cell phone for 11 year old

Please tell me my daughter is not the only 11 year old without a cellphone!

0tterbot...

ok - your daughter is not the only one :-)

Almost all the middle schoolers I know now have cell phones and my daughter
begs for one but I refuse to get her one. I tell her when she is old enough

Sue...

old >enough to go out with her friends alone, I will get her one.

Ericka Kammerer...

She's not the only one ;-) Hang in there.

Best wishes,
Ericka

No, my girls don't have a cell phone. They are 14, 11 and 9. I do let them
have mine when they are out without me though and it definitely comes in
handy so they can get a hold of me when needed.

L....

Why?

to go out with her friends alone, I will get her one.

Irrational Number...

I plan on getting my kids the kind that has
four or five programmable numbers so they
can get ahold of me or DH, but not actually
dial any friends' numbers. (They're 3 and 1
right now.)

Cathy Weeks...

Hell, I'm more strict than you are! My almost-12-year-old doesn't have
a cellphone, and I see no reason to get him one any time soon. When
he *does* need one (usually for short-term needs) We loan him one of
ours. In the last couple of years, that has happened once.

But, we also have a pre-paid plan, and our rates are REALLY high -
$0.25 per minute. But in the end, that's a lot cheaper than regular
plans (we never came anywhere near using up our minutes in our regular
plans, it was money down the drain) , and due to the per minute cost,
we are all encouraged to use them as little as possible.

My stepson is also allowed to ride his bike without us, and go to his
friends, or the library and rec center, etc. There are phones at each
end of his journeys that he can use. And he has to alert one of us to
his intended whereabouts BEFORE he goes anywhere. So yes, there might
be some chance that a cellphone might be useful en route, but I believe
those to be sufficently low risk that I don't think he needs one.

Cathy Weeks

Aula...

My turning 11 DS doesn't have one, doesn't want one and doesn't know one kid
his age or older [or younger] who has one. Does that help? Course, living
out here in the hinterland where the hills make reception interesting in
many areas, I suspect we are going to see a lot less of this issue than we
might have had we stayed in sunny flat Florida.

Banty...

The hinterlands are better :)

Aula...

there are certain benefits, even if shopping and work are a bit of a drive
away. ;-)

Chris...

We just got our 14 year old son a cell phone this summer. It is a
prepaid plan that he pays for--about $20 every 2 months gives him about
100 minutes I think. He uses it mainly to call when he is done at
sports practices or work. I like the convenience of him having it, but
our soon to be 11 year old 6th grader does not have one, and I doubt he
will get one anytime soon. We don't live in an area where the kids can
walk anywhere, so I don't have a need to be checking up on them or
having them check in.

Marie

Banty...

Your stance is quite reasonable. My going on 14 year old son is getting his
first cellphone.

Banty (Yammer Time!)

Cathy Kearns...

I got mine a cellphone when she was 11. However, at 11 she was also old
enough to go out with friends downtown during the day alone, she was allowed
to walk to the library alone, and she was allowed to ride or walk to school.
She would also spend weekend days at the barn, and it was much more
conveinent for her to call when she wanted to be picked up. After loaning
her my cellphone a ton (she couldn't walk downtown with friends without a
cellphone, she needed to call when she got there, and every 30 minutes or
so...) we decided her having her own worked better.

In junior high it's nice to have a cellphone as then they can call if they
are staying after for a meeting or sport tryouts or something, so you don't
worry when they don't make it home. (I could have sworn in my day they
would know about this stuff in advance, and know how long it would take.
Apparently with the advent of cellphones even the adults in charge feel they
don't need to know the exact schedule.)

If you don't let your daughter out without you I can't see why she'd need a

Jen...

I wouldn't even think of it yet for my nearly 11 yo daughter. She has no
interest, and there is only one kid I know at her school that has one, but
she rides her bike a long way to get home. I think kids here in Australia
are a little different than some other places. She never goes anywhere
without us or her friends parents.

0tterbot...

my kids will get them when or if they can pay for them themselves :-) (and i
do mean pay for the phone itself AND the calls.) my 10 year old son is
allowed to go to some places by himself, but i hardly see how a mobile phone
would change anything. (what's he going to do with it - ring me up & say
hello?)

i hardly use my own phone. it's merely the most expensive alarm clock i've
ever had
kylie

Nikki...

My 10yo niece has one. The reason for it was because she walks home from
school - many blocks and then her and her brother are home alone until
parents are of work. They don't have a landline. That seems to make sense
to me. I guess I'm not sure what I'll do with my kids. I'm not against
them.

cellphone.

Banty...

If the cellphone isn't necessary for this kind of parental-child communication,
I'd bet it's all about not being left out of mega-amounts of pre-teen yammer.
Which would on balance probably be a positive thing.

Cindi - HappyMamatoThree...

From most of the responses I would say you are not alone, but my 11 year
olds both have their own cell phones. As we are a blended family each 11
year old has a parent in a different state and it is far cheaper to call
with free long distance on cell phones than it is to use land lines.
Additionally, for my daughter, she feels more secure when she is visiting
her Dad in another state knowing that I am only a call away. We have a
family plan and unlimited text messaging. So she can text me or call me
whenever she feels like it. It helped her diffuse a really unhappy summer.

But besides that special circumstance, my daughter uses her phone to call
after school if something special is going on, if she needs to stay late,
etc. Plus if I am not going to be home when she gets off the bus (as that
happens once in a great while) I can leave her a voice mail, she checks it
when she gets on the bus, and knows to use her key to come in and when I
will be home.

I feel safer knowing I can get in touch with her when she is out in the
neighborhood with her friends, and she can always reach me. When she was in
2nd and 3rd grade she walked several blocks to school from our home, and we
used long range walkie talkies so that she could talk to me during her walk,
and I could make sure she made it safe and sound.

I can say that my daughter has had her cell phone for about a year now, and
not once have we gone over the family plan allowed minutes, and only once

HCN...

For our daughter it is the same thing. Since she goes to the library and
pool by herself, plus had (and will have next month) afterschool activities
she got a cellphone. It is a prepaid plan with no text messaging and just a
certain amount of minutes.

This has become necesary as pay phones are slowly disappearing (which is how
I kept in contact when I was a kid too many decades ago).

Actually, she and her older 15 year old brother each got phones. Hers had
more time on it because we thought she might call her friends more. But we
were wrong... it was her brother who needed more time (he got more minutes
as a Christmas present from grandparents). ALSO... during the summer she
has not needed the phone, so I borrowed it (and I suspect I'll be getting my
own soon).

has she downloaded ring tones without permission, and she had to pay those
charges back with her allowance.

Overall the choice to get cellphones was a good one. There is no more asking
the other parent for permission to call whichever parent is far away at the
time, and there is constant connection if either child feels like they need
a little extra support. My daughter had such a tough time with this summer's
visitation and she would have been lost without her cell phone to call me.
Plus she could text me any time of the day, no matter what she was doing,
and she didn't have to worry that her Dad was eavesdropping on her
conversation.

Of course these are probably not concerns in your situation, but it works
for us.

Cindi