The Monster I Created

This year Oliver’s riding the bus home from school and there are a couple of scheduling issues that might cause him to be home alone for a few minutes every once in a blue moon.

So I bought him a cell phone.

Before you get all riled up about how a 10 year old doesn’t need a cell phone, let me tell you that we don’t have a house phone. So really he kind of does, and it does not go to school with him.

After I bought him this phone I put a few numbers into his contact list and told him in no uncertain terms that he is not allowed to call anyone else.

Everything was fine. I would get texts from him when he was in his room asking things like “Can I get a snack?” or “How are you?”. But for the most part he just answered it if it rang.



And then his cousin/best friend got a cell.



I can’t get him off of it.



They text from the minute he walks in the door until I bodily rip it from his clenched fist 30 minutes after bedtime.



Yesterday he took it in the bathroom with him.



I started to get upset and frustrated with him until I got up from where I was sitting to eat my dinner and grabbed my phone to take it with me to go take a shower.