The messy list of phones and watches my kids and I actually use, not the one I posted in mom groups
I’m sitting here at the kitchen table right now, digging Cheeto crumbs out of the crack of the couch where my 11-year-old left his GizmoWatch for the fourth time this month, so this feels like as good a time as any to talk about this. I see all the posts in the elementary school parent group asking what watches and phones everyone uses with their kids, and everyone’s got these perfectly curated answers, like they did 10 hours of research and landed on the one perfect device that solves every problem. I never comment, because our setup is messy, full of hand-me-downs and last-minute compromises and things that work 80% of the time, which is apparently the best we can do right now.
Let’s start with the watches, because that’s where most of us start fighting this battle, right? My oldest got his GizmoWatch 2 when he turned 10, which felt like the responsible call back then. All the parents said it was great – you can call and text only pre-approved numbers, location sharing, no social media to worry about. What no one mentioned was that the thing is super sensitive, so he’d shove it in his soccer shorts pocket before practice and accidentally call me 12 times in an hour. I once got seven missed calls from him while I was in a performance review at work, and I had to step out panicking thinking he’d broken an arm, only to hear him go “wait, I didn’t call you? I’m just drinking Gatorade.” That happened at least once a month for a year.
It worked fine when he only needed to call me to pick him up a little early from school. But lately, half his friends have gotten hand-me-down phones or Samsung Galaxy watches that can text anyone, and he’s dying to join the group chat for the Minecraft server they play on every weekend. Gizmo only texts other Gizmos, remember? So he’s been moping at dinner every other night saying it’s a “stupid baby watch” and all his friends make fun of it. I told him he has to wait until 7th grade for a real watch, but we’ll see how long that holds.
My younger girl, who’s 8, got my old Apple Watch Series 3 when I upgraded two years ago, and I thought I was being smart saving money by using Apple’s Family Setup instead of buying a whole new kid-specific watch. I was so proud of myself for cutting costs, until we realized the battery can barely make it to dismissal on a day she checks the time more than three times. She caught on fast that if she leaves location sharing on, it dies even quicker, so she just turns it off all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in the pickup line panicking, refreshing Find My over and over getting that “no location found” message, only to spot her at the far end of the playground sharing a popsicle with her friend, completely oblivious that I’m two minutes away from calling the school office to have them page her. It’s fine, it’s fine, I just need to remember to yell at her to turn it back on every morning, which I remember 60% of the time. She does love the walkie-talkie feature, though – when she’s at after-school care, she’ll spam me with like 40 rainbow and cat emojis while I’m in back-to-back meetings, and honestly? Most days that’s the best part of my day, even if I have to hide my phone under the table to giggle at it.
Phones, right, I almost forgot. I passed down my old iPhone 11 to my oldest last month, which is something I swore I wouldn’t do until he was at least 13. I caved. He’d lost that Gizmo three times in six weeks, and the school called me three separate Wednesdays because basketball practice got canceled last minute and he had no way to reach me to tell me he needed a ride earlier. What was I supposed to do? I set it up with all the screen time limits, approved only the apps I was okay with, thought I had it all under control. Then a week later I checked the screen time report and saw he’d been on TikTok for two hours a day. I confronted him, and he admitted he made a whole new Apple ID with a fake birthday that I didn’t see, because all his friends have TikTok and he wanted to watch the Minecraft tutorials too. I didn’t yell that much, honestly – I remember sneaking around to listen to my mom’s CD player when I was his age, so I get it. I just took the phone away for a weekend, fixed the settings, and that was that. He still hides his old Gizmo under his pillow to play that stupid little snake game on it after lights out, so I guess old gadgets never die around here.
I’m on my iPhone 15 now, and it’s just full of all these apps I never thought I’d need. I’ve got the Gizmo app, the Apple Family Sharing app, Find My open in a tab basically 24/7. The weirdest thing is, I got all these devices to feel less worried, right? If something happens, they can reach me, I can find them. But half the time, they make me more worried. If the watch dies, I spiral a little, even though when I was 11 I walked three miles home from school by myself every day and no one ever checked where I was once I left the house. It’s this weird contradiction I can’t shake. Last week we were at a birthday party for my nephew, and my 8 year old wandered off to the other side of the park, and I checked Find My three times in 10 minutes, even though I could see the watch was moving fine and she was just playing on the swings.
Oh, and the other day, we were at the pediatrician for my daughter’s flu shot, and her watch started ringing right in the middle of the nurse talking to us. It was my oldest, yelling that he forgot his lunch money and needed me to bring it to school right now. The whole waiting room turned to look at me, and I just wanted to disappear. I paid for him to have Venmo on his phone now for that exact reason, he just forgot to open the app.
Right now, the Gizmo I fished out of the couch is charging on the counter, Cheeto crumb still stuck in the port, and it still works. My daughter’s Apple Watch is on her wrist, half charged, she’s coloring at the table. My oldest’s iPhone is charging in the kitchen like it’s supposed to be, not under his bed this time. It’s not the setup I planned when I first started thinking about kid devices. I thought I’d be that parent that held off on phones until high school, that had the perfect watch that never died and never caused problems. Turns out, perfect doesn’t exist when your kids are growing faster than their devices can keep up. I’ll probably cave and get my oldest that fancy Galaxy watch he wants for his birthday next month, even though I said I wouldn’t. Some days it’s a pain, some days I get a random cat emoji that makes my whole day. That’s just how it is, I guess. (Word count: 1182)
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