Keep An Eye On Kids And Their Cell Phones
You can't walk around a mall or almost anywhere else without bumping into a kid who is staring not ahead, but at his or her cell phone. Almost all parents give cell phones to their kids under the premise that it is important to have one just in case of an emergency, but how many of the kids who are wandering around aimlessly are really talking about a critical issue?
If you do not allow your children to have his or her own cell phones there is a good chance that you can win the award for Worst Parent of the Year. That's how important it is for kids to have cell phones and automatic access to the Net,
but as they are falling into kids who are as small as elementary school age, you might want to consider how much access they need to have. Sure, all of their friends have cell phones, so you don't want your kids to be outcasts, but you also have to know what they are doing with those phones.
There is so much that these mobile phones can do now. They have games built in for one, that kids can play with for hours. So, if you want your child to have a distraction for a while, it could be a good idea. There are game systems though that kids can carry with them to make shopping trips and doctor visits easier. It doesn't have to be a phone. Sometimes having a mobile sort of a babysitter can be helpful.
There are unproven rumors that cell phone use can cause brain cancer, and it is not easy to believe, but do you really want to tackle that chance as a parent? Letting a kid have a cell phone in these days means a lot of cell usage and the chance of the possibility that something bad can happen.
Kids are going to conceal their cell phones whether they are allowed in school or not since most of the cell phones today are tiny and impossible to detect, but if you walk around any school today you can find kids chatting away on the phone or texting to their friends who are only a few feet away.
While you don't want your kids to spend too much time on a phone, it is nice to have it in case of emergency. A home phone, or land line is good to have for kids to use when they want to chat with friends. A mobile phone though will allow you to keep track of them when they are away from the house.
Keep track of the way your kids use their cell phones and, while you are at it, make sure to enforce certain limits on your own usage. Do not be a slave to your cell phone and try to get away from it at least once in awhile and enjoy life in the present instead of having to babble away with someone who isn't there and probably doesn't care.
