Dear Spillane Parents & Guardians,
Below you will find a set of digital safety tips that we wanted to share with our families. Please know that we are including these simply because we care deeply about the safety and well-being of our students. Our intention is never to tell anyone how to parent. Every family makes the decisions that are best for their children.
We also know that many students at Spillane still do not have a cell phone, and truthfully, I personally love this. As a parent, I often say I wish I had waited a little longer before giving our daughters their first phones.
A special thank you goes to our 8th grade counselor, Lori Hilsher, for creating such a clear and thoughtful list of recommendations for families to consider.
There are three additional ideas that are not on the tip sheet that I wanted to briefly share from my own experience as a parent. First, Mrs. Blume and I both created phone contracts with our own children when they first received their phones. We actually updated those contracts as they got older to reflect their age and maturity. Sitting down together to create and sign a contract provides a great opportunity to talk about expectations, appropriate use, and also the things they should never do with a technology device.
Second, my daughters are now in college, and one thing we wish we had done longer was delay allowing them to have their phones in their bedrooms at night. Please know that as a parent you should never feel bad about setting restrictions that you know are in place to help your child.
Third, one of the best decisions we made as parents was setting time restrictions on our daughters’ phones. When they were in high school, they were convinced that I was the only parent who turned phones off at night, but I know that was not actually true. The funny part is that during her first semester in college at Texas A&M, my oldest daughter Ryan called me and asked if I would put the time restrictions back on her phone because she realized she was not getting enough sleep.
Our children simply do not yet have the ability to consistently self-monitor their technology use, no matter how mature or responsible they may seem. I trusted my daughters completely, but I am so glad we set healthy structures and boundaries to help keep them safe and well-rested.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please never hesitate to reach out if you ever need ideas, support, or someone to talk things through with. We are here for you, and we are here for every one of our students. Their safety will always matter to us. If you have not already explored them, I also encourage you to take a look at the safety and monitoring tools available on your child’s phone. I am certainly not very tech-savvy myself, so if I was able to figure it out, I know you can too.
Sincerely,
Jamie Brotemarkle
Spillane Principal
