i never wanted my tween to have a cell phone. her dad got her one all on his own. at first she had a super simple phone that did text and made calls only. then she got upgraded a little bit. then she got upgraded a lot. to a droid. to a fragile {better than mine at the time} phone with internet and facebook and twitter and youtube and apps. to a phone that requires a data plan and needs a screen protector and phone case that is military grade. because lets face it - tweens are irresponsible and should not have a cell phone.
why?
because her phone was dropped.
yup a cracked screen. oh, don't get me wrong; it happens to the best of us. i dropped my phone once and well, the entire screen shattered. the result of carelessly leaving my cell phone in my lap while driving to pick up the wolf and getting out forgetting it was there only to watch it fall {as if it were in slow motion} screen first onto the gravel. but wait, we're not talking about how careless i am with my phone. we're talking about my daughter here.
so hers is the result of letting a friend enter in her number and it being dropped in the process. shes been told time and time again to not let other people handle her phone. she can't even handle it well enough; there's no way i want other people touching it. she dropped it just a few nights before at films with families and it scratched up the case pretty badly. now its completely unusable! which is really fine with me, but her dad has to pay a big ol' deductible to get it fixed so thats a bummer.
but if she didn't have the thing in the first place we wouldn't have this problem!
i have to admit; it is sort of handy to get a hold of her at times. and she doesn't have to use up my phone to talk to her bff at the moment. but aside from the irresponsible handling, the limitless access to the internet and apps are ridiculous! why pay for all that stuff if they can't even use it?! or they shouldn't anyway {she isn't allowed to}. but even so, it's there. for them to take advantage of! that's pretty scary! so many weirdos out there and kids are so impressionable and naive... they'd believe just about anything! even with parental controls theres only so much you can limit on those darn things anyway.
but, she does have a phone and it does have all of that stuff so what do we do? we monitor it ourselves as much as we can and leave the rest to her to make the decisions. we've explained to her the rules and boundaries and trust she will make the right decisions. so far she hasn't let us down. except for breaking it...
well, there was that one time that one of her friends prank called - oh wait, that was on my phone! hahaha, oh my gosh. ok, story time! one of her friends had prank called my phone. i answered and these kids on the other end were talking funny asking for bry. i asked who it was and they hung up. i shrugged it off. then they called again, and kept calling! so i called them back, told them i was bry's mom. they were like 'oh you must have the wrong number' and hung up on me. so i called back again and tried asking who they were and they were giving me the run around. so then i decided to play a little trick on them, just to scare them a bit. i then proceeded to tell them that if they don't tell me who it was i was going to call the police and file a report. i told them i had their number and the cops could trace it to their exact location and they could get in a lot of trouble for harassment. i also told them that the cops would be talking to their parents. you guys... it was the funniest thing! i was dying holding back laughter and you could totally hear bry and the wolf laughing their asses off in the background. so they quickly gave up who they were and were suuuuuper apologetic. i was dying! so funny. i told them dont ever call my phone again and if they want to talk to bry to just call her and they were like 'im so sorry miss saunders, im so sorry! we wont do it again we promise!' hahaha. punks. {totally prank called my fair share of people back in the day myself so i wasn't even mad}. then when they hung up i felt terrible and had the wolf talk to them at school that monday to apologize to them for me {i would have done it myself but i was pregnant with morning sickness so i was no good to anyone before 10am.}. every thing was cool after that and i felt better, but every now and then when im picking her up from school and i see the kids in the hallway i feel a pang of guilt and also can't help but laugh a little.
ok, anyway, enough about that! so, tell me... do you think tweens should have a cell phone? at what age do you think it is appropriate to let your child have one?
also, did you ever prank call someone? what was your favorite time? what happened?
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