Cellphones for Your Kids - Tips and Tales

[Free Agent]

When our kids take the dingy ashore, or are out and about on the jet skis we like the idea of communication with them if we stay on the boat, or are hitting the Reef Bar.

On Santa Catalina island cell phone service is iffy as are radio communications.

The kids tote along the Standard Horizon HX280s hand-helds and they seem to work better than their cell phones.
Waterproof radios, the cellphones are not, so that's another bonus.

We have a family plan that includes 5 phones and it's served us well.
Our little one has a phone with only 5 pre-programmed numbers. That's all that will work on it.

Cellphones are banned at my older daughters school.
But when a 21" underground water main that ran across the center of her school ruptured, it put the entire school under several inchs of water.

The principal immediately got on the hailer and asked all the kid with (banned) cellphones to let other kids call home with their cellphone to get parents notified to come pick them up. 1800 students at her school BTW.

Our daughter busted hers out and lets the kids call away.

Another time PITA showed up and had a brutal, violent demonstration at one of our kids schools. It was nice I got a call from our child and was able to get our child outta there.
So we think our reasons are legit.

Wife recently had an excellent cellphone that monitored the kids calls coming and going, also their texts. Wife could screen and block any number to/from the kids phones from the wifes phone.

Wife confiscated my Droid X as a deal maker when I wanted to buy a new Rzr XP, and I got an regular standard cell phone in it's place.

Rats.

Any tips or tales of your kids with cellphones?

[capngeo]

Any tips or tales of your kids with cellphones?

I dropped mine in the water once er, I meant twice, Uh, well maybe three....... OK, I'll admit it.... King Neptune gets his phones FREE courtesy of ME!

[sledjockey]

Both my kids have phones and have had for years. They are both teens and in high school now, so they have smartphones with data plans. They are hooked up to our family Email and my Exchange server. This is for NUMEROUS reasons, but the main ones deal with monitoring, backups, and mostly the opportunity for them to learn business systems before they are required to really "know" them. Let's face it: kids are going to be in a position where complete IT style understanding of tech devices is going to be an unspoken requirement to get decent jobs when they get older. Why cripple them?

I have also found that they are more "in touch" and easier to monitor with smartphones. Between Facebook and Twitter updates, I know EXACTLY what is going on. I have also found that 4Square removes the need for tracking their GPS as well. They do it for me to become "Mayor" of their hangouts.

I definitely recommend all parents bite the bullet and just purchase smartphones for teens. I also recommend that they rotate the brands/OS's as well for each upgrade. Get a BlackBerry one time, Windows Mobile another and Android/iPhone last. This gives them the chance to really understand the technologies before getting the easy to configure device.


As for the waterproof idea: There are waterproof bags that are made for cell phones. We picked up ours at REI for use during kayaking/canoeing and snowboarding for around $15 per bag. They also have leash things on the ones we got. The top folds over and velcros and has a clear section to see what the phone is doing in the bag. I have gone swimming a couple times due to the canoe tipping without killing my BlackBerry before and DroidX now. Both were completely unscathed.