Apple AirTag for Parents Review

Apple AirTags are these little circular devices about the size of a quarter, and maybe as thick as about three quarters stacked on top of each other. They don’t have any moving parts or buttons. All it does is allow you to find the AirTag via your iPhone’s Find My App, or via a downloaded Android app. But are AirTags good for parents?

You bet your sweet bippy. (I don’t know what a bippy is. My dad used to say this.)

Tracking Small Children

A few years ago, we lived in the Denver Public Schools district. In addition to having a wide array of bad schools, it did have a few gems, including the elementary school where we sent our kiddos. The school was a magnet school which meant that it wasn’t nearby. The district offered school bus service to take kids to and from our neighborhood where several other families lived who attended the same school.

The problem was that the bus service frequently had problems and delays, leaving us standing at the bus stop wondering what was happening until the Department of Transportation eventually sent an unhelpful text saying that the bus was delayed by 15 minutes. Trouble is, they always sent that same text, no matter how much the bus was actually delayed. Add to that mess the fact that it was possible, albeit unlikely, that they might miss the bus altogether and we needed a way to get an idea of where our children were after school.

Avoiding the Cell Phone

Like many parents, we were not keen on giving our elementary school aged children cell phones. At the time, there weren’t a lot of other options. There was a watch called the GizmoWatch that would allow you to see where your children were via GPS. The drawback was that it required yet another line of service with your cell provider to work.

In the end, we got the cheapo free cellphone offered by our wireless carrier and stuck them in a side pocket of the children’s backpacks with instructions to just leave it there and only pull it out to call home in emergencies.

Fortunately, we have pretty well behaved kids and it never became and issue. The main drawback was having to remember to keep them charged. Your plan is to pull them out each weekend and charge them, but life comes pretty fast and there was more than once we needed to find the kids (and their school bus) and one or both phones were dead.

Apple AirTags Keep Children Safer

Man, I wish they had Apple AirTags, or their Android cousin, Tile, when my kids where younger. An Apple Air Tag would have allowed exactly what we needed. A small, unobtrusive, zero maintenance, always on, way to keep our kids safer by letting us know where they were.

I recently bought a four-pack of Apple AirTags off of Woot for a slight discount. Any discount on Apple products is a good discount because they seldom allow discounts and when they do, they aren’t big discounts.

If you are looking to buy Apple AirTags online, I suggeset using Rakuten to get cash back when you buy them. Wait for a special offer from Rakuten (they have them all the time) and then strike. Even if you pay full price for your AirTags, you can still get 8% or 10% cash back if you buy from the right store at the right time. Ten percent cash back is the same as getting ten percent off. If you can wait for opportune moment, you could get a 10% sale on AirTags coupled with 10% cash back and really score.

How Apple AirTags Work In Kid’s Backpacks

The best thing about Apple AirTags is that they don’t take up any real space, and they don’t need any charging or other maintenance. The battery in an AirTag should last about year. The AirTag batteries are replaceable without special tools or skills. Just twist the top off and stick another battery in there. Do it at the beginning or end of each school year, and “Viola!” no issues with dead tracking cell phones or AirTags.

The most important AirTag feature is that it doesn’t do anything. There is no reason for your kiddo to play with an AirTag. There are no games, no texting, not nothing. It’s just a small disk tucked away into that tiny zipper pocket they never use. You can even attach it with a key ring or something. If you’re really worried, it wouldn’t be hard to stitch it in.

Whenever the bus is late, or your child isn’t on it for some reason (“I forgot that wasn’t my stop.”) you can whip out your iPhone and use the Find Me app to know exactly where they are with no issues.

AirTags For Traveling with Children

I read someone suggest that when flying to put an AirTag in each piece of luggage. That way, if a suitcase gets lost by the airline, you know where it is. I don’t have to tell you how hard it can be to navigate an airport, security, tickets, food and drinks, and watch not only your kid but their stuff as well when flying with children.

Ironically, the airlines often have no idea where your bag is and just wait for it to show up as unclaimed for long enough that an employee eventually scans it back into the system. Telling your airline that your luggage is in Houston may send someone looking for it sooner. Even better, if it just turned up on the wrong baggage claim, or someone else accidentally picked up your bag, you can find it much faster that checking everywhere and waiting for the airline to find it.

For kids, put one in their backpack or carry-on as well. Then, when their backpack with Mr. Snufflekins gets left at the Sbarro in the airport, and they don’t realize it until the plane is boarding, you know exactly where to run to get it. Heck, if you can, pull open a stitch on Mr. Snufflkins and stick an AirTag in the middle of the stuffing. Now when they lose the stuffed animal that their whole life revolves around, you can find him at the playground before he gets rained on and covered in mud.

1 thought on “Apple AirTag for Parents Review”

Leave a Comment