Child Locator Devices - Technology Comes To The Rescue For Parents

Probably every parent has had this experience at least once. You are out at the zoo, a crowded amusement park or mall, you look away from your child for what seems like 2 seconds, you look back, and your heart lurches when they are no longer there. It happens so fast and it can happen so easily. You want to keep track of your child, but kids are naturally curious. They find everything amazing. They are also fast. In their own little world, they have no idea of the dangers of wandering off. Even if you tell them it is dangerous, their minds don t really have the capacity to understand danger or any possible horrendous outcome. Nor do we want them to know. Unfortunately the statistics on this are not low. Over 725,000 cases of missing children are reported every year in the USA. All of them occurred while out in a public place, either with a parent or while under the supervision of an adult. So what are parents supposed to do? Obviously you need to take your children out in public. You can t keep them locked up until they are 18 (which would present a whole other set of problems). Fortunately technology has come a long way and has brought with it a vast array of child safety devices that make parenting a lot less stressful - well, in one area anyway! Parents everywhere must be applauding the inventors of the child tracking device. Starting with the very young and adapting to various age groups, right up to the teens, parents can now have some kind of peace of mind when it comes to locating their children. For the very young, and before they start to wander, there are baby monitors and security cameras. For toddlers there are gadgets that attach to the child. They work on the same principal as cordless phone finders. The activator is kept in a purse or on a key chain. To find your child, just use the activator and the device on the child will beep loudly. Then there are distance monitors. These are also in two parts, one for the child to wear and one for the parent. If the child strays outside of a specified area, the alarm sounds. Some of these also have panic buttons for the child in case they ever feel threatened. Audio and visual alarms are great ideas for attracting attention to a potential attacker. The child wears the alarm, usually in the form of a watch, and can set off the alarm if they feel they are in a potentially dangerous situation. As your children widen their horizons and fly out of your sight for hours on end, you can keep track of them by various means. Of course, there are cell phones. There are also wireless products which can be used as tracking devices, and can also monitor up to 4 children at one time. Then comes good old GPS. Much to the consternation of your teen, the sky is the limit with these devices. GPS tracking systems are a gift to parents. Your teenager may not like it, but on the other hand, what do teenagers like? All joking aside, as a parent only you can make the decision on how far you want to go with monitoring your teen with GPS. Who knows, they may even thank you one day. Feel free to visit Review of Child Tracking and Safety Devices for more on this subject. Georgie Ellington is a regular contributor to the Information Hill websites.