Chopsy Blog: Why do young children have mobiles phones?

I have had a contract phone with O2 for six years. They have given me a couple of oafish moments at times. But generally, it’s been simple, with upgrades done quickly over the phone or internet.

On Thursday, after months of umming and ahhing, I went into a phone shop to buy my child their first phone. I had been researching them on the net. I just wanted something simple, perhaps with just one or two buttons, and able to speed dial preset numbers. I looked at designs for both the elderly and children. They were ridiculously expensive. It seems the less you want a phone to do, the more expensive it becomes.

Eventually, I went into The Carphone Warehouse and bought pretty much the cheapest pay as you go phone. How complicated was this? Well not really, but I suddenly felt my age when I had to ask a sales person how it all this pay as you go stuff worked now.

Embarrassingly, I explained that I wanted the phone to be simple enough for a child to use. Actually a five year old. Having been someone who previously judged other parents for buying their seven or eight year olds phones, here was the precious first born I had planned on raising with a Steiner education and all that natural nonsense getting his first mobile phone at just five.

I awaited the phone call from my own mother with some trepidation when she found out I had bought him a mobile phone. She is practically Amish in her ways and things like this drive her mad. Surprisingly, she thought it was a good idea too. An unprecedented moment.

But why buy a child so young a phone? Because I lose him all the time. This is not down to lax parenting. When I take him out anywhere, I honestly try not to blink too often. In the space of a blink, he has gone.

I call my child a runner. Some use the word bolter. Since he was two years of age, I have said with all seriousness that he is the type of child who will get themselves to the other side of the world on his own when he should be in school doing phonics.

When going on day trips, he can now keep this phone in his pocket so I can call him when he gets excited about running onto some random tube or  seeing a Dalek in a shop window. That blink of an eye stuff.

And when he realises he can’t see me, all he has to do is press one button to unlock the phone and press a second button to speed dial me.

I seriously wish I had done this a year ago. That would have saved the anxious 40 minute hunt around Butlins with their security. Or when he thinks it’s funny to hide in the sales clothes at Sainsbury’s and jump out at people.

The moments when I wouldn’t have thought of looking inside the hippo enclosure at the zoo, or the monkey island and he has recently taken an interest in the logistics of getting onto the school roof.

He doesn’t have the phone all the time. That would be ridiculous. I mean, who do these children actually call? Their friends to discuss the latest episode of Tracey Beaker or something?

But for all parents and carers whose children get so focused on things when no amount of no, stop and don’t – sound familiar – means nothing, a basic seven pound phone could be a life saver.