Mobile phones are commonly use by everyone nowadays and there are even more high tech phones coming up in the market. Whether to allow your children to have them is always a usual question asked by many parents.
The first thing to consider would be a mobile phone is a necessity or not because it can be a distraction to another request by your child but if it’s not necessary for them to have it, why let them? You should ensure you have a valid reason for them to have a mobile phone that wouldn’t cause them any bad influence.
Maybe you should also consider their age group as this reflects their responsibility. Surely, letting them have a mobile phone is to easily keep in touch with them but you would need to ensure that your child wouldn’t get addicted to the games or chatting over the phone whole day long. It’s ideal to teach them value of money here by giving them a phone allowance per week/month where if they spend on their phone bills above the allowance, it would be on their own expense. This would at least help them to control their usage of the mobile phone.
Yes, the older they are the harder to control their daily life and the more they would ask for their own mobile phone. Every parents would surely want to know what their child are up to daily and giving them a mobile phone could hide away some of their activities. You may discuss with them to still let you into certain things but they may choose not to let you into certain details of their activities that are healthy by explaining to them the reason of doing so which is to ensure they aren’t indulge in any unhealthy activities.
You may start out with a basic mobile phone which is use to call and text with limited functions of games or Internet connection to try out your child’s responsibility and how well he/she could handle the mobile phone. If you find that they are mature enough and its time for them to change their phone, make it a point to change for them as a reward to anything like an achievement or a job done! In fact, you can make them work towards the goal to have their mobile phone in the first place.
If they often complaint on the allowance isn’t enough where it’s a reasonable allowance, then, get them to work part time for their own allowance or do more chores or accomplish other tasks for the reward of more allowance! It all depends on your child if they are ready to hold such responsibility yet before deciding on letting them to have their own mobile phone.
