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The Wall Street Journal asked a psychologist who practices with a focus on parenting and relationships for her thoughts on tracking teens with GPS tracking systems. This expert said that teenagers need to earn their parents’ trust and this takes time. This expert did suggest that parents tell teens that their driving is being monitored, but surprisingly, she did not insist that parents tell teen drivers exactly how they are being monitored. For example if you tell your child that you will be installing a device to monitor them, they don’t have to know if it is for speed, seatbelt use or destination. If they break some of the driving guidelines you’ve set and you talk to them about it, they will then be aware of what is being monitored.

So if you are a parent who is thinking about buying a GPS teen tracking device to keep an eye on your teen, know that you are not being overly anxious or controlling.

As a parent, you know your child, so you have an idea of how responsible and trustworthy they are or are not. Still, no parent can really know what their child will do when they are not subject to parental guidance.

By the way, the woman and her daughter quoted in the article mentioned earlier are a prime example of just why teens need monitoring: this woman admonished her daughter to wear her seatbelt after a monitoring device informed her that her teen was not wearing a seatbelt. The daughter started to comply and got into an accident soon after. Her car flipped over, but she walked away unharmed because of her seatbelt.