Children are getting their first “own” phone earlier and earlier. When buying it, it is worth considering the pros and cons of this solution.
Many parents believe that the first phone is a good gift to celebrate:
The list of communion gifts is getting longer every year. Nowadays a child for communion receives an expensive watch, bicycle, console, tablet and even a smartphone. Offering electronic equipment to a child as a communion gift may turn out to be your short-term success. This is because he/she treats electronic equipment received for communion only as a great toy, not as equipment for everyday use.
Want to give your child a phone for their birthday? But on which one? The seventh, eighth or ninth? Remember that the gift should be tailored to the age and emotional maturity of your child. There are no laws that govern the appropriate age for a child to have their own phone. Age is just a metric – there are eight-year-olds who are more emotionally developed than their ten-year-old peers.
Giving a child their first phone under the Christmas tree is a fulfillment of all childhood dreams – a phone is the perfect gift.
Communion, birthday, Christmas or Children’s Day – each of these days is eagerly awaited by the child, who very often plans gifts for these occasions. When they receive the phone, they will be very emotionally attached to it. All attempts to control the use of the equipment by the parent will be perceived by the child as a restriction of its rights, thus starting a rebellion. Therefore, it is much better to give a phone to a child without a special occasion, then it is less special for the child.
A given phone becomes a symbol of maturity and transition to the stage of independence of your child. Therefore, it is best to buy your child their first phone when it is necessary, i.e. when the child is already moving on their own (e.g. from home to school) or is going to a camp.
When a child starts walking home from school on his/her own, parenting enters a whole new level. A child’s first walk home from school on their own is always stressful for a parent. This can be minimized by giving your child a phone.
Having the child’s own phone is a great help for the parent, who can call the child or, for example, locate the child using a free application
It is worth making the child aware that the phone is a device used to contact with others. Although modern phones have many different interesting functions, the main task of this device is to provide communication with another person.
Today on the GSM market you can find about a thousand different models. When choosing the first phone for a child, it is worth answering the questions:
A very common practice among parents is to give their child their “old” phone. However, you have to reckon with the fact that if the phone is equipped with an Internet browsing function, your child will surely use it. Of course, you can block or restrict this feature, but this is not always an effective solution.
Giving your child a traditional phone with keys is a very bad idea. Such devices are already “old-fashioned” and your child may, unfortunately, be ridiculed by his or her peers because of this. If you do not want to expose your child to ridicule from his/her peers, give him/her a touch phone.
