There are probably 1000 questions running through your mind, but before going over texting and talking plans, there are some more important questions you need to ask yourself before giving your child a phone. A phone isn't going to solve all of your family's problems, and, in fact, it can exasperate issues that already exist.
"It is really imperative that we are looking at the big picture for our child," Janell Burley Hofmann says. "Take the device out of it and basically go through that evaluation before we introduce the phone. What we don’t want to do is introduce something like a smartphone that is going to cause more struggle for a family. We want to make sure there is a certain level of readiness in our child, and it sounds a little idealistic, but we want our kids to have success with the technology."
So how do you know if your child is ready? Hofmann says parents need to ask themselves the following questions:
- How are their grades?
- How is their behavior?
- How are they interacting with the other technology in our lives, whether it is a computer game or video game system, or maybe an Ipod or an Ereader or something like that? We should be asking if they have a healthy relationship to this already.
- Are they doing what they're asked, whether it is chores or contributing to the family system in some way?
She says parents need to thoroughly assess their answers to those questions and determine "what is working in these areas and what isn’t. And if I do introduce the phone, what are some of the boundaries I am going to set so that we have success and we don’t have struggle."
