when the streetlights go on, don't talk to anyone you see while out, don't go anywhere further than the parking lot alone. And that was fine, and we got smart because of it. We were vigilant and carefree at the same time. We crossed roads looking both ways to get to parks we'd never been to. And we pushed the boundaries a little to see what would happen.
Me and my female friend were once approached by a guy "looking for a dog". He wanted us to come with him to the dog park to help him look for it. Understanding what it could mean, we said no and ran inside-- as we'd been taught. Since we were given the freedom to make such decisions, and since we'd seen danger before, we knew the "right thing" to do and we chose to do it.
I didn't have a cell phone back then. I'm sure if I was given one I'd promptly "lose it" just as you say. In suburbia it's just not necessary to be in constant contact with your kid. They're not gonna call you unless you've raised them to be as docile and paranoid as yourself. They won't need to.
First of all, the dangers of modern phones to emotional health, for adults as well as children, I think is very well established by now.
So this device seems like a decent compromise for overly concerned parents (this is a redundant phrase).
I think there are also benefits for the child. In earlier generations, children would need to run home to ask permission to stay out longer or engage in a new activity. Now they can make those requests with less interruption to their current activities.
"If they comply, great! If not, they learn actions have consequences."
The key is to figure out what level of consequences they are ready to handle at different points in their development.
For example, in the online account management section, where one can set up the channel (I'm just guessing how it works, I don't know how it gets set up), an option can be toggled to enable/disable the parents getting the capability to initiate a call or not, and this option is protected by a second password which only the kid knows, so that parent and kid set up this property together, in an agreement, and the parents can't override the agreement unless the kid also agrees and enters the password.
This would help chronic helicopter parents to not be able to constantly call their kids and possibly tell them to send them the gps coordinates or bug them otherwise.
The same should go for GPS access, that only kids can send position updates to the parents, and optionally, if both agree (again, protected with the kids password), let the parents poll the GPS data.
[edited] I know you market yourself as tetherless, but I'm referring to something as simple (and optional) as the mechanism Roku does for their wrist straps on remotes (and Nintendo Wii, etc):