Tracking Every Baby, Child, and Teenager

Would you implant a GPS enabled microchip into your kid if it were available?

My husband thinks that by the time our kids are teens, this will be readily available.  We agreed that we would jump on the chance to track our kids. He mentioned this to a friend today and the friend said he wouldn't do it.  And then they wondered whose opinion was the more popular one..and a post was born. 

In fact, while talking about it last night, we joked that it would be cool if they would have sensors that went off if your kid was about to have sex, do drugs, or anything illegal.  

Imagine it- you are sitting in a meeting and you get a text that warns you your child has just begun engaging in something questionable.  You step out of your meeting and make that lovely phone call that stops your child from doing something they will one day regret.  Okay, okay...that isn't really what this is about, but it had me chuckling at the prospect.  

Stepping back to the real world, implanting a GPS tracking device in kids isn't a completely absurd idea.

There is a company that has received FDA clearance for an implantable microchip, but hasn't produced/sold anything yet (at least not that I can tell).  This is the same type of chip that gets implanted into dogs (so no tracking of the animal, just identification).  The main reason that they aren't available seems to be due to an increase chance of malignant tumors near the injection site.  Yeah, they have to fix that first.

There was a watch on the market that did a great job tracking called the Brickhouse Alert Mobile GPS Watch.  If you can't implant a tracking device, this may be the next best thing.  Not only does it track your child, but your child could send a distress alarm, use the built-in speakerphone to contact emergency services or family members, and it sends alerts to you if your child leaves the customized "safety zone".  Sounds great, right?  Unfortunately, it has been discontinued.  I am not sure why, but the $40 monthly fee probably had something to do with it.

Of course, there is always GPS tracking with the cell phone.  There are multiple free applications out there for all the different phones.  I haven't tried any of these, but briefly looked at the descriptions for the ones on the Android phone.  I like that some of them do more than just tracking, but I won't go off on that tangent today.

Certainly the watch and cellphone tracking devices/applications aren't perfect.  It is easy enough for an abductor to remove the watch or toss the cell phone.  So that brings us back to implantable tracking devices.

If someone was able to create a non-cancer causing device that allowed you to know where your child was at all times, would you do it?  How would cost factor into this decision?  Would you pay a monthly fee (like the watch) to have this information?

So it is time for you to weigh in on this.  First vote below, then leave a comment telling us why you chose the way you did and any other thoughts for the rest of us to consider.  I can't wait to see what you all think!

If it were safe, would you implant a GPS tracking device into your child?

• Yes
• No

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And ready to go!

Yesterday I posted about the realization that Superman had outgrown his infant car seat.  Today I am going to talk a little bit about what I did to find Superman's new seat.

Unless your child is over a year, the next car seat after the infant seat must be a convertible one.  Most state laws dictate that children must be at least 20 pounds and one year before they are allowed to be forward facing.  However, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),

"For the best possible protection keep infants in the back seat, in rear-facing child safety seats, as long as possible up to the height or weight limit of the particular seat."

With this in mind, I knew that I wanted to not only get a convertible seat, but one that would allow Superman to stay rear-facing as long as possible. 

So the first thing I do whenever I need to buy something new is go to Consumer Reports.  Sadly, this time they dropped the ball for me initially.  I didn't feel like their reviews on car seats helped me much and they were recommending some seats that had really low scores.  Frankly, I just didn't understand it all.

The next thing I did was post on my personal Facebook page that we were looking for a new seat and wanted recommendations.  I thought that I might at least get some leads and maybe some car seats to stay away from.  Of the 21 responses, all but one person recommended the Britax and that person had a Combi and an Evenflo.  The three main Britax car seats people had were the Roundabout, Marathon, and Boulevard.

At this point I did go back to Consumer Reports and found that the Roundabout was the highest rated of the three, but had the lowest limits for weight (35 lbs rear facing & 50 lbs forward facing) and shoulder height  (max 16.25 for both rear and forward facing).  All three have a max height of 49 inches.

Since I want Superman to be rear facing for as long as possible, I felt like the Roundabout was out of the mix for me.   When I looked at the Marathon 70 and Boulevard 70 the only differences was the side impact protection.  The Boulevard has extra head support in case of a side impact collision.  According to Consumer Reports, the Boulevard also had a feature that allowed for adjusting the harness height without having to re-thread it.   Consumer Reports also rated the Boulevard higher than the Marathon.

I went back and forth over which of these two to get.  Amazon had them both on sale and the difference in price was about $20.   Finally my husband told me to get the one that was rated higher.  So we got the Boulevard 70.

I will be honest, when I saw how big the car seat I was a little worried that I went a bit overboard.  We could have gotten away with the Marathon...but it turned out we couldn't install it in the middle seat (and wouldn't have been able to install the Marathon in the middle either).  Now I am grateful to have the extra side impact protection.

Resources:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

• Ease of Use Ratings (descriptions) 
• Ease of Use Ratings (actual ratings)

Child Restraint Laws (by state)
Seat Check.org
Car Seat Recall List

**Disclaimer- I am not an expert on car seats.  I have no certifications or documents saying I should be giving advice. Therefore, take what I say as one mom's experience and do you own research.  Thank you.***

All buckled in...

A few days ago I wrote about safety on the internet...or rather I wrote about reading about safety on the internet. Today I am going to talk about safety in your car.  I know that many of you have little ones around the same age as my Superman.  Many of you probably are still using your infant car seat, aren't you?  It is okay to admit it, I was up until this week.

Thank goodness for friends with children older than my own.  I was at boot camp and it came up casually.  I had it stuck in my head that my infant car seat was rated to 30 pounds.  Superman is only 19 pounds so we were good.  What these ladies pointed out to me was that it is not just weight, but height that factors into the change to a bigger seat.  When they said that I had one of those, "OMG I can't believe I didn't think about that!" moments.

So I did a little research and found that the height limit for our infant seat was 30 inches.  Superman was 29 inches at 9 months.  Fortunately, we measured him again and he is still just 29 inches.  However, the other thing the manual said was that if his head was less than an inch from the top of the seat, it was time to get a bigger seat.  Sure enough Superman's head was less than an inch from the top.

So let me recap.  You should know the following limits for your current car seat:

• weight limit (if it is a convertible seat, you should know the limit for rear facing and forward facing)
• height limit (if it is a convertible seat, you should know the limit for rear facing and forward facing)
• shoulder height limit

Unless you are absolutely positive that your child is within the limits for their current car seat, I would go check right now. Oh and if you knew this already? Good job!  I am disappointed that I didn't know all this before, but feel better knowing that I have the information now.  If your child is too big for their car seat, don't beat yourself up, just do something about it.  If you aren't sure where to start, be sure to come back tomorrow when I will share my experience with shopping for Superman's new car seat.

**Disclaimer- I am not an expert on car seats.  I have no certifications or documents saying I should be giving advice. Therefore, take what I say as one mom's experience and do you own research.  Thank you.***