I was against smartphones for the kids. Truly I was. I thought no good would come of it. There is so much danger to be found in a device that basically holds all the world’s knowledge, countless cat videos (as well as many not so innocent or entertaining), and all the evils of social media (and the good of SM).

There is really no way of effectively locking down the content available on a smart phone for kids. Not that I’ve found at least.

All kids need to make bad choices is opportunity and curiosity. <<<<That is the honest truth.

Ask my friend – her twin 11-year-old boys were wondering what ‘teabagging’ was. They found out.

How did I cave on the smart phone thing – simple ‘effing diabetes’.

I used an app on my phone to calculate insulin doses (this was when my daughter was taking daily injections rather than pumping). The app was wonderful. Basically I input all her ratios and when she needed to dose she just told the app how many carbs she was consuming and what her before meal blood sugar was. The app calculated the dose based on saved ratios and IOB (insulin on board – amount of insulin still active from a previous injection). It was basically all the brains of an insulin pump without the actual insulin and robot parts. The app was a wonderful tool. It tracked all her doses and we didn’t need to use pen and paper to log diabetes info. Thus after a bit we agreed to getting my daughter an iPhone so she would have the application as well. Worst mistake I’ve made. It spiraled from there – each of the boys in turn begged (demanded) iPhones when they were nine years old because my daughter got one when she was nine. We did what most reasonable, educated, loving, parents do – we surrendered.

It was all just fine for many years. The kids basically use their phones to play games, text me or a few friends, and call me or a few friends. Well except when they don’t. When instead they set up instagram accounts and flickr accounts and twitter accounts and downloaded snapchat, and KIK, and Vine and ???? who knows what else. We try to limit it – we have iTunes password protected. They can’t download and application without me or their dad putting in the password. The thing is both their dad and I hadn’t realized they had a window of time after the password was put in to download more crap without our knowing – or make in-app purchases resulting in iTunes charges of $45+.

I’ve been to the internet safety talks at schools. The presenters do a great job at scaring the crap outta parents but also providing a list of well know ‘evil’ applications to watch for. Applications that mostly exist to corrupt minds, allow for sexting, bullying, and to deceive parents. The problem is with every application designed to help protect our children by monitoring their apps or in the time it takes for government agencies to identify troublesome apps,  another half-dozen applications are launched that will corrupt our children; and trust me, our kids find them well before us or the government agencies find them.

Each time I attend an online safety talk I return home hell-bent on locking down the smartphones. This is always met with complete acceptance and understanding from my kids of course – said no mom ever. Instead it is met with defiance and outright rebellion “Why don’t you trust us?” “I’m smart enough to know better!” “It’s my phone!”

After much protest I do get my way. For a time. Then they change pass codes and I am locked out again.

I’m done with it.

LOL- all of thee above was written back in July. Ask me if my kids still have their smart phones. Yes.

I am sure back in July I had some idea of how this would be connected to parenting kids with diabetes and the tools we use to help manage diabetes. Hell if I remember what that point was now.

However – I will take this time to say this. Since the 2014/15 school year has begun I have taken away my oldest kids phones a few times. Yup I have sent them out the door to the bus with NO phones. No way for them to text me blood sugars. No way to ask questions. No way for me to send reminders. Guess what – they returned alive and well. Occasionally there were high or low blood sugars and

 

they handled them. Sure there was a time when my son ran out of insulin and needed to use the office phone to call me. Yes, schools still have office phones. In fact most schools have classroom phones too. So remember a moment ago when I said my kids had no way of informing me about blood sugars or discussing issues – yeah scratch that. It’s true I couldn’t send them 342 reminders to check and bolus but somehow they figured it out.

Ok I know my kids are older than many. They are 15, 12 and 10. We’ve had diabetes in the house for nearly 8 years. We have some experience under our belts. Not all my readers can say the same. I encourage every family to do what works best for them and I ask every family to avoid judging families that do things differently.

I currently have both adult friends and friends with cwd who use the CGM in the cloud thingy or nightscout – honestly I am not entirely sure what it is all called. If that is what works best for you and/or your kids then Woot Woot.

I have friends who require their kids (of all ages including high school) to share every blood sugar via text while away from their parents and many of those kids likely appreciate the support.

I have friends who barely give diabetes a thought – they trust their teens and pre-teens to do what is necessary and only get involved when asked by the teen.

Parenting styles will vary in nearly every aspect of raising kids. I honestly don’t care if you breast-fed, bottle fed, allow endless TV, buy M rated video games, schedule playdates, attend church, tell them about Santa, or how your family chooses to manage diabetes. I do care if you vaccinate – please do – Jenny McCarthy and those that blindly follow the anti-vaccine ideals put others at risk daily. The studies that linked vaccines to autism have been proven false and were complete lies with falsified study results.

So basically this post started out by talking about the evils of smartphones and kids and took a sharp turn to land at the stupidity of the anti-vaccine movement. Sorry.

Confessions of an unstable parent: I look for reasons to ground my kids from their phones. shhhh.