7 Years Mature

My eldest turned 7.

It means a lot here: my child will go to school in August. Now she has her own key, mobile and travel card (for the public transport). Signs of a more independent child.

Lucky she is also keen on training a few things together, like opening a tricky door, how to keep a key safe (and why not write our address on it even though most things are returned to their owner in Finland), how to walk short distances home on her own, how to be a few minutes alone at home and how to pay the fee in a bus.

We have talked more about who to ask for help if needed (staff or mothers with kids in the same age) and the stranger danger (kids are allowed to go home from school on their own here. Not that she will, at least not initially).

And she has started to use her own mobile. 

She has quickly mastered the technical part of using a mobile, how to turn it on and off, how to call, answer calls and send sms etc. 

But there are more things to consider and discuss:

• no, one does not call grandfather at 5am just to tell one heard a lovely bird sing, our mobiles sleep during the night.
• If you answer a phone call, you need to say something, at the very least hello…
• we don’t take any pictures of anyone in a compromising situation and we especially do NOT send those picture to anyone.
• We don’t give the phone number of a friend to a third person without asking for permission (if somebody asks, better to suggest we submit the details of the person and then the one who gets them can choose to be in contact or not)
• She can not give her phone number to any one she doesn’t know very well.

I think it was a great idea to train the use of a mobile now when kids are on holidays. New things to discuss pop up continuously. And now, in the beginning, the excitement has been huge, but it is alredy wearing out a bit. I am sure she would have been distracted from her school though, had she received the phone at the same time the school starts. 

We haven’t showed her how to get online on her mobile. We know she will figure it out but at least this way it will be a little later. 

We solved the problem with all the possible apps and games by giving her one of my husbands old Windows phones with virtually no selection. For now our kids can sometimes play either on the computer or an Ipad, were we can see what they do. 

But she loves being able to listen to her music on her mobile.

The question of Whatsapp was already raised by another mother. Our answer is now easy as Windows doesn’t support it. We will just hope not all other children at school will create a whatsapp group that she will then be excluded from.

But what do you think: how important is it to follow age limits in various apps eg whatsapp? Any tips on what themes to raise with our growing baby?

Tags: going to school, growing independent, parenting in digital age