If You’re on the Fence About Giving Your Child a Smartphone
In the lead up to my son’s 11th birthday, he fell into a pattern of heralding me with stories of his close friends receiving smartphones on their birthdays; almost as though it was a de facto rite of passage of which I should be made aware. He was laying the groundwork; getting out ahead of things to set the expectation that he too would want one.
He’s the second youngest in his cohort of close friends, so he regarded each new announcement as a minor victory — i.e., an opportunity to bolster his own particular claim. Unfortunately for him, I am about a generation and a half ahead of his friends’ moms and generally not influenced by their decisions. He’d remind me daily that much younger kids, some as young as 7 even, already had phones. And I would remind him that every family situation was different and our situation didn’t warrant him having one at this time.
Every attempt to justify getting a phone was met with unwavering pushback from me. This is the backdrop for which I recount the events leading to my change of heart. It is my hope that you find our experience helpful should you find yourself evaluating the appropriateness of giving a phone to a young child.
Fasten Your Seatbelts
To say our son’s transition to middle school was bumpy would be an understatement. Though we anticipated going from elementary to middle school would require adjustments on many fronts, we weren’t prepared for just how jarring the transition would be.
Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t delusional about the potential challenges. We recognized we were still in a pandemic. We were aware that masking and social distancing were still controversial and, in some instances, divisive practices depending on what side of the School Board’s policies people fell. And we were aware that many of the teachers and administrators would be returning to classrooms they had vacated nearly a year and a half prior. Many of which were still accumulating dust; i.e., the classrooms, not the teachers.
However, we naively thought we were prepared, to some degree, to just roll with it. And, for the most part, we did.
A Change of Paradigm
In elementary school, we became accustomed to and were spoiled by a fair amount of hand-holding. In fact, adult parents were nearly as coddled as their children when it came to school communications. It was not uncommon, on any given day, to receive multiple alerts in English and Spanish, followed up with a phone call, an email from the Principal, the teacher, the classroom parent, or a PTA representative. Upcoming events such as state-wide testing, open houses, book fairs, and anything deadline driven would automatically trigger a barrage of communications with an expediency and efficiency that would make our most trained military units marvel.
Though the copious stream of notices and alerts clogged up my email, voicemail, and messaging apps, I always appreciated them. They were informative and often served to remind me of key deadlines that may have fallen off my radar during the daily press of life.
Gone Fishing!
As we found ourselves about a month out from the fall start date, I went to pick up my son from his day camp. When I pulled up to the cue I noticed he was in a huddle with two of his friends deep in conversation. When I asked him about it, he told me that his friends told him they would not be at camp the next day because they were going to an orientation at the Middle school. As they were all attending the same school my initial thoughts were… “What the…?” quickly followed by, “How bad a parent must I be to have missed THAT correspondence?”
I was blind-sided. And I was embarrassed at the thought of asking any of my son’s friend’s parents for the deets. Mom-shaming is a very real thing in my community. Nevertheless, I put on my big gal britches, braved the discussion with my son’s friend’s mom, and risked revealing just how uninformed I truly was as a parent. To my relief, I discovered this particular parent had only just found out about it herself the night before through casual conversation with another mom. There were no letters sent out. No emails. No alerts. No calls. I was not as uninformed as initially thought. I just needed a paradigm shift.
Panicked that I had stumbled upon the information too late to sign up for the session scheduled for the next day, I was assured that there were several slots still available. I was not the only parent who did not receive word. And, with that, I rushed home and went on a fishing expedition to find the information buried deep inside the belly of the website. After registering my son, I notified a few other parents whose children were not signed up as a way of paying the information forward. Having pulled off an 11th hour save for my son, I felt my mom cred rising again. Bolstered by my success, I pored over the school’s website for hours until I felt satisfied that I had all the information I needed for my son’s first day. All was right with the world again.
Fast forward to the week before school; the Wednesday before the Monday start to be exact… There was to be what was touted as a dry run on Thursday. Families could opt into the half-day if they were unfamiliar with the school or its bus routes. As my son would be riding a school bus for the very first time, we decided it was worth it for him to participate. Being thoroughly conversant with the school’s website by now, I knew where to pull the updated bus schedule. The prior year’s schedule was still posted on the landing page, but I knew that if I went to the school’s Transportation page I could find the updated schedule. I was THAT informed.
Listening to the Voice Within
The day before the dry run, I felt unsettled in my spirit all day. The school’s Administrative staff demonstrated on many occasions that they were challenged when it came to timely communications. In one particular instance, children were invited to a virtual meet and greet with their grade-level counselors in the middle of a week day, in the middle of summer, via a link sent via email less than 30 minutes prior to the scheduled meeting. So there persisted a concern that the dry run would not be immune to said challenges. And, by the end of the day, I convinced myself that I needed to get my son a smartphone just in case.
So after a full day of work, I went online and booked a 6pm appointment with my wireless provider so that I could upgrade my smartphone (which was long overdue for one) and then give my son my phone. And after a nearly 2.5 hour visit, my son walked out of the store triumphantly with his phone in hand. Upon reaching home, I downloaded the app for my son’s restricted phone plan so that I could track his phone usage and location, programmed two numbers (mine and his dad’s) into his phone, and showed him the basic functionality of the phone; ensuring that he knew how to make a call. All that was left was to leave him with instructions to call me if anything came up. With that done, the voice within me was quieted.
Immediate Dividends
Thursday morning, I placed my son on the bus and went about my day secure in the knowledge, per the alert from the app I downloaded, that my son arrived at school. And I was fairly confident that he would come home feeling triumphant at successfully negotiating the bus and his first half-day dry run. However, just after noon, and right about the time I was settling down to eat my lunch, my phone rang. It was my son calling.
Mom, I think I am on the wrong bus.
Thank god for that phone!
Fortunately my son, who has always been able to find a way to get his needs met, was mature and responsible enough to use his phone exactly as intended. As a result, we were able to establish a plan and reunite relatively quickly. But it is in my nature when these things happen to consider the alternative. What if I hadn’t given my son the phone the night before? What if I hadn’t setup the GPS tracker on his phone that would allow me to locate him on a map within a few yards, give or take? What might that scenario look like for us?
Even the Best-Laid Plans
If you are a parent of a school-age child, by now you may be aware there is a shortage of school bus drivers across the nation. School systems are having a hell of a time recruiting and hiring drivers (who historically have been retirees over the age of 65) due to fear of COVID-19 exposure. As a result, school bus transportation has been severely disrupted.
In our transportation cluster, three specific routes are impacted by this shortage; two of those three routes are my son’s AM and PM routes.
We found out that my son was on the right bus on the day in question; just during the wrong run. Because of the driver shortage, some drivers were making two separate runs to two separate neighborhoods, circling back to the school in between for the later pickup. My son, we were informed, would need to wait at the school for the 2nd run. As with all instructions coming from the school’s Administrative staff, the information came to us a few days after it was needed.
Unfortunately, the situation has not improved even a month out from a scandalous and disastrous first day that resulted in kids stranded curbside waiting for buses that never arrived, buses arriving at school near the end of first period, and other calamities that were so egregious they made the local news. (As an aside, I was one of the parents who wrote a complaint email and called the Transportation coordinator for our Middle School.)
If this is to be our particular new normal, I am glad I gave into my intuition on this, even if I had to eat a bit of crow for my reversal of thought.
What about you? In your opinion, how young is too young for a smartphone?
