When a dog is lost, it can be returned home if it has a homing chip in it. The “lost dog” signs are torn down, and everything returns to normal.

When a child is lost there’s not always that guarantee. But what if there was a way there could be?

I’ve long ago heard the idea of putting homing chips in children, so that if they are abducted or lost they can be found. It would be a way to return some of the milk-carton children to their homes and secure the thoughts of parents all over whose worst nightmare is to turn around and find that their son or daughter is missing.

Maybe having a chip to assure you of your safety wouldn’t be so bad. Every child worries about the strangers their parents warn them about — especially in today’s world where trusting those you don’t know is seldom practiced.

Even though more and more children now have cell phones at younger and younger ages, if there was a real emergency there may not be the opportunity for them to whip out their handy sidekick. A homing device is something that would be inside of you always and something that couldn’t easily be taken away. It would almost be like having a security system in you, a way of letting others help you when there’s a situation you can’t handle yourself.

Yet there’s still something about this seemingly brilliant device I can’t get past. If the tracking system got into the hands of someone who didn’t have your best interests at heart, it would be a map to finding you.

There is also the issue about having something like that permanently installed in you. What if you don’t want to be found? And are we really at a place in the world where we need to put tracking devices in our children like we do our pets? As if our children have just as high a likelihood of wandering off and not being able to find their way back home as a dog? Or in a worst-case scenario that someone takes them away, steals them from their home?

Sure, it may be a nice security blanket to have, a way of always being assured that there’s still a chance of being found even if you wind up in the most difficult situation. But we must ask ourselves where the world is if we feel we need to take away so much of children’s freedom that they can never go anywhere without their parents being able to find out where they are.