What a big moment in all of our lives, our first born getting a smart phone with Internet access. It was such a big decision and I won't lie, I feel like I allowed a little peer pressure to influence our decision, but not the kind of peer pressure you would normally assume - from the incoming 6th grader. In fact, Carter had not asked one time for a smart phone. Not once. Giving him the "flip phone" exactly a year earlier had completely squashed any justification of him needing to communicate with us. Although not being able to group text or even type a number in his 2006 model flip phone, did present some annoyances, it did it's job of allowing us to communicate when we needed for all of 5th grade, even though he never took it school.
So why? Well, long story short, after talking to a few moms that I truly respect, I realized that I wasn't just is the last 15% to give their child a smart phone going into middle school, I was teetering on being one of the very last in general (for the school he was going to.) I was always fine with being towards the last but I realized that I didn't want Carter to be an anomaly that would cause him to stand out socially. It's so easy to want to keep him bubble wrapped and keep him naive and sheltered but when I am well rested and thinking clearly, I know that is not in his best interest, for the long run. We want to help him navigate this big part of life that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. We feel like the younger he is the more open he is to listening to us and partnering with us in the electronic part of life.
Carter has shown tremendous responsibility and so we felt confident that he was ready.
So the Friday before the first day of middle school, Blake and I got one of our old iPhone 6s (apple has currently launched the iPhone 8/PLUS and iPhone X, almost a year ago.) We invested in replacing the cracked screen and a brand new battery - all for about $160. We decided to not make him pay for any of the phone however, we made it crystal clear that we will not replace any cracked screens, damaged or lost phones when it happens. That will be 100% on him. We had him sign a very detailed contract that we went over with him for over an hour. We discussed many situations he will surely be faced with, now that he has this added responsibility and how to respond. The key take-a-way to everything is the amount of communication we were placing him by adding this phone to "our" world. We discussed how much more stress to his normally carefree, almost 12 year old existence were adding, and to ours as well. He agreed he was ready, so after all all contacts were signed, we handed him the phone.
Fast forward just a week or two later, the good... he texted us dozens of times the first couple of weeks of school, which was truly heart warming when you have a middle schooler. I did love how he could find his friends that first week of school in the mornings to hang out with and I could text him the exact time I would be there to pick him up in the afternoons after he practiced in the band halls. I will say that teachers truly do almost expect vast majority of kids to have phones in class. On the first day of school, he told us how one teacher had them pull out phones and go to a website and take a test and it sent the results directly to her. If they failed it, the had to keep re-taking it. Now, they do have chrome books in all classes for the 5-6 kids that didn't have smart phones out of 25-30 to use. We have thought him to use it as a tool to help him stay organized with his new found freedom navigating 8 classes in middle school, many of them going at very fast paces being AP. He only has one game on it, as of now and anything he downloads comes directly to me for authorization via the "Family Sharing" with apple. Also, he's not obsessed with it and I very rarely see him checking it. Amidst many rules, he doesn't ever take it into his bedroom or any bathroom and Blake and I regularly pick it up to look through it admits other software we have on it to keep him safe.
However, with the good came the bad - the exact scenarios mainly around group texts with his old 5th grade friends, started creating lots of learning moments and adding lots of talks to the end of our day. Blake and I quickly struggled with seeing that his group text was on several days getting 180-200 texts per day, of useless comments, often offense. As part of our contract, we would not make him leave the group because we knew this would close down Carter's open communication with us, but we talked though how distracting it must be to get vibrated 183 times during the day and that we know he can't help but look, even though he is not participating. By day 4-5 of this, Carter had voluntarily left the group, which we were so proud of his decision. Unfortunately, he was added back however the main kid that was over posting and one of the three being offensive was taken off the group. This who initial group text real world scenario happening so quickly in 6th grade definitely caused us all stress but the 3 of us came together and learned from it. By the end of week 2, his phone had been taken away for the day, not because his friends were posting bad things in their group chat but because he had not followed through with his commitment of coming and talking to us that same day. He also got his phone taken away one day within the first month of school for not following though with speaking to 3 of his teachers about missing school one afternoon for a soccer tournament in Dallas.
