If you are reading this, there is likely a couple of reasons. The first reason is you also have a younger child with a phone and you felt relief that you are not alone. Or you are staunchly opposed to any young elementary child having a phone and you were appalled to read the title.
If you had asked me even a year ago, I would have been appalled too. I would have told you that MY KIDS WOULD NOT have a phone until they are MUCH older. And I would have meant it too.
“I mean there is no reason! My kids are with me what do they need a phone for? That is just asking for trouble! There are too many scary things and scary people in this world to give them a phone,” said past me very loudly whenever the topic of phones or technology was discussed.
So you may be asking yourself, what has changed? How would you go from appalled to permitting? Or you may be flat out calling me a hypocrite to say all of the things above, and still, give my child a phone.
This past summer my son attended his first overnight camp in College Station. We didn’t have much experience with him staying anywhere away from home other than at a grandparents’ house. So I knew we needed a way to stay in contact with him, but remember, I was against my young children having a phone. So I did some asking in our community group, and a few people did suggest biting the bullet and getting a phone for the occasion, others suggested alternatives like the Relay Kids Phone Alternative.
After thorough consideration and wanting to stick to our “rules” about phones I invested in the Relay Kids Phone Alternative, which is essentially a really powerful, screen-free walkie-talkie. Weeks prior to camp time we practiced at home using the Relay, which connected to our phones through an app and all seemed well. Our son demonstrated that he knew how to work it and we each practiced sending messages back and forth.
What I didn’t account for or even think about was cell service (which the relay uses to communicate) and the fact that at home we were all connected to WiFi so there were not any service issues, so of course, everything was in working order.
When the first day of camp came, we did drop off and everything was fine, but by the time it was 8 or 9 pm I realized we had a problem, our cell service in the area was TERRIBLE; and we had been trying to touch base with our son most of the evening with no luck. Then he and his roommates who were staying in dorms on the Texas A&M Campus got locked out of their room, and it totally scared my son. He was OVER it by this point and started to panic. He was then sending me messages through the Relay in the throes of a full-on panic attack and we were unable to respond to him! It was easily in the top five WORST moments of motherhood I have experienced. To hear your child having a full-on panic attack, and to not be able to get the technology you are trying to use to work so they can hear your voice. Another part of the problem was that he was too upset to think clearly and would not release the buttons to allow us to talk back with him instantly, it was a MESS!
By this time it is almost 10 pm, but I knew we needed to do something, so I was able to get on the phone with a camp counselor and get permission to bring my son a phone. My husband ran to Walmart to get a burner phone and delivered it to our son at camp. For the next two days at camp, he called us every single chance he could and eventually made it to pick up on Saturday.
Since then we have realized that it is handy for him to have a way to contact us or vice versa when he is playing with friends in our neighborhood. So we ditched the burner phone and set him up on a line we already had attached to our plan with the cheapest phone we could get. He only has our numbers and his grandparent’s numbers saved in the phone and it stays hooked up to a charger in the office area when it is not in use outside of the house.
Since he is so young everything is hooked up to either my or my husband’s emails and requires passwords, that he doesn’t know, in order to download apps. So with the setup we have and his un-interest in anything social media-related, I am confident that we have a secure setup and a way to contact him if he is not with us. As he grows older I plan to implement further safety measures like using the Bark App monitoring system to keep him safe while using phones and technology.
So while this new plan certainly goes against everything past me said. It was something that happened out of necessity. I got more information and experience and had to change my thoughts on the subject. Recently I was watching a video by Elyse Myers about this exact subject. She talked about how she had to learn that it is ok to learn new information and change your mind about really anything! The problem is that many of us are so LOUD about our convictions that if we do end up changing our minds we have to choose between publicly eating our words or hiding our new beliefs in shame.
Part of those reasons is why all of these events happened for our family in July 2021, and it is January 2022 before I had the courage to sit and write this article. I hope that I can encourage even one person that it is ok to change your mind about something that you thought you would NEVER do. This is part of the parenting process, we think we know how we will handle situations until those situations happen and we realize we had NO IDEA!!!
This is also a message of grace. Can we show grace to the new mom who is laying out all the “rules” she plans to have for her house?
Just because those things didn’t work out for you, maybe she will get to have a house with zero plastic toys or keep her kid’s stuff neatly hidden in the $50 modern storage bins. Encourage her to try and let her know that if those things don’t work out, that is ok too! Part of learning and growing as parents is to have an open mind, to be open to change when your plan doesn’t work, and showing our kids that we don’t have EVERYTHING all figured out but that we are all learning and growing for the rest of our lives hopefully.
So yes, My 8-yr-old has a phone, that wasn’t a part of the original plan, but it is a part of the new plan and I can tell you this is we are READY for another try at overnight camp this summer!
