Use Find My iPhone To Track A Child: A Parent’s Secret Spy Tool

If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably seen or heard of the Find iPhone app. You might already know what it does, but why would you need to use it? It’s not like you can’t find your own iPhone. Here’s where it gets interesting: Find my iPhone can track any Apple device if lost or misplaced. This includes your iPod, iPad, and Mac, as long as you’re signed into iCloud on that device.

However, did you know Find My iPhone is a great spy tool for parents? In this article, I’ll explain how to use Find My iPhone to track a child and some other great uses for the Find iPhone app.

Track Your Child’s iPhone With A GPS Locator

This is one of the benefits of having a whole family using Apple devices. You can add your kids’ iPhones to your Apple ID to keep track of them. If you want to have even more control, sign into iCloud when setting up their device with the parent’s Apple ID.  This allows you to find their device using Find My iPhone and they can’t sign out without your password.

If your kids are older, you can allow them to have their own Apple ID and sign in themselves, but you have to make sure they know that can’t sign out or turn off Find iPhone.

Using The Find Friends App To Track Your Kids

There is also the app called Find Friends which also shows a GPS location and works both ways, which means your kids can see where you are too. Find Friends also works great, but I find Find My iPhone to be a bit more secure and has a few more tricks to it.

iPhone Location Ping: A Great Way To Find A Lost iPhone

Have you ever put down your phone somewhere in the house—or even in the store—and suddenly you can’t find it? You can’t remember where you had it last or even what you were doing with it. You ask a friend or family member to call your phone and you realize you had it on silent.

If you haven’t turned on Find My iPhone, well, I guess you can skip this part. If you have, like the rest of us, you can use Find My iPhone to find that phone, even if your iPhone is on silent. The Find iPhone app has an option called Play Sound, which shows up when you select a device to locate.

If you select Play Sound, it will ping your iPhone and cause it to emit a repeating pinging sound that will play no matter how loud your volume is set. This is great for finding your iPhone whether it’s lost in the laundry or under the bed—I’ve even heard of some people finding their phones in the fridge.

How To Make Your Kids Answer The Phone

Okay, I’m going to admit that as a parent, I play dirty. I pull out all the stops to keep my kids honest and I have rules. When my teenager daughter is not at home, she needs to answer my calls and texts right away, within a reasonable time period of a few minutes. The only exception to this is when she is at school because I know she can’t use her phone in school. However, I don’t even try to call her during those times, so it’s not much of an issue.

If I call my daughter multiple times and it goes straight to voicemail, that’s when I pull out my last parent trick using Find My iPhone. I ping her phone. Even if her iPhone is on silent, I use Find My iPhone to make her phone go off. Sometimes I really have to get her home or she needs to answer me. My daughter hates this, of course, but I’m a sneaky parent, and I’ll use Find My iPhone as a sneaky parent spy tool until she’s in college.

Well, maybe…

What If You Don’t Have Another iPhone, iPad, or iPod Handy?

This is not a problem at all. As long as you have access to the internet and a computer, or even another smartphone, you can go to iCloud.com and access Find iPhone there. Just like the Find iPhone app on your iPhone, it will show you the GPS location of your phone and allow you to Play Sound so you can find your iPhone.

The only thing you need to do is sign in with your Apple ID, have Find iPhone turned on in Settings -> iCloud on the device, and make sure the device is turned on and connected to the internet. This usually isn’t an issue for iPhones, but iPods and Wi-Fi-only iPads may not be connected to the internet.

Use Your Secret Spy Tricks On Your Kids

You are now able to use your new parent spy tricks to GPS locate your kids, find your lost iPhone hidden in the house, and get your kids to answer their iPhones—or you won’t stop pinging it until they do. Go out and be a Find My iPhone ninja. Oh, and of course you can use Find iPhone for the way Apple intended too, so overall, it’s a total parent win.