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[quote=Anonymous]We have always said that we would resist phones/group chats (like on an iPad) for as long as possible after seeing DD’s friends’ older siblings deal with tween group text drama.

But now I’m sort of at a crossroads and wondering how to balance sustaining friendships vs. avoiding the pull of group texts, the need to check them all of the time, and the potential drama.

DD is switching schools this year as are many of her old friends, so already they are struggling to keep in touch. She has a landline but her friends are reluctant to call and some don’t have access to a phone at their house. There are a lot of texts between the girls on parents’ phones, which is fine but also kind of annoying.  Meanwhile she just switched teams for her swim club at the start of the summer and is in a mixed aged workout group with girls in 5th-7th grade, but with the majority in 6th and 7th.  They are together 4x/week so this is a huge part of her life. She says everyone is on a group text save for one other girl in a group of 12, and they send silly selfies and things and talk about it before and after practice and she’s left out. Some of the girls have phones and others use watches or iPads.

I can see that her social life is on a collision course with the rules we’ve laid out. On one hand, DD says she knows that group texts would be annoying and she’d feel like she had to check it all of the time. On the other hand, she’s making two big transitions this year and I do want her to be able to keep old friends and make new ones, and I don’t want to ignore the fact that this is a way that kids socialize. At her age I definitely was starting to talk on the phone with friends and we all lived close enough to see each other frequently.

Any advice?[/quote]

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