My 3-Year-Old Got An iPhone For His Birthday

tumblr_msakhqhiAV1s3cqiio1_1280I had this conversation with my sister last week.

Sister:We’re giving your son an iPhone for his birthday. It’s our old 3G one. 

Me: No. That’s ridiculous. I’m not buying my 3-year-old a data plan.

S: You don’t have to. You have Internet. He can watch the YouTube videos he likes.

M: My 3-year-old can’t have his own iPhone. I didn’t get my first one until I was 38.

S: He’ll stop using yours.

M: Okay. You can give it to him.

And that’s how my 3-year-old got an iPhone for his birthday.

A couple times a day we let our son look at our iPhones. I downloaded a Bubble Guppies alphabet game he likes to play with, and my husband did the same but with a Minions game. It’s pretty ridiculous; an iPhone is an expensive piece of machinery. When I first got mine, I didn’t even take it with me until I had a cover for it – and treated it with the care you would give a ticking time-bomb.

Fast forward two years, and this is the conversation we had in our house this morning.

Have you seen little man’s iPhone?

No. Did you actually just utter those words? This is ridiculous. We are ridiculous. A 3-year-old can’t have an iPhone.

Maybe I would feel better about this if I called the phone “mine.” He still only gets to play with it for a few small blocks of time in the day – and now I don’t have to worry about him breaking my phone or tweeting Angry Birds videos. Even though it’s old, used, and would probably never be used again by anyone in my family if it wasn’t given to my son, it still feels weird to me. It makes me question some basic things about my parenting.

Am I going to be the mom that always gives in? Am I going to be the mom who spoils her children? That’s it – this is the last day we’re going to refer to that thing as “his phone.” Even if it changes nothing about the way he uses it – it just makes me feel better.

Humor me.

(photo: Tumblr)

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