Tell me a parenting issue everyone struggles with with tweens and teens, but ...
about.
“Rina, I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their”
kid anymore.
I'm Rina 9 and welcome to ASLISA, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and
on Dr. Lisa Demor, we bring you science back strategies for managing anxiety, discipline, intense emotions, and more. We decode tough parenting issues with tips you can use right now. So subscribe to ASLISA, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and join our YouTube community today.
Just Google, Ask Lisa podcast, we're here to help you untangle family life. Episode 262, tracking teens, safety tool, or trustbreaker. You know, one of the things about parenting that I'd love in the digital era is you can kind of see where your kid is. They can kind of see where I am, how close I am to pick up if I'm really, really where
I say I am. I'm on my way, I'm on my way, I say exactly right, exactly right.
But I love that we're taking on this topic about, you know, is it really okay to continue
tracking your teens as they get older? What do we need? How do we need to think about this? I'd love to get into this letter, Lisa, yeah, do it, dear Dr. Lisa, I'm writing because I'm stuck in a standoff with my 16 year old son and I'm not sure what to do until recently
we used location sharing on his phone. It wasn't something we talked much about. It was just part of the deal, mostly. So I knew he got where he said he was going and could find him if something went sideways. A few weeks ago, I realized his location was no longer available.
When I asked about it, he told me calmly, not to finally, that he'd started turning off his location sharing so he, quote, wouldn't be tracked. Part of me understands that he's a teenager and wants privacy. Another part of me feels genuinely anxious. This is a kid who's driving more, staying out later and spending time in places I don't
always know well. I'm not trying to spy on him, but knowing where he is has actually helped me sleep at night. And I explained that he pushed back. He said it makes him feel like I don't trust him and that he deserves some autonomy.
He also pointed out accurately that he's never been in serious trouble and generally does what
he's supposed to do. Now we're locked in a loop. I worry that turning off his phone is unsafe and he insists that being tracked is unfair. I'd really appreciate your guidance on how to think this through and how to talk about it with my son in a way that doesn't turn this into a power struggle.
We both lose. Thank you.
“A concerned and tired dad, Solissa, who's right, the dad or the kid?”
It's perfect, Reina. It is perfect. They are both right. They are both right. There's no answer on this one where there is anything other than this is the picture
of healthy adolescence and it is, why teenagers are hard. It's why teenagers are hard. We cannot guarantee their safety. We do lose sleep, worrying about them and where they are and what they're up to. This Reina I have found over the years is an irreducible reality of having a teenager.
And I get it where the kid is coming from and I get it where the dad is coming from. So they got to figure this out and we can try to help but like there is no slam dunk answer on this one. So on the part of trying to figure this out, I think all of us parents feel the dad's concern.
You just want to know and especially if you know there are new locations that he's going to be at or maybe new friendships, you just want to know, especially at night, you really do. So what would you say about the dad's worry here? So I will tell you, like the dad is centering this on safety and I actually don't think
he has much of a like to stand on. But I do think I do see why he's bringing that up with the kid. Because kid might be like, why do you need this and if it has this well, it's a safety thing, then there seems to be an argument there. I actually don't agree.
I think there's a couple of things.
“One is, I have seen kids do all the wrong things in all the right places, right?”
Like the parent things are like, oh, they're at that very tame household. The kid is doing all sorts of things they should not be doing at that household. I have also seen kids who are in what the parent feels to be the wrong place who are actually, I had a kid getting big trouble. Our parent told her not to go to a particular house after a homecoming dance.
And then her date wanted to go to a party there. And the girl went to drop the kid off her date off at the party and was headed home. And the parent was watching this and thought that his daughter was going to the party and got super pissed. And she got it.
She, like, she actually was conforming.
So I think the safety question is a tricky one, is a really tricky one. Because the other thing, and I feel this very strongly, we can't keep our kids safe when they're not with us. That's not actually how safety works.
And so if your kid is out and about, you are basically having to assume that they can
keep themselves safe. And so I think to say, like, I track you to keep you safe. Well, I don't want some teenager thinking, like, I'm going to party and I can do whatever I want because eventually somebody will find me. Like, that's not the kind of reasoning that actually keeps kids safe.
So I don't want to think the safety argument holds up.
“I think the parent piece of mind argument can, right?”
Like, if the parent is like, I need to know that you are at the house where I think you are. So I can go to sleep. Or I need to know that you are, you know, you're later than I thought you would be coming back from this, you know, sports event.
I am now worrying that you have gotten into a terrible accident. I can look and see that your car is moving along at a steady pace towards the house. Now I can go to sleep and trust that you'll be home at a reasonable hour. Like, if there's an argument to be made, it's the parent piece of mind argument. But I don't know that the parent piece of mind argument outmatches the teen privacy argument.
What do you think? Well, I, I want to be able to track my kid, you know, I want to know where they are. It's quite frankly. I just know it, so I'm quite frankly, I'm having difficulty accepting this answer because I'm on the dad side and I do agree with the safety piece because I think that is
legit. You know, there, what is it, the frontal court, the front, the prefrontal cortex is still developing. They make bad choices. They definitely do.
“For any parent who needs a scientific reason, there you go.”
We have it. I, I understand you're, you're also trying to protect the teen here, but I, I just, I mean, I know someone who tracks her 80 year old mother. You know, if they vote to know where she is, you know, I'm actually, and I now track my folks because they are well into their 80s.
And Rina, I will tell you, I mean, we did an episode on this several years ago. My own tracking activity has changed dramatically in that time and I frankly love tracking. Like, I will, I'm totally with you. I track my husband. I track my 15 year old, I track my parents and sometimes I'm like, I wish I could
track everybody.
Like, like, I have my work wife, you know, my office and I'm always like, oh, she
on her way. Like, I'm like, why can't I track her? Because she's a grown adult who I don't have any reason to track her. But I, I am, I love tracking, I love tracking my younger daughter and I am such a hypocrite because I will tell you that tracking has allowed me to let my younger daughter, my 15 year
old do more of what she wants because I'm like, well, I can see her walking to her friends house and I can see she got there. So I, I absolutely am with you on the complexity of this and yet I am thinking, this is a 16 year old who has said, it feels like an invasion of my privacy. I have done nothing to make you think that I need to be tracked.
I don't want it.
“And I think the reason I'm coming down on the kids side.”
Yeah. No. Okay. I hear you on the kids side. I hear you.
But why is this child shutting the track her off in certain moments when, especially if it's at night, I want to know where, so I'm having difficulty accepting your answer today, Lisa. I know. I know I love it.
I love it. I think a lot of people will. I think a lot of people will. Friends, I am so excited that in a couple of weeks I'm going to be speaking at and recording a live podcast from the Common Sense Media Summit on Kids and Families.
Now I've been a fan of Common Sense Media since my older daughter was three and now she's 22, so a long time. They are a non-profit organization that helps parents, myself included, navigate the ever-changing digital landscape with confidence. I have turned to them for years for their ratings and guidance on TV shows and movies
and digital apps. And they've made a nice, neutral sort of third party with my own kids about what's appropriate for them.
On top of that, they generate incredible research.
You have heard us refer to it often on this podcast, incredible, valuable stuff. So visit Common Sense Media to learn about all the amazing parenting resources to help you stay informed about the digital platforms your kids may love spending time on. Sign up for their parenting newsletter and stay ahead of media and digital trends. I've been aware for a while that non-stick cookware, which I kind of like, does have
coatings on it that are not good for us or the environment, but I haven't been quite sure what else to use. Okay, enter Carroway Cookware.
These are ceramic pots and pans, and one thing that's amazing about ceramic i...
it's sort of naturally non-stick, so you don't need a lot of oil or butter to get your
eggs to slide right off of it and it also cleans up easy because things aren't sticking to it. Carroway Cookware's set is a favorite for a reason, and it can save you up to $190 versus buying the items individually. Plus, if you visit CarrowayHome.com/AskLisa, you can take an additional 10% off your
next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit CarrowayHome.com/AskLisa or use code AskLisa at checkout. Carroway. Non-Toxicookware made modern.
Okay, so I think that if the dad needs to make the case, if the dad truly needs to make the case, he's going to have to go through the piece of mind or, right? If it is very hard for me to go to sleep at night, if I don't know where you are. And frankly, you're a good kid, I'm going to give you a read, you know, if you want to say out to them at night or whatever the driving laws in our community allow by way of
curfew, I'm okay with that, but I actually also don't want to stay up until you get in the house. So, you know, I think that there may be a conversation where the dad says, but he just do me a solid. It's not that I actually don't trust you, it's that I need to sleep at night.
Is that an opening, right?
“Is that I think is actually more, I think it's usually what the issue is, right?”
Like, because if we play out the safety thing, like, you worry that your kid has gotten into an accident, right? Like, say that that's the worry. Like you worry that your kid has gotten into an accident and they're not coming home and, you know, you need to see where their car is, like, that that is the worry.
Okay, what can you do in that moment to have addressed this problem? Not really anything. Like, it's happened, right?
The solution is not in the hands of the parent in this moment.
The solution is elsewhere. Okay, you worry your kid has passed out drunk at a party, right? And you are texting on calling them, or you worry that your kid's gone to the wrong house. If the kid has passed out drunk at a party and you're texting on calling and they're not responding, but you can see they're at the party, you don't know if they're passed
out drunk or if they're just not responding to you, what are you going to do to you and drive over to the party, right, I mean, like, if you actually play out all the safety stuff, it's hard to come up with situations where the parent knowing the kid's location
“is the thing that's going to keep the kid safe, right?”
It's really hard. What I will say, I think there's two, like, places the dad could try to, like, make some headway. One is like, buddy, just let me sleep at night. That's the only reason it's not that I don't trust you.
The other is, I will be okay with this, but we need to agree that if you ever feel like you're in a jam, you're going to send me your location and then I will come for you, right? Like, so that's a way where the parent can say, you are able to keep yourself safe and you are making good decisions and I'm going to generally trust that, also things go sideways for teenagers sometimes and I am on your team and I am on your side and I'm going to count
on you to reach out to me if that happens. I wonder if your advice, I mean, you seem to sort of really lay out the teen side on this and kind of supporting that standpoint of helping us understand that, this is a well-behaved
teen, I mean, in this letter, the dad says he's never been in serious trouble, would
your guidance be different if it was the teen showing us risky behavior? I think what, and actually, clinically, I've cared for a family where the teen did do something really dumb, got very, very drunk at a party, ended up in the ER, right? Okay, so terrible nightmare scenario, right? And, you know, the parents had tracking on, the fact that they had tracking did not prevent
“this from happening and the only way they were able to let this kid go out again was”
that they said we're going to track you and we need to know where you are at all times for a period of time and that was actually the thing that allowed him to leave the house at all. So, I think there's that situation, I'm also thinking, I'm really trying to be sympathetic to like, I get it, like a lot of people feel like this is the safety issue, this is
the safety issue and I really don't want to be dismissive of that while prioritizing the fact that like, I don't think it's worth blowing up a relationship with a good 16-year-old who's behaving, I mean, they're all good, you know, well-behaved 16-year-old over surveillance questions, right? Well, I'm coming down so strongly on the kid's side, are there other scenarios though?
Like, I think we think about like, what if there were a terrible event at a kid's school, right? Like, would, would tracking somehow benefit anybody, right? Like, can you think that one's through with me? Like, what do you think?
Just being able to know where they are, you're able to, yeah, I mean, I think...
always the concern, as a parent, it gives you a piece of mind just knowing, okay, they
got to where they are or they're at where they are, right? Yeah. And maybe it's instead of saying, I just want to know where you are for safety, maybe it's
“you have to say what it really is, which is, it puts my mind at ease and maybe that's”
the way we need to frame it. I think that usually, I think that's honestly, you know, well, they're connected, obviously, like, we're worries about their safety, then mess with that piece of mind, but we don't really keep them safe by tracking them, though there may be situations I'm not thinking, yeah, but I'm trying to think of them.
But I think saying, it just makes me more at ease and, and frankly, it allows me to grant you more freedom, right? I think there's a lot of, you know, that's an argument that I really believe, like, we all kids to be having more freedom. And if this is something in this anxious universe in which we exist, that makes that possible,
that's probably, you know, a net benefit, right? And, and I'm thinking about my own hypocrisy where I'm saying, like, I totally track my 15-year-old, right? And part of it is, she isn't bristling at it. If the day came where she was like, if feels creepy, like, this kid is saying, it feels
creepy, I would be in the very uncomfortable position of having, you know, be where this dad is, which is, but I still like it, I want to do it and you don't want me to do it.
“But I think, you know, if I, if I'm really honest about it, I would have to sort of say”
to her, all right, we'll hear my concerns. Like, I need to know that you're going to be in touch with me as something goes wrong. I need, you know, if you're going to be out late, I think I want to revisit this question of, um, going to sleep at night and can I, can we maybe have a conversation about tracking you for certain situations where you turn the tracking off and on, but it's not an
all the time thing, right? And I think, I think that that's some of what I would want to have to think through.
Is turn age where, like, up until this age, it's always okay and totally acceptable to
track your, your kid. Um, I don't know. I mean, I think there's lots of families who have devices of one kind or another that they use with younger kids that actually let the kids run more free and I'm a pretty big fan of those.
Um, in some of our suburban communities around here, like, you know, they're, whether they're watches or things like that, where it's the thing that lets the family be like, yeah, or take your bike, you know, just, you know, as long as we know where you are. So I think that, I'm very easy going about, um, I think this 16 year old's like right in that sweet spot of like, I get it.
I totally get it where he, the kid doesn't like it and the parents still wants it.
“I do think, I think there's really interesting questions about tracking kids at college, right?”
When you are home and your kid is a college, um, I do not track my college age daughter. She doesn't, she does not want to be tracked if I asked her. She'd say no, um, Barina, back to your point. There was a night where she was getting back to college and it was late. Her sister tracks her and I asked to see her sister's phone to know she made it back to
her door, right? So like, I just, I can live in the complexity of this while also calling a lot of questions about whether tracking kids actually keep some safe, but I wanted to go to that. And I needed to know she was back in her dorm. And I wasn't 100% sure that if I texted her, saying, let me know when you get back
to your dorm. I don't know that she would have caught it. She's very good about turning her phone off. Like, I mean, like, I, I cheated, I don't know if that's really cheating. I think that is good to have, uh, backway options to get it now.
Okay, so here's something you don't know about me. Midway through graduate school, I had this momentary crisis of like, do I really want to be a psychologist or do I want to be an interior decorator?
Because I've always loved making my spaces just so.
And I remember sharing this with an advisor who said Lisa, psychology is interior decoration, which was of course lovely and charming and I stayed in school. But I have continued to love making spaces just so. And one of my favorite favorite partners in doing this is Wayfair. So Wayfair is a giant website that has everything you could possibly need to make your
home look and work just the way you want it to. They are my favorite. I rely on heavily and I am thrilled to have them as a partner in this podcast. But organized refreshed and back on track for Wayless, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home.
That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com, Wayfair, every style, every home. One of the things I love to do is to go to my spinning class. I go, I get a really hard workout, I sweat a lot, and part of what makes this all feel
Good is that I always take element with me.
An element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink, it comes either in a powder that you mix
with water or in cans of a sparkling form. And not only does it help me stay hydrated, but it also skips the food dyes, skips the other dodgy ingredients that are often found in popular electrolyte and sports drinks. It's not unusual that later in the day, I still feel a little thirsty. I still feel like I could use it more of that really careful balance that element accomplishes
of sodium and potassium and magnesium. And for this, I love their cans, the 12 ounce cans of the sparkling element. Receive a free element sample pack with any drink order at drinkeliment.com/asklisa. That's drinkeliment.com/asklisa, d-r-i-n-k-l-m-n-t.com/asklisa.
You know, we talked about tracking a few seasons ago and, you know, so much changes so
quickly in the digital space, but I'm just curious if your thought process on this has changed at all since we spoke about it a few seasons ago.
“I think my sympathy for tracking has gone up.”
I think a few seasons ago I wasn't tracking as much as I am now. I didn't like it as much as I do now. And, you know, a lot of what I'm using up for arena and I think a lot of families are, my younger daughter runs cross-country and so she has meets all over Northeast Ohio and they're a long bus ride's back and I'm not worried about the safety of the bus so much
is like, "I want to know how much time I have before I need to get in my carto-go pick-and-row at school." And so being able to see where her, she is, is a huge asset. So there's, I think what we're opening up is if we call it what it is, right, that it's a lot of peace of mind, right, it's not necessarily safety, it's like I need to, I just
want to be able to know that you got back to your dorm safe or that, you know, how far you're, sometimes it's convenience, right, like how far away you are, if a kid didn't
“want to be tracked, I think you could also then say, "Okay, but then the trade-off is,”
I still need the peace of mind," right, so I need to, you to text me that you got back to your dorm, or I need you to text me that you got to the party safely, or I think that's probably where you could meet a kid halfway. What do you think? Yeah, no, I think that's a great, I actually wanted to come back to this dad and the son
and ask you about that, like, what is the compromise here, so is that what you would suggest for them? I think that it would be something I'd have the dad put on the table, which is like, this is a peace of mind issue, so it's not about you being a bad kid, you're a great kid, it's just that I love you so much and I worry about you and I just need to know your
safe, you know? And I think, I think sometimes saying that, like, the number one thing in my whole world is you being safe, right, like nothing matters in my world if you're not safe, right? I think reminding adolescents that what can feel like hovering or surveillance, it doesn't, it's not about trust almost all the time, so I think that may soften the kid on being like,
“okay fine, that's what it's about, you could drag me, I doubt it.”
But then I think the dad may say, here's a solution I can think of that would let me sleep at night, what do you think about it, what are the solutions do you have, right? I mean, the kid may be able to come up with stuff, it's nice that tracking could be turned off and on so easily, so there may be scenarios where the dad says, you know what? You're going to be on a highway for three hours, I'm only cool with this, if I can just
know that you're not, that you're moving along at a steady pace, it's not about me trusting you, it's just, I'm just going to be anxious because you're on the highway, right? I think there may be some room to work in that, but if the kid's, if the kid's done nothing, if the kid's done nothing to raise questions about his judgment or his behavior, I have a lot of respect for a kid's rights to have privacy.
Guys, I'm surprised, I didn't expect that to be what you say, you know, I mean, you've always
been on the side of, we've got to be realistic about technology, right? We have to have realistic parameters, you've always been on the side of that. Is there something psychologically that we should know about why teens choose to shut their location services on and off? Why, for parents who don't understand, because we're so consumed by the safety issue, and
we, this is maybe our first kind of head to head on a big issue that's, that's of importance, why are they doing it, why do they feel so emphatic about it? Because I feel like what I am missing in this podcast is understanding why you really get why this is important for that. It's such a, it's such a key question, um, I think that we ask of teenagers something
That's nearly impossible, which is to become independent people while living ...
I think this is an extraordinary ask, right?
“Like, I know what my kid ate, I know what she wore, I know if her socks didn't match, right?”
Like, I mean, I know so much about my kid who lives under my roof, um, and yet this is a kid who in theory is supposed to be getting ready to leave us and move on and become, uh, you know, fully fledged many adults when she moves out.
Um, I think that's so much of how teenagers try to address this basically impossible task
of becoming independent while living under our roofs is to accomplish some sort of psychological autonomy, right, they hang out in their rooms and close the door. They want to be out and about without us knowing where they are or what they're up to. It's, um, it's like mid-wifing their way into adults and dependence. If we have total knowledge of every aspect of whether up to where they are, what they're
doing up until the moment they go on, right, move out, that's so weird. Like, that's like it's falling off a cliff, right? The kids trying to actually do something in between. So I, I think I just have kind of a, uh, just a general respect for the ways in which teenagers try to carve out a sense of an independent life while we know when their next ortho
appointment is, you know, I mean, it's just like, it's true. It's true. It's a funny thing. Yeah. It's such a funny thing.
So, I, um, I, I just, I value it for kids and I've, we had it, right now we had it.
“And there's not a lot of evidence, I think, I mean, setting aside, frankly, gun violence.”
Like, I don't know that the world's less safe now than it was. Um, and I don't know that you can set aside gun violence. But like, we, our parents, our parents didn't, they lost some sleep because we were teenagers. Mm-hmm. Great perspective Lisa, uh, great perspective, and it's also hard, I think, sometimes
rustics have that we are preparing them for independence when it's the opposite of what we have done for decades with them. So, yeah. It's a good reminder. It's a very good reminder.
Um, so what do you have for us, prepared to go?
I think the reason it's so, despite all my hypocrisies and all of the yeah, but it's and all the astrosks on my guidance here, I think the reason I have such a strong sense of like, you got to meet this kid where they are, maybe even more than halfway, is it's relationships that keep teenagers safe.
“If you want to know what keeps the teenagers safe, it's, it's their sense that if something”
goes sideways, I can call my folks, right? And I know this, like, took my marrow, right? The kid who doesn't feel like they can reach out to their parents because they are, you know, they don't have parents who are trustworthy or who, you know, they feel comfortable doing that with.
Those kids make me the most anxious in terms of their safety. And so given that this teenager is being reasonable, being respectful has not given the dad any reason to think that he's up to something he shouldn't be, I think there's a real hazard, if the dad is insistent, that it could damage this relationship and I'm like, that's the safety measure.
Like, that is the safety measure. The, like, kids can go, they can turn off their phones, they can do all sorts of things. The thing that keeps the kids safe is a good working relationship with at least one loving adult. So the negotiations around this phone, I think that's actually what you're trying to
protect more than you're right to know where the kid is. Mm. Well, thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much for your perspective and for getting us to look at a situation that feels so problematic, but from a totally different, I feel like this is an out of body experience
of trying to keep the fight for the team. No, I appreciate it. Next week, Lisa, we're going to talk about a daughter who is very obsessed with her appearance. I'll see you next week.
I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to ask Lisa at Dr. LisaDemore.com.
And now we'll work from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast is not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child's wellbeing, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you're looking for additional resources, check out Lisa's website at Dr. LisaDemore.com.
