A lot of parents are split up and/or work multiple jobs (especially in this economy). I can see this being implemented if it were to SMS when a kid gets home (to make sure they weren’t abducted) but not for checking up on their kid’s actual behavior (I was a “good kid” only as i was never caught o O ). Having it text when a kids gets home would at least give a peace of mind if I were in such a situation to need it!

Being a parent, I raised my kids to be trustworthy (as I would define it anyways) – but it’s the low-life element that I don’t trust… two reported abduction attempts in my medium-sized town in the last year. Trust me, I know some negative effect of trying to be Big Brother to kids – and there’s a fine line between protecting and smothering!

“Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.”
- Aldous Huxley

@Piku
What’s a house phone? :)

I like this, if the desire to circumvent this thing dosn’t teach the kids to hack than nothing will, what smart parents!

Neat system.

SpiffWilkie, I agree, there seem to be a few parent-less posters. From my POV, it’s the child that needs to build the parents trust, more than the reverse. The clock-in doesn’t seem very over the top to me. If the kids can manage to check in reliably, then it tells me the kid can be given more slack.

I’m with Jeremy that a webcam with motion and/or door detection seems a lot simpler.

I utilized a h/w keyboard logger during the first couple of years of the kids on-line life, and a logging gps for the first few months of solo driving. No, didn’t tell them, and as far as I know, they didn’t find out. If they had, that’d have been a bummer, but having them float out the door with nothing but the prayer that our parenting did the trick wasn’t my preferred option.

Looks fragile…

There was a saying once, “Trust, but verify.” All that is being done here is making sure that they were home when they were supposed to be home.

Trusting a teenager is dangerous, I was a “good” teenager and I still went to keg parties. No one would have suspected me to have done anything out of line. There is not a teenager yet that I would trust as far as I could throw myself.

If you don’t like this, don’t use it, your teenagers are probably real trustworthy. Some of you are teenagers, and I bet you are momma’s lil’ angel. You are so trustworthy that I am thinking about a neck bracelet to compliment this system.

The camera addition though, that is what is needed. A picture with the log in would prevent siblings from vouching for them. Taking the RFID antennae and either using doormats or door frames as the log in points. Also fixing the tag to the cell phones is a great idea. I don’t know a teen in existence that would leave home without it.

@Greycode… But still… you are probably glad you got to go to those keg parties… would you have been happier if parents + technology prevented you from *gasp* being at a party?

It intrigues me the impact that technology appears to have had on parenting in my (fairly short) time as an adult.

I’m young enough to remember being a kid, I’m at the age where I might start giving serious thought to starting a family myself (as I’m all grown up and married now), perhaps part the difference is living in the UK.

I remember clearly my parents just trusting me. If I blew that trust, shame on me. If I blew it twice, shame on them. There was always an amount of grace, an “OK, I trust you’ve learnt your lesson”, if it happened again, they’d be there waiting.

Personally, I learnt what was acceptable and unacceptable behaviour pretty quickly. I don’t think that has a lot to do with my own intelligence level or anything. I accept some people have specific difficulties which this kind of system would be well suited to, but (the point ‘ve been working around to) I can’t help but observe that these systems appear to become more and more popular all the time.

In the UK, it seems to have always been phone calls. Then mobiles became common place, and it’s texts / mobile calls. Now it’s facebook messages. Whatever it takes to keep tabs on people. Even when they’re 20 or more years old.

It saddens me. Why? Because for the people I know, they’ve grown to either be unable to make their own decisions, or to resent their parenting.

I think this is good hack, it’s interesting, and it’s got uses. Not sure I agree with what it’s being used for here.

Meant to add, and forgot:

Of course my opinion might move if I ever do become a parent. Maybe one day I will trip across a long ago archived copy of this thread on the “waybackmachine” and think “yeah, I was pretty ignorant back then”!

/wally

“Keep your kids in line with a time clock”

As opposed to some other kind of clock?

Couldn’t you simply beat your kids senseless with a regular mechanical clock until they behave?

Old tricks are the best tricks I always say.

@strider_mt2k: thanks, that made my day :)

@wally You’ve got the point, right on the money — and I am a parent. On this side of the pond there’s a movement to try and get back to the sort parenting we recall from just a couple of decades ago (Google “free range kids”) but it’s a slow uphill battle, fighting against shock journalism and a general fear of our own shadows that it has caused.

What a waste of a perfectly good Arduino.

Personally, I am under the impression that our teachers are essentially cattle herders, teaching however would put them on double duty.

@ reasonable, I am glad I got to go to them, but I saw people who did it all the time, and they grew up to be unwashed heathens. And now, they are growing up little unwashed heathens that will become unwashed hordes.

This is something that simply does what it is supposed to do. Make sure that a kid is following the rules of where to be, and when to be there. Nothing evil about it, and nothing extreme either. I would worry more about the children whose parents simply relied on trust, which I can assure you is a rare commodity in teenagers of any day and age. I do not fault the teenager, that is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They need to learn limitations, and this is simply showing them where those limitations are.

Bad parenting 101… those are going to be some messed up kids

I’m not so sure how this would mess up kids anymore than having Mom, or dad in the home after they arrive some school. Generations survived with mom being home to note. Many more generations survived have both mom, and dad around the farm or the family shop for most of the day being “smothering”. This is only a tool for newer realities, like all tools it can be use poorly or used well. My guess is those commenting against this are the parents of the little turds whose crap we have to endure, because the parents don’t do the most rudimentary monitoring of their angels.