Daughter's Day at the Beach

Summer is finally here and I couldn’t be more excited. I’m a junior high school teacher and I live for this season. I admit, I became a school teacher because I loved the idea of having summer’s off every year. However, reality set in when I realized I wasn’t making enough money, and I had to teach summer school or driver’s education at the high school for the first few years.

Eventually I got married, to another teacher from another school, and the two incomes steadied our lives. No more summer school! We started a family just a few years later and discovered a whole new reason to love summer: staying home with our daughter Jenny.

Now, Jenny is 14, and she no longer needs us around in the summer. In fact, she really doesn’t even want us around … except to drive her places. And that’s why I’m writing this article. Jenny, like most teen girls her age, is becoming independent. She doesn’t need or want mom or dad around—except to get her from one destination to another.

Jenny needed a ride to the beach this morning. It’s the first summer day at the beach in our family’s life where she was going with friends—and without my wife or me. I have to say, I honestly got a little upset. More than upset. This is my baby girl—even though she no longer looked like a baby. She’s a teen. She’s developed! And she wears a bikini. Not a skimpy one, but with her body, it doesn’t need to be skimpy in order to invite looks.

I’m a dad of a teen girl. I’ve seen how guys react. I used to react the same way. I’m very well aware of how boys—and men—look at my daughter. I want to kill them all. But I can’t. I have to accept it. I have to trust that my daughter will be safe. I have to trust that she needs to grow up. It’s not easy.

I dropped her and her two friends off—each in their bikinis—and watched as they walked away. The heartburn began to set in, but then I reminded myself of what I did in order to check up on Jenny every now and then. I installed a data backup and recovery software on her iPhone a year ago called DDI Utilities. I did it so that I can see if any perverts, hackers and bullies were trying to harm her in the digital world, but soon realized after reading the DDI Utilities reviews how helpful it would be to make sure that she was physically safe in the real world.

Jenny spends half her life on that phone. She takes it everywhere. I knew she would bring it to the beach—and because of that, I realized that I could be there to watch over her. The recovery app I put on it allows me to see everything she does, from what she takes pictures of to who she's texting or even who's texting her. I can now check up on here whenever I get worried. And if she goes missing—God forbid—I can track her phone with the app's GPS Locater.

So I’m home now, sitting in the backyard, actually relaxing. I texted her to make sure everything is okay. And I only checked the app once to confirm it. I promised myself long ago that I wouldn’t abuse it and I’m going to stick to it. If you're a concerned parent like myself I definitely suggest that you check out this DDI Utilities review and get your own app.