If you have kids, there aren't too many devices that test your trust more than a cell phone.  Whether you're worried about the bills or the freedom, giving your kid a phone can pose some problems.  Now parents have the ability to turn the table with some new technology.  

It's called the Chaperone Program, and it runs on the GPS found on most phones.  So if you're at the mall and you split up with your kid, all you have to do is pick up your phone and a blinking dot will tell you if they left the building.

When Kari Haberling goes shopping with her daughter Megan she keeps her close.  At 12 years old, Kari says Megan isn't ready for a cell phone.  She says she's not worrying about having to track her 15 year old son, saying "He calls when he needs to. He never goes over on his minutes. He's just not maybe the typical teenager. As far as the cell phone goes."

Best Buy Mobile Manager Jermiah Langdon says demand for tracking programs has skyrocketed in just the past six months, for one major reason.  Langdon said, "It's almost always parents coming in with problems."  Both Verizon and Sprint offer similar tracking plans for $9.99 a month per phone.  Verizon calls it Chaperone while sprint calls it Family Locator, but they both do the same thing.

If it's 2:00 p.m. and you hope your child didn't cut school early because it's a Friday, you can check right then and there and you'll instantaneously get your child's location on your phone.  And that's not all these tracking plans will do.  Parents can also set boundaries ahead of time, so if you don't want your child going north of Russell Street and they do it anyway, you'll find out immediately with a text message.

Kari says it's nice to know the technology is out there, especially because she knows it will be harder to keep tabs on Megan.  She says tracking would be a last resort, saying "I would hope I'd never have to use that. That there would be enough trust there that I wouldn't have to track my children to know where they are."

Now if you're more concerned about how much your child talks a month, a lot of parents go with prepaid phones.  They allow you to simply reload the minutes every month.  If you don't want change the phone, you don't have to do so.  All carriers now offer you the option to change your child's minutes every month for about $5 each.