I’m moving overseas to study and my mum wants to track my phone. How do I push back?

‘Plenty of people much older than you get into terrible tangles because … they make choices only by asking what will cause others the least pain,’ writes Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Painting: Old Woman and Child Reading a Book by Richard Caton Woodville. Photograph: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy

I’m moving away to another country for university next year and my mum wants to put a tracker on my phone so she can know where I am and make sure I’m OK. I don’t want her to do this, not because I have anything to hide, but because I’d like to have some independence and privacy.

She’s never been a particularly strict parent but she’s insistent on this one thing. But if I tell her, she might think I’m hiding something, or it might upset her as it may be one of the only ways she feels she could be a part of my life when I go – which isn’t true, because I plan to keep in good contact.