I remember when Grace was in third grade, one of her classmates came to school with a bedazzled Blackberry. And so it began. What do we do with cell phones? When would she need one? How would we address responsibility and empowerment? We didn’t need a cell phone when we were in school. Why now?
Our Strategy
We decided when Grace turned 15, we would find a service with some parental controls to teach her responsible use. After lots of searching, I found a company called Kajeet. It uses the Sprint network and has parental controls at the network level. They’re simple and work well. After over a year, I’d recommend this service for first timers looking for something simple, safe, and no contract. You can customize the way the network is setup based on each phone. For instance, you can decide what numbers work, what times of the day they work (inactive during school hours or after a certain time at night), and students can earn points towards minutes using a wallet system. Find out more at www.kajeet.com
Our Custom Contract
I worked with my wife to create a cell phone contract for our daughter. Being that there is no long-term contract to sign, I decided to create one based on a lot of Google searches on what other parents are trying to do. You can download the PDF, Pages, and Word versions and share with anyone you feel would benefit. Got your own? Share it.
Resources
- Cell Phone Contract– Microsoft Word
- Cell Phone Contract-PDF
