"lojacking" your kids?!??

[molly2004]

Okay, maybe I've watched one too many episodes of CSI....

My guys are 2 and we're going to Disney for their 3rd birthday. They have always been with family, never even went off to daycare or been left with a non-family member. I had gotten some great tips off this board on keeping IDs on your child in discreet places in case they get lost. Then DH had to bring it up. He wants to lojack the kids! And now, I'm thinking I can't settle for anything less. I'm thinking that this would be a good precaution even when they start school.

So does anyone know if there's any such thing as a tracking device for young kids? Cell phones have them these days, but the kids are really too young for cell phones. What is a parent to do? Am I being overly paranoid? It can be such a scary and freaky world out there.

Any thoughts out there would be much appreciated. I know there are a some police officers on the board here too. Maybe some of you can offer your advice to keep our kids safe.

Thanks!

 

[NotUrsula]

Well, yes, of course there *are* tracking devices that are made for this purpose, thought they are most commonly used for adults who have developmental disabilities or dementia. http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/vbsik.html

Do I think you've been watching too much CSI? Um...yes. For the record, there has never been a verified-by-law-enforcement stranger abduction from any Disney park anywhere in the world. While I suppose there could always be a first time, it really is not likely--their security is very vigilant.

Honestly, your best investment would be in a stroller with a solid 5-pt. harness system, and also good sets of walking reins. (I recommend the UK brand Clippasafe.)

 

[DVCLiz]

Molly, not trying to be unkind, but yes, way too paranoid. Millions of families successfully vacation at WDW, and you will, too!!!! A stroller is a great idea, and some discreet ID wouldn't hurt if it makes you feel better, but a tracking device seems way over the top to me (and I don't even know what "lojack" means!)

Relax - and leave those guys with a babysitter once in a while!!

 

[NotUrsula]

FYI: Lo-Jack is a brand-name satellite tracking product that is installed in cars to enable them to be recovered if they are stolen. That firm doesn't actually make devices to track people. However, since it is the best-known name brand in tracking devices, people use it as a generic term for the idea.

Some hospitals do put security tags on newborns to prevent their being taken from the maternity floor without the staff's knowledge. Lots of people think of this as a Lo-Jack system, though it isn't. It is actually a checkpoint system such as is used to prevent theft of library books or store merchandise, and does not allow tracking of the tag once it successfully leaves the premises.

Electronic tagging is a lot more complicated and expensive than most people think it is, and it really isn't all that reliable over wide areas, especially not in applications involving the tracking of people.

 

[mouseplanner]

I found this idea somewhere on this board recently. Planning to use it with my kids, 4&6. Write out all pertinent info (names, your hotel info, cell #'s) on a small card and loop it through your child's shoelace (face down, if possible). You could also use a small luggage tag. Go over a procedure with your kids (many times) until they understand what to do and how to show someone how they can contact you. I always tell my kids to go to another mom with kids and tell her that they are lost - you can almost always count on another mom to get them to safety (sorry guys, don't mean to offend anyone, just a crazy world out there). Good luck and have fun!

 

[tmt martins]

I found this idea somewhere on this board recently. Planning to use it with my kids, 4&6. Write out all pertinent info (names, your hotel info, cell #'s) on a small card and loop it through your child's shoelace (face down, if possible). You could also use a small luggage tag. Go over a procedure with your kids (many times) until they understand what to do and how to show someone how they can contact you. I always tell my kids to go to another mom with kids and tell her that they are lost - you can almost always count on another mom to get them to safety (sorry guys, don't mean to offend anyone, just a crazy world out there). Good luck and have fun!

Your so right

Now I would get them to a CM and make sure they were alright.

But DW or Mother Teresa as we all call her would feed them buy them a Souvie all while looking for the confused and upset people who lost them. The kids would be telling her when all said and done NO thats not my MOM can we keep looking

 

[irishbosoxfan]

This is something DH have talked about--If they made Lojack for kids I'd be all over it---If we can microchip our pets why not our kids??? I would rather Lojack my kid than go thru the agony and heartbreak of having some pervert pedophile chester get their hands on them!!

If they would make this into a nationwide system where if your kids been kidnapped you can activate their chip so if chester takes them into a store the security system goes off and the home office can track where theyre at thereby cutting down on tracking time by the police and molestation time for my child--I say do it!

 

[rhiannonwales]

To each thier own but i for one refuse to have my kids a part of some national registry or tracking system.... too Orwellian for me.

To give in to a mentality of fear is in effect losing the battle before its even won.
Bad things happen.I wish they didnt.But by becoming a part of the fear cycle, your teaching kids that they should be afraid too.I'm not saying to blithely ignore that there are nuts out there, but a life lived in fear is no life at all.Sometimes as awful as it sounds bad things happen and all the technology in the world cant always prevent it.

There will ALWAYS be a way to get around the system...what if "chester" works for the microchip company? What if he is a cop? What if it is someone you KNOW who is authorized to transport the child?What if it happens in a "safe" place... your own home? At what point do you stop getting watchers for the watchers?

Sherrie

 

[rhiannonwales]

BTW it is an actual statistic that most abductions/molestations go from beginning to end in less than 2 hours. IF you did not realise your child was missing right away, by the time they got the system up and going and dispatched the authorities, it would likely be too late one way or another.

Now i dont mean to sound uncaring, i have 2 kids myself.But i think that worrying about all the endless thing that COULD happen is a waste of my time when i could be with my kids,teaching them NOT to do certain things which often lead to these events...Like internet chatting.

 

[toesmom]

here in canada i was at bonnie togs which is also american store, and i saw a product on the shelf which keeps child and parent close, and if child goes too far, an alarm goes off.

don't remember name, next time i go i'll check and report back

 

[irishbosoxfan]

To each thier own but i for one refuse to have my kids a part of some national registry or tracking system.... too Orwellian for me.

To give in to a mentality of fear is in effect losing the battle before its even won.
Bad things happen.I wish they didnt.But by becoming a part of the fear cycle, your teaching kids that they should be afraid too.I'm not saying to blithely ignore that there are nuts out there, but a life lived in fear is no life at all.Sometimes as awful as it sounds bad things happen and all the technology in the world cant always prevent it.

There will ALWAYS be a way to get around the system...what if "chester" works for the microchip company? What if he is a cop? What if it is someone you KNOW who is authorized to transport the child?What if it happens in a "safe" place... your own home? At what point do you stop getting watchers for the watchers?

Sherrie

I agree w/you on most counts but I believe "to be forewarned is to be forarmed"--Yes bad things do happen all the time and the watchers that are in place don't always do the best jobs but if they are who we are to depend on then I'd rather be prepared--If I have to research pedophile behavior to help my kids avoid them then I'd rather it be me who was immersed into their sadistic world than my children because I wanted them to have lives w/out fear and believe the world is just this hunky dory place where evil is not allowed to dwell.

A certain amount of fear is healthy--Fear is what keeps kids from running out in front of cars or jumping off a roof so why shouldn't it be something that keeps them from being kidnapped,raped and killed?

 

[rhiannonwales]

Yes some fear is healthy.However, I think the kind of fear learned here is that everyone is a potential murderer/molester.Thats the kind of fear that goes on well after they are grown.
The seeds we sow now will grow into fruit eventually.Not saying it would definetly happen, but i could see a child who is so terrified of such things growing up to be a person who trusts no one, who has no close connections, and has a problem with opening up to others.

And i never siad that i thought kids should think the world is a hunky dory place.My kids (well DD is only 2) know that not everyone is nice.But I have also told them that sometimes things happen and we dont know why.

 

[irishbosoxfan]

Everyone IS a potential murderer/molester!! I mean how does one know if someone is or isn't? We don't.! That's why we teach our kids not to get in cars with strangers and teach them not to help the lady who lost her puppy and to tell us if Mrs Soandso the daycare provider touched her/him in an inappropriate way. Because we don't know for sure who will do what,where or when.

I would rather have my kids be aware of what to look for and be safe instead of giving them some vague reason for something that happened.
As for them growing up to be untrusting individuals...If your car broke down on the highway at night and a man stopped and offered you a ride to the nearest gas station--Would you go?

 

[rhiannonwales]

No i would not.However i was referring to personal relationships, not some guy at night on the interstate.
My point to the OP was that there are some things which are just outside of our control.Why let them interfere with life?With all of our security and technology, are we any safer? I doubt it.If i spend my whole life protecting my kids from "chester" and it happens anyway, will knowing that i did all that protecting make the pain/grief/anger any easier to deal with? No.

Anyway it is obvious that that we will never come to an agreement on this issue.Why let it spiral into an arguement? The OP asked for opinions and i have given mine.

 

[molly2004]

Okay, I did not realize how much of a paranoid freak I sounded like. You know it was one of those things that made so much sense in your head, but after you've had a chance to think about it and hearing from all of you, I realized that I'm going way overboard...at least for the trip! Thanks for keeping me in check! At least when we are with them, I'm sure they will be okay since we'll not let them out of our sight. What we'll do when they're school aged...we'll figure it out then. Doesn't hurt to think about it though. It is a scary world out there!

Thanks for your input!

 

[molly2004]

To each thier own but i for one refuse to have my kids a part of some national registry or tracking system.... too Orwellian for me.
Sherrie

I wasn't suggesting a national registry. I was thinking more of a device you keep on your child like we keep our cell phones on us. If something happens, the authorities could track the signal. No! No registry for me!

 

[mouseplanner]

I'm not sure this is true but my husband who has been to WDW many times said there is a central location in each park for lost children. No matter where they are found, an employee will bring them to this location immediately. So, god forbid one should wander off, find out where this location is and check there first. As I said, I haven't confirmed this with Disney but it sounds like a logical way to handle the situation.

 

[disneymom3]

I understand your fears and have first hand experience with a lost child in a Disney environment. It is scary as all get out, but I can tell you that Disney is amazingly fast in their response.

We lost track of our two year old in the chaos of orientation at the Oceaneer's Club on DCL. Couldn't have been more than five minutes between last seeing him and searching the bathrooms and general area before we told the CM at the desk that we could not find him. He asked what he was wearing and I told him. They blocked the doors (I must say our mistake was in assuming the CM standing there wouldn't let any little kids leave by themselves, but I also know watching him was our responsibility) and all CMs in the club looked for him in there and verified he was not in the club. Then they put out a security call--no one was allowed off or on the ship until he was found, including CMs. I don't know the exact system, but they told me that all "available CMs" were now looking for our son. This all happened really fast. Seemed like a lifetime, but they found him within 10 minutes all the way at the other end of the ship and up a floor.

So, all this is to say that WDW has a system in place for lost kids. The whole time I was waiting for my little wanderer, I kept telling myself, "Disney is really good at this. If you are going to lose a child, this is the place to do it. There is no way out of this ship, etc." I have heard that they do the same thing at the parks as far as closing down exits and sending out CMs to look.

As for the national registry idea, no they may not be registered but some day down the road they may decide that people other than you have the right to activate that tracker and then it is pretty George Orwell. Same reason I don't have Onstar or any of those programs. Yeah, I know....I am paranoid the other way!

 

[MissSixty]

I have often thought that the locating device would be a great idea, in fact, I had heard John Walsh (America's Most Wanted Fame) was pushing for this.
If this is one more way to keep my child safe, then I am all for it.
The horror the parents of a missing child go through not knowing what has happened/or is happening to their child is the ultimate nightmare. I am sure the parents of Jacob Wetterling wished this had been available to them. 20 some years later, they are still left wondering.... Big brother can watch me all he wants in the matter of my child being safe!

 

[NotUrsula]

This is something DH have talked about--If they made Lojack for kids I'd be all over it---If we can microchip our pets why not our kids??? I would rather Lojack my kid than go thru the agony and heartbreak of having some pervert pedophile chester get their hands on them!!

If they would make this into a nationwide system where if your kids been kidnapped you can activate their chip so if chester takes them into a store the security system goes off and the home office can track where theyre at thereby cutting down on tracking time by the police and molestation time for my child--I say do it!

Like I said in a previous post, most people think that tracking systems work better than they really do. The above scenario is not possible, not so much because the individual technologies do not exist, but because this is the US and we do these things via private industry, and private mfrs. build in incompatibility so as to sell more equipment/more subscriptions.

The above scenario invokes 3 different and technologically incompatible types of tagging systems. Lo-Jack and systems like it use GPS. To have a GPS beacon work properly from a distance, it must be powered (like with an internal battery), so it isn't possible to use an implanted passive RFID microchip as a GPS beacon, as there is no room for the power supply. A passive microchip is only usable as an identifier when it is scanned by a powered device tuned to bounce a correct-frequency signal off of it, and due to its size and location, the reader must normally be less than 6 inches from the chip. It is also useless unless the person using the reader has access to the correct database that links the number stored in the chip to actual eye-readable id information; without that, all they will get is a number. Store security systems are not compatible with microchip systems; those are magnetic, and only store a +/- signal, again that can only be read within a short distance; normally less than 6 feet. Passive RFID technology, which is just now coming into vogue for inventory tracking, will do better than +/-, but without a power supply, it still can only store a number, and the effective scanning distance is <12 inches. They are also totally unreadable if there is metal between the reader and the tag.

BTW, it *is* possible to microchip people. The VeriChip system is FDA-approved, and has begun to be used for some Alzheimer's patients.

One other thing I'd like to say: my experience with these technologies has taught me that when they are in use, people tend to rely upon them more than they should; their presence creates a false sense of security. Those of us with experience in this industry know that the best way to keep track of tagged items is to keep them from leaving their proper place without authorization in the first place; using these devices to find them after they have disappeared doesn't work nearly as well. It's just the same for kids; your best option is to take steps (including technology, if appropriate) to keep them from escaping in the first place, rather than relying on technology to find them after they manage to escape supervision.