Cell phone use by tots on rise
Cell phones - the scourge of high school classrooms and corridors - are falling into the hands of grade school tots who are showing up for class with a phone to call home as early as kindergarten, school officials said.According to TheBoy, there are at least four or five kids in his third grade class (out of 24) who have cell phones. That's not terribly surprising given the high YQ* in my town - just pull up at any school function and you'll see a sea of late-model SUVs arriving to drop off their kids. It's a status symbol like pretty much everything these days; whose kid has the latest and greatest phone/game system/vacation/whatever.“Cell phones are a problem for all grades,” Haverhill High School Principal Bernie Nangle said, adding that a colleague described seeing kindergarteners with cell phones at her elementary school.
There will be no phones for the G. children for the foreseeable future. There's simply no need for a first (or third) grader to have their own phone, given that they are with us or in school at all times. Perhaps when they are in middle school and have more autonomous after school events we might consider adding a line to our plan, but certainly not while in grammar school.
Now, a tracking device - or shock collar - there's an idea...
That is all.
*Yuppie Quotient
10 comments:
I agree.
There is no time now when my daughter isn't in the presence of an adult, or at home. No need for a cell phone.
There's an Ipod app that allows you to track cell phones (I call it the Stalker App) so you can keep tabs on the kids. Less painful than ear-tagging them.
Alan,
Bingo. When I asked TheBoy how many kids in his class had cell phones, he started in with the "I want one" crap.
I asked him to tell me even one time that he was less than ten seconds from someone without a phone of some sort. He couldn't do it.
He made the fatal mistake of asking how old I was when I got my first cell phone. I responded that:
1. I was 24, and
2. Cell phones were the size of bricks at that time.
When he's in middle school and starting to go off on his own, I'll revisit. Until then, no phone, no how...
Timmeehh,
I wish you were kidding. There's already a program in MA and other states to give free cell phones to people...
Stretch,
The big problem there is that it would mean I would have to get an iPhone...
He made the fatal mistake of asking how old I was when I got my first cell phone. I responded that:
1. I was 24, and
2. Cell phones were the size of bricks at that time.
... And he rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically and said, "Dad, you just don't get it."
When there are children in the ZerCool house, and they start asking for a phone, they will be told, "When you can pay for it yourself, AND prove that you can own it responsibly."
Yeah, my 16-year-olds still don't have cell phones, 'cause they don't need them. And when Silver was coming home after school by herself, and we had NO landline, THEN she got her first cell phone. She was in 8th grade. I got my first cell phone when I was 28, I believe...
I never got a phone till I came to college. My mom forced me to.
cell phones for young kids - can't see the need, like yours mine are either with us or at school or with a delegated responsible adult.
a shock collar on the other hand would be v.useful ....
Hell, I didn't get my first cell phone until I was 53. I'm 58 now and still don't use it more than once a month. I mainly keep mine around in case of emergency.
Cricket is the only 7th grader without one (she has a HAM radio) and Bugaboo (3rd grade) is the only one of a few that doesn't have one. Maybe at 16 but since they will both have HAM radios, probably not.
And what's with all the stalker apps? Can't our kids deceive us like we did our parents?
my kid will probably have one of the phones that has the 'call mom' 'call dad' buttons on it... no numbers or anything extra, it will ONLY call me, my wife, or possibly 1-2 other numbers (in case we're both un-reachable at the moment)
not sure which age, but it'll probably b pretty young..
we use the phones to communicate while on the farm, and if he's off on the 4-wheeler, or a horse runnin cattle, or checking fence, I want a way for him to contact us, even if we're not on the property....
and he will have one shortly into his school ages at the latest, I dont trust teachers anymore, and if there happens to be some type of incident, I want to know about it so that I can get there ASAP (I'm the big poppa that nobody will want to mess with, you aint gonna hurt my baby -LOL)
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