Tag Archives: Parenting

The Little Girl Who Fooled Our Security

This is a story I would like to tell you not just as a professional US locksmith, but also as a concerned parent. The other day I was driving back home from my work at Pembroke Pines Locksmiths in Florida. On the way I picked up my daughter from her Nana. On the way home she briefed me as usual on what was happening in her favorite TV shows, and I was half listening half thinking about work. You know how it is with working parents, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.

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When we finally got home I parked and we approached the locked door together. I am a family man and as such I made sure to put the best security measures I could put in my house, and that includes some serious locks on the doors. So my door was properly locked with a keypad deadbolt lock, and I therefore did not even bother to look for the key but went straight to unlock the door with the finger on the pad, when I heard a sweet voice peeping behind me: “daddy, can I do it”?

I smiled, how sweet is my five year old daughter, thinking she can unlock our big front door. “Sure honey,” I said, stepping out of the way, “you can try!”

And my sweet, piggy tailed girl walked to the keypad and unlocked the door without blinking an eye. In the first second I was amazed and even proud. It’s quite a long code and she just recently learned to read digits. But then it hit me: my five year old, my sweet naive girl, can give our big lock door code to any grown up who might ask her for it. True, normally she doesn’t meet strangers without us present, but what if somebody approached her while she’s at school? She’s so young and might be proud to show that she actually can tell what our secret code is. Who would have thought my little girl has been watching me punching in the code and managed to memorize it? What do we do now? Do we give her a talk about security and strangers and maybe confuse and scare her? Or do I just change the code and just be careful from now on?

When my wife got home I told her what happened. It was almost funny to watch her go through what I felt – first she was filled with pride, but then the meaning dawned on her. We decided to do both – we changed our code and also brought up the importance of being safe in a conversation with our daughter.

On the morning after I went to my office in Locksmith Pembroke Pines. I told my colleagues how my super safe deadbolt touchscreen lock can be compromised by having one clever little girl. We all agreed that as sweet as they are, one should not underestimate our little kids. If you have a security code at your house, you should reconsider how much of it is exposed to your little ones. They see much more than you think.

The Daughter’s Secret

This funny thing happened to me the other day. I was at our office of Locksmiths Doral , when a call came. The caller was a business owner here in Doral, Florida. I have been to his offices in the past for changing locks, and now he wanted an advice. He was looking for a GPS tracker for his car and he wondered if I knew where he could get a good one from a reliable seller. It wasn’t exactly a locksmith job, but I find that often people we give service to call us with further questions regarding how to protect their property and cars. So I sent him to a place where I know they sell good quality gadgets like that in reasonable prices and moved on with my regular Doral Locksmith schedule.

 

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I wouldn’t have given it another thought if I wasn’t called again to the same customer a few weeks later. They had a need to change a code to their locks and called our Locksmith Doral number so I drove to their offices. It was there where I ran into the owner and after shaking hands and asking how he’s doing I wondered how did it work out with the GPS tracker. When he heard my question his expression changed to something I couldn’t quite figure out. I felt a bit concerned that he wasn’t happy with the place I sent him to, but he assured me that everything was fine with the tracker, it’s just that he now has troubles with his teenage daughter because of it. When he saw my puzzled face, he explained. It turns out he bought the tracker because he wanted to be able to locate his car in case it got stolen. However, that led to surprising discoveries that he wasn’t prepared for.

As it happens, he has a 17 year old daughter who every now and then borrows his car. When she does, she says she’s going to the mall, or the library, or a friend, nothing unusual for a teenager. But the other day he checked to see if the GPS tracker is working, and instead of finding his car next to the local library, he found it next to an unfamiliar address not even in Doral. At first he got confused and thought the tracker must be broken, but then realized that the more likely option is that his daughter is not actually in the library.

When his daughter came back he asked her how was the library and she answered “boring as usual”, rolling her eyes at him. He said nothing, but the next time she borrowed his car, this time to go to the mall, he checked again, and found that his daughter lied to him yet again. His car was on the same address where it was when she “went to the library”. Now he was very upset about it and told his wife what was going on. They decided to give the daughter another chance. At the next time she borrowed the car she announced she was going to the movies and will be back late, and they were disappointed to see that she went to the same exact place she went to at the first two times.

So the morning after his wife and him sat down with their daughter and confronted her. They wanted to know where she was going, and more importantly, why she was lying. They expected the girl to show regret and meekly explain what she has been doing, but instead the girl got very upset to hear there is a GPS tracker on the car and blamed her parents for stalking her. No matter how much they explained that the tracker wasn’t intended originally to be used for following her, she wasn’t willing to hear. So now he wasn’t allowing his daughter to use any of their cars, and the daughter was not speaking to him. He didn’t see this family trouble coming when he put the tracker in the car…

I went to our Doral Locksmiths office full of thoughts. My children are still young and don’t drive yet, but I know I would like to know where they’re going when they do. It doesn’t look easy, being a parent to a teenager…