While this may sound off topic, it actually isn’t.

My sister works for Cingular, and we were using US Cellular. (We dropped our land line several years ago when we found out that cable+cell phone provided what the phone company was providing for less). She finally talked us into switching because the monthly cost will be less. She also got us two almost new phones for free. While we were there, though, I saw one of those phones for kids that have only two buttons for calling two numbers. She explained how it works. They can only call the numbers programmed into the phone and can only receive calls from those numbers. My oldest (Sam, 13, non-CAH) has been begging for a phone for a couple of years now, and we told him that  A: he’s too young and B: it costs too much. Well the additional line would still leave us well below what we were paying, and he agreed to use the money he saved from mowing lawns to pay for the phone itself. So we got it.

Yesterday, Ginny (8, CAH) was sick in the morning, but I gave her a double dose and she seemed to get better. I had to go pick up some things from the store, so I headed there after their Ped Endo appointment (we have to wait a week to do the lab since I gave Ginny a double dose). Once at the store, though, Ginny said she wasn’t feeling well. She said she didn’t feel like throwing up, but a little tired. She’d been fine all morning, so I gave her another double dose and left her in the car (the temp was about 68º with just enough wind to make it feel good). I told him to call me if she threw up. I could be out of the store and to the car in about three minutes. He liked the idea because he wanted to draw in his notebook, and also liked being responsible.

Ginny was fine (I think both a combination of the double dose and the fresh air) and Sam never had to call. And I was able to get my shopping done (our cats hadn’t had any cat food in three days and were tired of our homemade mixture of tuna and dry bread)

These new cell phones for kids are a good idea. In this case the expense wasn’t that much, I can be confident that he’s not abusing it, and I know that I can contact him whenever I need to. It also opens the possibility of actually being able to go out and not have to see if the few people we trust with our kids are available. I know that Sam could handle the more common problems, even with a CAH kid, and the bigger stuff, we’d simply make sure we’d be close enough to get home in time to handle. Of course, I still think I’ll wait a year before we start using him as a baby sitter.