Dd7 and a mobile phone

[Fullofthought]

DD is very nearly 7. She's asking for a mobile phone as she has lots of friends who have them. She would also be able to use it to have contacted with her farther if he gets off his arse and writes to her it would progress to calls. Do you think that getting her a very cheap phone with a camera on it would be unreasonable and just not top it up often so it's more for the camera and him to contact her. I can get a very basic phone with camera for 10.79 including a £10 top up.

around here, one or two have phones, but most get them in year 6 in readiness for secondary.

That seems a good yardstick, so that is what dd2 will get

I can see why plenty of people don't want to get their young children mobiles, but I'm not sure why others are saying it's 'irresponsible'. My dd has had one since shortly after her 7th birthday. It was a very cheap reconditioned one, so if she lost it it wouldn't matter too much. She uses it to keep in touch with us by text/email if she is not with us, and mainly to take photos that she can save to the computer. We keep a close eye on what she uses it for, so I fail to see how it's 'irresponsible'?

She has a tablet but it's too big for us to take out with us- won't fit in my bag or her bag. She doesn't bother with its not as easy to take pictures on when we did take it out with us In the days where we needed it to keep her occupied during long hospital appointment for her. She loves taking selfies of herself on my phone.ans we do a lot of long car drives now where I need my phone for the maps and she wants to play games on it or take pictures- impossible to take her tablet on these drives due to the nature of what we do when we get to the location we are driving to.

NO.

It is not needed and you need to consider how vulnerable a child of this age is to online issues.

Jeez, can't believe you keep trying to justify it!!!!

It's not something I'd consider for my 6 or 7 year old.
We had an old phone the older two used when they were in juniors and started going out and about without me but in all honestly I find for keeping in contact mobiles cause more problems than they solve.
My 18 and 14 year olds either have no signal, have no credit or have their phones on silent. It's easier just to agree times and stick to them or phone their friends landlines.

Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly is really worth a read. It's really quite frightening how quickly these social media apps pop up and seem so innocent. "It's just a really cool app where you can record a song and lip sync...".

The age limit is 16 for a reason, and overriding it so kids can have fun is opening them up to potential harm that we may be completely unaware of.

DD2 has WhatsApp and had about 4 contacts from her old school on there. Now, in her new school, she said to me one morning, "Mum, I've been added to loads of chat groups and I've got 534 unread messages and I don't know what to do!" She had been added to chat groups by her contacts, then added to other chat groups as a mass add from those chat groups.

She felt scared to leave the groups because she knew that it pins a notification at the top of the group, but didn't want to be in the groups. She didn't feel comfortable with the chat. I had to take over for her and say "we're just going to click 'leave group' and 'delete group'. Other people have done it, nobody will notice and you'll be fine."

Just the fact that your not at all savvy about the apps she wants makes giving her a phone of her own a very bad idea.

She can contact her dad using your phone, or the land-line.

My DD has only just got a mobile phone at 11yrs old .That is because she started secondary this time and goes on the bus so i agreed to a phone as i feel happier knowing she can contact us if needs be .My younger DD not a chance until she is also at secondary.

But why do Yr 6s need to have a phone "in readiness for secondary school?" What exactly do they need to practise?
I can see why you might want themto have a phone if they're walking to and from school unaccompanied. Can't see why it needs to be a Smartphone though, and passing on an old handset from an adult doesn't make it OK. You're opening a Pandora's box of tempting apps that way.

Y6’s don’t NEED to have a phone, but this is when they often start getting them.
From middle of Y6 we started slowly getting DD1 used to a little more independence. Letting her stay at home during the day, on her own.
Walking on her own to nearby places. Etc.
We didn’t want to have all the changes start with a bang on Sept of Y7....

Also - having the phone - kids started learning about communications with peers....
Mass chats were established as a way of connecting. Then lots of learnings about dos and

So - by the time she arrived in the new school, she had a way of keeping in touch with the old school friends. And the phone/chatting usage was at a more manageable level.

As to why a smart-phone? Partially - because I do not want DD to be so one of the few people in her new school with an old style phone.
(Teenage years will be hard enough, don’t need to add to that)
And another reason is security.
Her phone talks to mine and I can track her location when she is coming home on her own.

We have the phones set up so that if DS1 (and soon DD) want to download an app, even a free one it sends a message to mine and DHs phone to ask us to authourise it. Means we know exactly what apps they are downloading and can if needs be have a chat about it first.

As PP said, year 6 was a good time for them to learn the nuances of messaging and learning that things don’t come across the same in a text as they would if you were saying it face to face as you don’t have the body language or tone of voice to help convey the message.
Group chat with year 6 was a safe place for them to explore this, they were all old friends having grown up together (so knew that x jokes around rather than being mean, y doesn’t do chit chat and gets to the point etc) and we all knew that all the parents were occasionally looking at the messages. Then when they go to year 7 they have learnt a bit to communicate and hopefully won’t put someone’s back up.

You could just get your dd a smaller tablet no need for a phone
My dc have had tablets since they were toddlers. They don't need a phone until they at secondary school and not being collected from school

I had a similar situation with my 8 year old she wanted a phone but I told her she's too young for one at the moment and she doesn't have a real need for one either.
However, we did buy her a watch from xplora where she is able to make calls to 12 different contacts (all of which are put in via mine or my partners phones) she is able to make calls to us and press the SOS button if she's in an emergency. We are able to track where she is if she's out for the day with a friend or two and their parents or if she's in the park with us and runs off and we can't find her we can locate her and call her. We are also able to send her text messages but she can only make calls to the preset numbers we install on her watch. It works really well for us and gives her a sense of responsibility I suppose and shes less likely to lose her watch with it strapped to her wrist. Xplora have a website, it might be worth giving them a look.

I had mobile phones from aged about 7 or 8. I used to go away to sports camps a lot and like your DD, liked to get in contact with each parent if I was staying with the other.
It never did me any harm, I had a set allowance and once that was gone, it was gone. My parents also would read and check everything at random points for safety.

Hey my daughter 5 wants a phone ( it’s all to do with the fact they see them everywhere and we use them ) I didn’t want to get her a phone so I bought her a second hand iPod touch. She loves music so will listen to her music / play games / take photos , FaceTime dad and ballet teacher etc.

No.
My dc y6 don't have them yet and most of their friends don't and school won't allow them in school.
I have said they can have them for secondary school.
A kindle fire maybe?

It’s a 3 tier school system where we are so kids tend to get phones from the age of 9 in readiness for going to the middle school which is a bus ride and half a mile walk away. Feels too young but I can see it would give parents some comfort.

Just the fact that your not at all savvy about the apps she wants makes giving her a phone of her own a very bad idea.

What PickAChew said. I'm sorry OP but you sound very naive about her online safety. If you're going to be driving, so not supervising her usage of the phone for long periods of time, then she could be being exposed to all sorts. Better to say no, and get her something like a Nintendo DS to play games on for long car trips.

OP, you make it sound like the only thing a child can do when in a car/waiting in hospital, is go on a mobile phone
She could read, colour in, day dream, do an eye spy book, sing, play games with you, play with toys, use play doh....

If you want to buy her a phone, then do. But it doesn’t sound like you know anything about keeping kids safe online, so I feel you just want a mini tablet for her, get an iPod touch or something.

I really wouldn’t allow my 6 year old access to musical.ly (Or any part of the teen/adult internet) unsupervised.

WHen my dos was that age he had restricted access to apps like CBeebies or yahoo kids. He couldn’t download anything, time was limited, everything monitored, and what he could access was trusted safe content.

Having worked in schools where kids have fallen foul of being given adult gadgets And unrestricted access, my boy will not be exposed to dangers like that, just because “everybody else” is allowed to snapchat/play COD/Whatever

As the mother of a nearly 7 year old that’s madness. If she wants to take photos, buy her a cheap digital camera. Which 7 year old needs a smartphone? YouTube is full of questionable content and it seems like you don’t know much about the games she wants to play. And the ‘all my friends have them’ is clearly a bogus argument. Especially at 7. Books. Colouring. Music. More books. Craft. Board games. Playing outside. So much more that they can do that doesn’t involve a smartphone (cue MNers telling me how their kids had smartphones from 5 and went to Oxbridge...).

How did anyone ever survive without them?

Absolutely not. Secondary seems like the right time, if they have to have them at all (I hate mine having them, tbh, but there's only so much swimming against the tide you can do). Dc1 had what was effectively a non-smartphone (very simple smartphone, internet blocked) from 10 when he went to secondary (not in UK) and graduated to a proper smartphone at nearly 12. Dc2 (by then we had moved to a different area with a different secondary transfer point) got one at almost 11, entering his last year of primary (where they are not allowed to have their phones at all). We have a parental controls app (the basics are blocked, the rest is fairly liberally set but so that we can monitor what they are doing) and phone use is for communal areas of the house only. They're not allowed on social media at all. And they certainly don't have flashy models. Modest, newish ones.

I still hate it, but I feel reasonably comfortable with this compromise. I still worry my head off about them, because I am under no illusion that we can always have 100% control and we will need to gradually start relinquishing it at some point. Even without a smartphone (and having an 'entry-level' phone may mean she ends up moving to a smartphone sooner than you are comfortable with), there is still potential for so many unwise actions at that age, where you just don't think things through. Plus I think it's important to resist the notion that these things are essentials.

Get her a smaller tablet for Christmas. They're not expensive.

Not necessary in the slightest.

6 year olds don't need phones for any reason.

You say, so she can have contact with her father... Who won't write to her and is entirely absent. Yet you're okay with her suddenly maybe having completely unmonitored, unsupervised phone contact with him? As a parent, I wouldn't be okay with that. The child is 6 - ALL contact should go through you.

If primary school kids are mature enough to walk to school alone they can do so without phones surely