The ten minutes between the school gate and our front door used to undo me

This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but here goes. For about two months this spring, I got nothing done between 3:10 and 3:25 in the afternoon.

That's the window. That's how long it takes my daughter (she's nine, and she would like you to know she is "basically ten") to walk home from school. Four blocks, one crossing with a lollipop lady, past the corner shop. We practised it a hundred times. I knew, rationally, that she was fine. But I'd sit there with my phone face-up on the desk refreshing nothing, and if a work call ran into that window I'd lose the thread of it completely, because half my brain was on a pavement across town.

I didn't want to put a phone in her hand yet. I'm not ready for that, and honestly neither is she.

The things we tried

We tried her just calling me when she got in. Except a nine-year-old who's walked through the door wants a snack and the telly, not to phone her mother, so half the time she'd forget and I'd panic over nothing. We tried one of those kids' GPS watches. She found it itchy, it needed charging every single night, and she "accidentally" left it at school twice in one week, which I've chosen to read as a review.

What finally stuck was almost boring. There's an AirTag in the front pocket of her backpack. It had been there for ages, honestly just so we'd stop losing the bag itself at swimming.

What actually changed

I connected the AirTag to LogMyTag and set up two alerts. One for when the bag leaves the school zone. One for when it arrives in our home zone. That's the whole system.

So now, at about 3:11, my phone buzzes: left school. And somewhere around 3:23: arrived home. I don't watch a dot crawl across a map. I don't hover. I get two little messages that basically say she's doing exactly what she's meant to be doing, and I can get on with my afternoon. The first day the "arrived home" one came through, I actually teared up at my desk, which my husband finds endlessly funny.

I was never trying to watch her every step. I just needed to stop holding my breath at quarter past three. Two little buzzes, and I could breathe.

If the "arrived" message is ever late, I can open the map and see the route the bag actually took, whether she dawdled at the shop again or detoured to her friend's house (we have words about that one). But most days I never open it. That's the whole point. I don't have to.

And she doesn't mind, for what it's worth. We talked about it properly. She knows the bag "tells me when you get home safe," and she thinks that's fair, which from a basically-ten-year-old is about the highest praise available.

– Nadia