We are now officially the Meanest Parents Ever. The girl is now the last remaining person in her grade to lack a cell phone. In fact, she could be the only person in the entire middle school. We have maintained that she really doesn’t need one for the following reasons:
She lives a short walking distance from the school.
She’s never without someone with a cell phone.
She has an iTouch and can text her friends with it.
She’s never anywhere but school, home or friends’ homes.
So we’ve held out a pretty long time as you can imagine. She’s indignant and furious. She’s humiliated. We’ve stuck to our guns. We know, once she gets one, that’s it — she’ll be on it 24/7. We held out getting one for her older brother until he was in high school and marching band practice would end at various times. It became a necessity. We haven’t gotten there yet, with her.
I’m starting to waver, though. It’s that “only kid without one” thing that’s getting to me. It’s the Jonas-like boy asking for her cell number and the girl being forced to lie and say her parents are Amish.
Think we’ll make it to eighth grade?
She’s not the last my daughter just got one for her 16th birthday in 11th grade only because she is without us much more often. Swimming practice dating etc.
What happen to kids calling the house to talk to each other and parents getting the chance to harrass them.
This will be us in two years, I just know it.
Oh, how we’ve suffered with this! We, too, were the meanest parents ever (and still are–but in different ways). We finally gave her one a month ago (she’s in 8th grade). That’s went they start to travel in packs and I’m having a hard enough time dealing with that.
Stay firm!
I love the “travel in packs” – :-)))). I gave in during 8th grade-JV softball, band, worrying about boys. My neighbor gave in during 6th grade because of bus schedule & daughter alone BUT asked me to give it to her for her birthday so she didn’t know it was her parents giving in. It was the “pay as you go” type and she had to earn her own minutes.
My nieces both received one beginning of this school year-8th & 10th grade, but also ride combo of transit bus and school bus in Richmond.
As the parent of toddlers, I’m thinking of becoming Amish. I scarcely can justify having a wireless phone for myself. What an odd luxury our children expect these days.
we actually got phones for the kids when they were in 7th and 8th by OUR choice so that we could keep track of them. however, they were not on high minute plans and were under strict orders to limit phone use to necessities, and had no texting. phones added 2 years later added unlimited texting and that is what gets used more than the phone anyway. (youngest with >10x as many texts as oldest, 20X more than me, 100x more than my wife)
We’ve heard the “only one not to have” story so many times I could spit. Rhiannon has a cell phone (7th grade…Christmas) that serves no purpose but to cost us the $10 charge to our fam plan. Ever since we cancelled texting because she was texting after bedtime, she lost interest. This means the phone is rarely with her and rarely charged. This is infuriating for parents who assumed providing a telecommunications device to their daughter would ensure communication. There you have it. She rarely used the phone for anything BUT texting. Only thing I can say is, if you give in, just add to your fam plan…we started with kajeet, for which you purchase minutes as you go. Idea was she would earn her minutes each month. Problem is, minutes are expensive and they charge you so many minutes a day whether you are making calls or not…TOO costly.
You guys are holding out??? Wow! You are my new heroes. We gave in last year over the “last one the in the grade” thing. (And she really was)It’s all about the texting…If she had Mark’s cell number she’d be texting him right now. Hang in there!
This actually forced me to pull out our last statement to see how much talking actually occurred. 300 minutes….not that bad. 1000+ text messages…ugh