Well somewhere along the way I thought my 12 year old son was ready for a cell phone.
WRONG!!!
We are 9 weeks in and it just got taken away. And honestly I am not even sure it was the phone but Instagram.
Now I am not about to crap all over Instagram, I love it in fact. However the middle schoolers use it in a completely different way than I do. I am over here posting pics of our lives randomly and scrolling through to see others, so what my favourite celebrities are doing and calling it a day.
Middle schoolers use DM's like we used AOL...….haha did I just age myself and when I saw AOL, I am mean that when I was in university and using AOL. Not grade 7.
I take full responsibility for it all, I debated the Instagram for about 3 weeks. So yes that means he lost his mind in only 6 weeks! The things these kids are posting are awful, it's just a constant barrage of pictures of girls selfie's wanting people to tell them they are pretty. They tag everyone they know so they will see the picture. Then there is the stories; asking people for their picture so they can rate them. Secret spam accounts to post inappropriate memes. Other anonyms accounts to spread gossip about anyone and everyone. It's terrible.
My kind, outgoing kid turned into a mean, stupid boy in a matter of days. His younger brother sees the difference as much as we do. He is snarky, detached, not himself. And the things he reposts have almost killed me. Stupid is and stupid does, wow just wow.
So it's gone. It does not have the potential to come back until school ends. The phone might come back (minus Instagram) by the end of the month but honestly I don't know yet.
I made him review and sign a contract that I created for these instances when it just is too much for his brain to handle. I explained in details the rules and what was expected, I gave him a paper copy. And yet here we are, I think he probably broke more than half the rules. I spent the last 6 weeks trying to explain why things he was doing were wrong and sometimes inappropriate. I don't think it sunk in.
Now I am just say I gave in. He wasn't ready, I should have known. It's a lesson for all of us. We are starting from scratch and I think a whole new set of family rules are coming into effect soon.
So maybe it was a blessing in disguise to have these 2 months of crappiness to create better people in all of us.
Fingers crossed!
