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" Sixteen-year-old Tabitha LeBlanc, of Cankton, LA, was driving home one night when her right front tire blew out. Stranded on the side of a country road, she tried calling her mom, but her cell phone battery was too low to get a signal. Then she thought about heading out for help, but it was pitch-black--and there wasn&amp;#039;t a house or even a streetlight for miles. Tabitha&amp;#039;s mom, Carlene, was sick with worry when her daughter was half an hour late and didn&amp;#039;t answer her cell. But after a few clicks on the computer, LeBlanc pinpointed exactly where her daughter was, then sent her husband to the rescue. Tabitha&amp;#039;s phone, equipped with a GPS tracking device, still had enough juice left to indicate her location. &amp;quot;Like any parent, I worry about my daughter when she&amp;#039;s out in the world and on her own,&amp;quot; says LeBlanc. &amp;quot;And I&amp;#039;m really glad she has the GPS cell phone to help keep her safe.&amp;quot;  Donna Butler&amp;#039;s 19-year-old daughter, Danielle, is an accomplished dog handler who often shows the family&amp;#039;s six purebreds. One weekend last year, Danielle wanted to see a poodle in Ocala , FL , about two and a half hours from her home, and convinced her mom to let her go with someone she knew from the show circuit. Not long after Danielle and the woman set out, Butler decided to check on her daughter, whose cell phone is equipped with GPS tracking equipment and software that calculates how fast a car is moving. When Butler logged on to her computer, she discovered the driver was doing 85 miles an hour on the interstate. &amp;quot;I just about flipped out when I saw the speed,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;No one should be going that fast, and certainly not with my daughter in the car.&amp;quot; She immediately sent Danielle a text message: &amp;quot;Tell her to slow down or I&amp;#039;ll come and get you both--and I won&amp;#039;t be happy about it.&amp;quot; Butler watched on the computer as the driver slowed down and her daughter safely arrived at her destination. Thanks to a host of new, relatively inexpensive technologies, parents can now keep tabs on their kids and, in some cases, guide them out of harm&amp;#039;s way. There are three basic categories: GPS-equipped cell phones, car-tracking devices, and computer-monitoring software. But using them the right way requires more than simply figuring out how to plug them in. It means dealing with some thorny issues, including how much privacy and independence you&amp;#039;re willing to allow your child, and how much you trust each other. &amp;quot;Parents need to teach kids how to make good choices on their own, not just because Mom and Dad are watching them,&amp;quot; says Massachusetts General Hospital child psychiatrist Steve Schlozman, M.D. &amp;quot;If you fight your kids&amp;#039; normal instinct to become more independent, they&amp;#039;ll get stuck.&amp;quot; IT&amp;#039;S NOT ABOUT SPYING  Many parents try to use these devices without telling their kids what they&amp;#039;re doing--a strategy that almost always backfires. Kids hate the idea of being spied on, and by deceiving them, you run the risk of damaging your relationship. The technology can also work against parents by giving them a false sense of security while pushing the child underground to do what he wants without being monitored. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like when my dad used to tell me, &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t let me catch you torturing your sister,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Jane Bluestein, Ph.D., an educational consultant and author of Parents, Teens, and Boundaries: How to Draw the Line. &amp;quot;All I heard was the &amp;#039;don&amp;#039;t let me catch you&amp;#039; part. I never actually stopped the torment; I just got a lot more creative about the way I did it.&amp;quot; When she married for a second time, Michele White Sterne already had two kids; so did her husband. To help keep track of what the four teens were up to, Sterne installed eBlaster on the home computer and soon got an eyeful: One of the boys was routinely visiting porn sites and, as a result, getting tons of porn spam. &amp;quot;It was nasty, violent stuff,&amp;quot; Sterne says. &amp;quot;I was really upset, especially since the girls would sit down at the same machine and get exposed to all of it.&amp;quot; As soon as the boy found out she was keeping an eye on him, the porn stopped. &amp;quot;But what Mom didn&amp;#039;t realize,&amp;quot; admits Sterne&amp;#039;s daughter, Malorie, who is now in college, &amp;quot;is that my brother still looked at Internet porn; he just did it at a friend&amp;#039;s house, where he wasn&amp;#039;t being monitored.&amp;quot; A TOOL FOR BETTER COMMUNICATION The point is, you can&amp;#039;t depend on the technology to do your job. Instead, &amp;quot;use the technology to give you something to talk about with your kids and help build your relationship,&amp;quot; says Bluestein. Camilla Suddeth, a mother of four in Woodruff, SC, looked at her 11-year-old daughter&amp;#039;s Internet history and saw a string of pornographic sites and pop-ups. When she asked her daughter, Lindsay, what was going on, the girl told her mom that she had just been trying to find out what a Playboy Bunny was. &amp;quot;It turns out a friend was talking about Playboy Bunnies at a birthday party, and Lindsay got curious,&amp;quot; Suddeth says. &amp;quot;She wondered if it was a toy. When I asked her about it, she said, &amp;#039;Mom, I didn&amp;#039;t want any of that stuff to come up.&amp;#039; She started to cry, and I knew she was scared.&amp;quot; Mother and daughter had a long talk about the dark side of the Internet and agreed that if Lindsay had questions, they&amp;#039;d go online together. These kinds of monitoring tools can also help parents clue in to problems their children may not even be aware of. When Malorie Sterne was a sophomore in high school, her mother used eBlaster to monitor online mentions of Malorie&amp;#039;s name. The program alerted Sterne to a chain of instant messages. She was uncomfortable with what she read, though she didn&amp;#039;t really understand it. So she did an Internet search to figure out what the messages were alluding to and discovered that a boy in Malorie&amp;#039;s school had posted pictures of Malorie, accompanied by aggressively sexual comments. When Sterne told her daughter what she&amp;#039;d found, she realized that Malorie herself didn&amp;#039;t know about the pictures. Sterne called the boy&amp;#039;s parents immediately and got the pictures taken down. &amp;quot;At the time, I thought my mom&amp;#039;s monitoring was a huge invasion of privacy,&amp;quot; says Malorie. &amp;quot;But when that incident with the boy happened, I was really glad she was watching out for me.&amp;quot; 4 TIPS FOR HIGH-TECH PARENTING So how do you go about combining the new technology with good parenting? The experts offer some specific suggestions: 1. PRESENT THE TECHNOLOGY AS PART OF THE PACKAGE If you make the monitoring device a condition of your child having a cell phone, driving the car, or using the computer from the outset, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem like a punishment but rather a part of this great new privilege. Bluestein suggests saying something like &amp;quot;Of course you can use the car this weekend. Just know that this tracking system is here. I don&amp;#039;t plan on checking it all the time. If you drive safely, get home on time, and go where you say you will, why should I? But if I do have reason to look and notice that you&amp;#039;re driving over the speed limit or more than a few miles from where you say you&amp;#039;re going, there will be consequences.&amp;quot; The same idea works for Internet-monitoring programs. Of course you&amp;#039;re not going to spend every waking minute reading your kids&amp;#039; end-less strings of instant messages--you don&amp;#039;t care whom Jeremy&amp;#039;s dating or if Susie&amp;#039;s skirt was out of style. So tell your kids exactly that. Then explain that you&amp;#039;re checking occasionally to make sure that no one inappropriate is trying to contact them and that they aren&amp;#039;t facing a situation they may not be able to handle on their own. 2. EXPLAIN WHAT YOU&amp;#039;RE CONCERNED ABOUT When you&amp;#039;re clear about why you&amp;#039;re using these devices--because more high school kids die in car crashes than from any other cause, for example, or because predators posing as teenagers often prowl the Internet--your kids will be more likely to accept the idea that you&amp;#039;re trying to keep them safe. 3. SET CLEAR LIMITS You need to be clear up front about what you will do if you find your child has lied about his whereabouts, gone over the speed limit, or come home late. Although it&amp;#039;s tempting, don&amp;#039;t resort to &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t drive the car again for 40 years,&amp;quot; warns Bluestein. Instead, try something like &amp;quot;Yes, you can drive to Joey&amp;#039;s party. But I need you to be home by midnight. If you&amp;#039;re not, that tells me you&amp;#039;re not ready for the privilege of driving. We&amp;#039;ll try again in a month.&amp;quot; And be sure you have a way for the child to earn back the privilege--getting home on time for three weekends in a row, for instance. If you don&amp;#039;t, there&amp;#039;s no incentive for him to learn from his mistake. 4. STAY CONNECTED With all the communicating kids do by e-mail and cell phone, it&amp;#039;s easy for parents to lose track of their kids&amp;#039; friends and activities. Encourage your kids to have their friends over often. Listen to their conversations as you ply them with snacks. And talk to your kids regularly about what&amp;#039;s going on in their lives. They may grunt in reply at first, but eventually you&amp;#039;ll get through. Cathy Wagner, of Monroe Township, NJ, had a scare with her 13-year-old son, Dylan, about a year ago. A girl he knew started sending him instant messages about committing suicide and the possibility of the two of them doing it together. As the electronic conversation progressed over the next couple of days, it became clear that Dylan was trying to help his friend but was in over his head. &amp;quot;I had a huge knot in my stomach each time I turned on the computer,&amp;quot; says Wagner, who uses the software program eBlaster to monitor her son&amp;#039;s computer activity. She printed out the messages, then explained to her son that the situation was serious. &amp;quot;He just shrugged and said, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ve got it under control, Mom,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she remembers. &amp;quot;But I insisted we tell someone at school.&amp;quot; Wagner took the printouts to the school guidance counselor, who in turn notified the girl&amp;#039;s parents. &amp;quot;Everything turned out fine, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn&amp;#039;t read those messages?&amp;quot; Wagner says. HOW TO HANDLE MYSPACE MySpace is the popular social-networking site that teens use to post profiles and blogs, leave messages, and connect with new people. There are similar sites--such as Facebook, Xanga.com, and Sconex--but MySpace is the one your kid is most likely to use. The threat on all of them is that a predator could contact your child or that the kids themselves could engage in bullying or other bad behavior. Here&amp;#039;s what to do: Read your kid&amp;#039;s profile Kids will often unwittingly post a suggestive picture or quote, then find themselves the subject of unwanted attention. Have your child remove anything inappropriate as well as any identifying details such as his hometown or school. Make it private Go to Account Settings on your child&amp;#039;s profile and use the privacy options to stop strangers from viewing the page (only people your kid invites to join will be able to see her profile). Explain the Internet&amp;#039;s reach Embarrassing photos or postings circulate quickly and can be impossible to pull back. One mom Googled her daughter&amp;#039;s name and found a photo of the girl and her friends vamping for the camera. Someone had posted the photo on MySpace; someone else had downloaded it--then sent it all over cyberspace. Make sure your child uses the setting that prevents other people from forwarding images from her profile.  Guard the password This will help keep someone from posing as the owner of your child&amp;#039;s profile and posting inappropriate material--an increasingly common problem. Even if your child is careful, hacking can still happen. If it does, contact MySpace immediately.  WHAT&amp;#039;S IN THE STORES New tracking devices seem to be introduced every day, but here are some of the most popular. GPS-EQUIPPED CELL PHONES Almost every service provider sells equipment with Global Positioning System receivers that can track a user&amp;#039;s location and download that information onto a home computer. Some, such as Sprint Family Locator (prices for each handset up to $180 after rebate, $10 monthly fee), will even send a text message to parents&amp;#039; cell phones when their kids leave a designated area. Another option for families is Disney Mobile&amp;#039;s Family Locator phone (handsets from $149 to $199, monthly plans from $40 to $170). And Wherify Wireless&amp;#039;s Wherifone ($100 handset, monthly plans from $20 to $47) is designed for kids ages 6 to 10 and allows parents to control whom their child can call and who can call in. CAR-TRACKING DEVICES There are two kinds. Devices that attach under the dashboard, such as the CarChip ($139; davisnet.com), record distance, speed, and hard braking. Parents can then download this data to their computer to see (after the fact) how well their children have been driving. Another service, called Teen Arrive Alive (starting at $15 per month; teenarrivealive.com), uses a GPS-equipped cell phone to track the speed of a car in real time. Parents can log on to a Web site to locate their child and check the speed of the car in which he or she is traveling (whether or not their child is at the wheel). COMPUTER-MONITORING SOFTWARE Packages such as SpectorSoft&amp;#039;s eBlaster ($100; eblaster.com) and PC Tattletale ($50; pctattletale.com) let parents review their children&amp;#039;s e-mails, instant messages and chat room conversations; they also report which Internet sites kids are visiting. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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