mobile phones v children: when??

 My daughter wants a phone. To be fair, she has seriously wanted a phone since Yr 4... she is now Yr 6 (mean mummy).

Now I am thinking about it because she is off to secondary school in September . However, I don’t want to just give one to her for her to abuse and break.

Therefore - being a mean mummy and an ex solicitor - I told her this was her opportunity to persuade us ( I did say a document that I can keep would be quite persuasive along with a presentation...).

Last night she gave her presentation and it was very good. She had obviously worked very hard - I knew she had.

These were her main points:

- To stay in contact with friends

- I could delete her friend's contacts from my phone freeing up space.

- When she goes to secondary school she needs it to stay in contact with her old friends

- If something happened and she had no phone, she would not be able to contact anyone to come and 'save' her.

- Some phones have tracking on them.

- To be able to text her family to ask a question or ask for something

- Re emphasised the built-in trackers

- Apparently she has limited social media because she is 11…

- Educational type words apps are available

- She thinks that there is setting for us to see what she is downloading

- She will apparently let my son use once a week until secondary school (I'll believe that when I see it).

-She acknowledged phones are expensive and she promises to look after the phone

Although I probably could argue with her on several of the above points - I think she'll be getting that phone sooner rather than later.

My thoughts were it's good to develop her persuasive language skills and she is learning how to write/ give presentations from an early age.

I am also hoping that because she had to invest a serious amount of time into getting it that hopefully she will be responsible with it...we'll see!!!

Overall I was impressed.