Baby LoJack and Teen Surveillance: Can (Should) Technology Replace Good Parenting?

Adorable baby photo courtesy of Flickr user //endless

So, I happened to catch one of those sanctimonious Duracell commercials in which having a pair of double A batteries saves the world from blowing up, prevents a small child from falling down a glass-shard-encrusted well, or some such nonsense.  This particular commercial depicted a mom spending an afternoon in the park with her children.  Mom turns around for a millisecond and little Timmy is gone.  But not to panic!  Mom has a Brickhouse Child Locator System (powered, of course, by Duracell).

Using GPS technology, little Timmy is equipped with a homing tag (at present this is an external device that can be worn or stored in a pocket or backpack) and his mom has the Locator which beeps faster as the homing tag gets nearer.  Crisis averted.

I was curious about this Child Locator system (which I fondly like to think of as “Baby LoJack”) so I checked out the website of the makers: Brickhouse Security.  They have some interesting products for “child safety”: hidden nanny cams (one looks just like an air purifier, another is disguised as an alarm clock), a GPS teddy bear, and bulletproof backpacks! Who are these kids’ parents?  Jack Bauer?

But then I found their “Teen Tracking” product line (“As seen on Fox News!”).  Get a load of this:

Sex, Drugs & Reckless Driving. Teen Tracking will put you as parents back in control. Sleep peacefully while your daughter or your son is out, monitoring their movements. Your children are counting on you to keep them safe.

Wanna know what you kid is text-messaging?  No problem!  Get a Cell Phone Spy Data Extractor.

Worried that Cindy Ann and her new bf are making out in your station wagon?  Put the kibosh on that with a CarCam Voyager.  Over 8 hours on one video card!

Wanna know if Johnny is really at baseball practice but don’t want to, you know, ask him?  Say no more!  Brickhouse’s got you covered.  Slip one of their Super PocketTrack Covert GPS Tracker pens into his (bulletproof) backpack!

Not quite invasive enough for you?  Why don’t you attach a Brickhouse Key Logger to his computer?  See over 64,00 keystrokes- even passwords!

Think Annie is lying to you?  Do you suspect that she is having premarital sex?  Don’t sit down and have a frank, heart-to-heart, mother-daughter talk!  And there is certainly no need to place any trust in your teen.  Technology is here for you!  Try Brickhouse’s Portable Lie Detector!  It can analyze any voice in person or on the phone.  And best of all, it has super cute graphics: “the Demon icon’s nose and horns grow when someone tells a lie.”  Nice touch!

Still have doubts?  Why not make like a CSI and invest in a Brickhouse Semen Detector?  (No, seriously.)

It’s a brave new world, huh?

Nanny Bustin’ Blog

Have you heard about I Saw Your Nanny ? Apparently, parents, nannies, and general do-gooders/tattletales send in sightings of bad nanny behavior.

I’m conflicted on this one. There have been plenty of times when I’ve witnessed dubious behavior on the part of caretakers- both in my library and out on the street. And often, I’ve wished there was some way to contact the parents of these children.

The bad behavior I’ve witnessed has never crossed the line into abuse. At most, I would say I’ve seen nannies being negligent and just plain clueless.

Case in point: I knew a nanny who brought her two charges into the library almost every day of the week after school. For the most part, the kids were fairly well-behaved. But even the best kids have off-days and need, you know, adult supervision. This particular nanny would stare into space, chat with her friends, try to sneak-eat McDonald’s from out of her purse, and generally do anything except interact in any meaningful way with the two children she was being paid to look after.

The kids would climb the bookshelves, topple the furniture, scream out obscenities, run around barefoot. The pretty standard stuff kids do when left to their own devices. My co-workers and I were on constant patrol with these children and tried to impress upon the nanny time and again that she needed to take a more active role in watching them and perhaps show them a bit of attention once in a while.

Now, the kicker to this story is that despite her rampant neglect when it came to reprimanding the kids for things that were blatantly inappropriate, there was one thing she would not allow the kids to do: “annoy” the librarian by asking for…..wait for it…..BOOKS! That’s right. It was totally okay to knock books off the shelves and draw on the furniture- but ask the librarian to help you find a book? That’s where this particular nanny drew the line!

I don’t know what to tell you. I wouldn’t believe half the things that go on in the public library had I not witnessed them myself.

But getting back to I Saw Your Nanny. As much as part of me is tempted, I’m not convinced this is the most appropriate way to deal with negligent nanny behavior. What do you think?