By Tiffany Craig Investigative Reporter
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Published: Mon, February 12, 2007 - 4:41 pm
Tiffany Craig
"He pretty much follows the rules you know," said Brock's mom, Donna Eddins. "He's just a regular 16-year-old kid."
But that doesn't stop Donna and her husband Glenn from wondering what Brock gets into when he goes out.
"With teenagers nothing would surprise me," Donna said. "Mine is definitely not exempt from anything. I wouldn't be a parent to say mine would never do that."
So, this Theodore couple agreed to put a magnetic GPS tracking device purchased by News 5 on Brock's truck for a weekend.
"Oh he's gonna hate me," said Donna.
Part of the deal, no one tells Brock the tracker is recording where, when and how fast he's going. Family therapist Diane Roberson-Hill calls this high-tech parenting.
"I think this is another step in that direction," Roberson-Hill said. "It kinda speaks to what's going on in our world today that there's a lot more for our children to get into."
After the weekend, we got the tracker back and plugged it into the computer program to see Brock's activity. His parents stopped by News 5 to watch and instantly noticed something alarming.
"What road could he have been going down going 95 miles an hour," Donna asked?
Next, Brock's parents started looking closely at where he went. They recognized all of the stops except one. Puzzled , they studied the map and tried to figure it out.
"That's where the party was," Donna said. "That's where they did their drinking."
Donna and Glenn went home and broke the news to Brock.
"All hell broke loose," Brock said. "I thought of looking for Channel 5 News' number so that i could chew them out."
Three weeks after the experiment, Brock was still mad but agreed to an interview.
"I think it's B.S. I think it's stupid."
We asked him about the speeding.
"I wasn't going no 95. Wasn't even going 70. There ain't no way!"
He says his truck doesn't even go that fast! As for the unexpected Friday stop, Brock was tight-lipped for fear of getting friends in trouble.
"I'm not going to a drug house. I'm not go do stupid things. I am smarter than that. All I want them to do is trust me. If they can't trust me in order to do this then they can't trust me. I might as well not even have a vehicle."
Our therapist says this is the down side to keeping track of someone's every move.
"If something comes up and you discover something that they're not supposed to be doing, then you are the one who has to deal with the consequences," Roberson-Hill said.
Donna and Glenn now wonder if they should have gone down this road. Brock says he'll start watching his truck for what could be watching him.
If you'd like to buy the same device we used for our experiment, click here.
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Parents have to be ready to parent and do the hard things. If I knew my son had gone 95 in my car, there would be no keys in his hands for a while. There would be no cell phone, no games, no TV and only me. If you don’t want to be a parent one day, give him free rein. Who butters the bread in this picture?