I don’t know about you, but is it hard to remember life before cell phones? It makes me nervous now, just thinking back to college when I drove around St. Louis at all hours of the night without one. I mean, what if my car would have broke down? I don’t have a fancy phone with internet or anything, but my phone is a sense of safety for me. It bothers me just running to Wal-mart without it. And, I have to admit its convenient to be able to call and ask about groceries that we need or even send a photo of something I’m thinking about buying and get approval.
Kendall, my nine year old, is involved in several sports that involve lots of practices. I don’t miss a game/meet, but I’m not one to stay and watch practices. I have too much to do, so I usually find myself running errands during these practices. There have been several times that practices ended before the designated time, and I found Kendall sitting alone or with a few other kids as I pull up at the time practice was scheduled to end. After one of these occurances this summer, I was a little worked up. It bothered me that he was unsupervised in a public place when I don’t even let him home alone yet. The stories I hear from my husband about things that go on in our town, probably don’t help the matter. So, I brought up the topic of getting Kendall a cell phone. Darren’s phone is provided through his work, so its not an option to send that with Kendall. If I were to give Kendall my cell, he wouldn’t be able to contact me as I’m usually in town running errands. After lots of discussions with my sister and Darren, we finally decided to purchase a $20 phone in which we add minutes when necessary. We were sure to inform Kendall that this was not HIS phone. It was our phone that we would allow him use when WE felt it was necessary. We gave him lots of rules and added the numbers of family and neighbors that he may need to call.
I should say that we purchased this phone the first week of August and we have used a whole 5 minutes! But, each of those five calls have been warranted. The thing that has surprised me is that Kendall is actually embarrassed to take the phone places. He is afraid someone will see him! When he has spent the night at friends’ houses, I’ve asked him to take it just in case he needed to call me (Kendall would probably be too shy to ask the parents). He will not take the phone unless Darren or I have informed the parents that he has it. He has NEVER ever asked to use it. We actually have to force him to take it to practices and put it in a hiding place. He told us he went to the bathroom to call us once, just so no one would know. I guess my fears were not warranted. I was afraid that if we bought this cheapo phone, he would be asking for an iphone before long. Again, I am impressed that he isn’t the kind of kid to go around bragging about what he has (or I guess what WE have, since the phone is technically ours).
So, do your kids have phones and at what ages did they get them?
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