Reply to Just got pre-teen a Smartwatch, it's not going well

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[quote=Anonymous]Hi!  I would love some advice about this really stressful issue.

My son is 12. So far we have resisted getting him a Smartwatch or phone, but felt he was getting left out of a lot of social things without the ability to text. So we went ahead and got him a Smartwatch, thinking that the inability to go on the Internet would be a positive, but he would be able to text and call his friends. I am really second-guessing this decision.

As a bit of background, he struggles with motivation issues and has very few interests other than TV and video games (he does not have an ipad), though he is involved in a lot of sports--one travel team and one regular sport, as well as another sports class.  He does two hours of screens (TV and video games) per day.  I have tried to get him involved in at-home hobbies but other than reading, which he does for about an hour per day, it has been difficult.  If it were up to him he would do nothing in his free time but watch TV. He does okay in school (As and Bs) but puts in very little effort and has no interest in school.  We are currently in the process of getting him evaluated for ADHD.  He has a lot of friends at school but never meets up with them unless I am the one organizing a meetup.  This year he has struggled more socially because all of his good friends from the past two years either moved out of state this summer or went to private schools.  He made new friends this year but has not met up with any of them all year, and I felt it was because he did not have a watch or phone (though several of his new friends don't either).

Anyhow, we went ahead and got him the watch last month.  We had him sign a contract that I created before getting the watch, which outlined important responsibilities with the watch, including safe texting, not taking the watch to school, and leaving it to charge in the kitchen overnight. It also mentioned in the contract that parents can read his text messages at any time and parental controls on the phone will be in place.  Also in the contract was that his only watch time is one of his two hours of screen time per day (in other words if he uses the watch for an hour he doesn't play video games).  We were trying to limit his overall screen time.

So far he has lied to my face about the fact that he was texting a girl (and when I read his texts I was a bit shocked by what they were discussing), he told me that he is not texting her when he actually is, took the watch to school even though that's against our rules and then lied that he didn't know where the watch was, and made phone calls to this girl during times when he wasn't allowed to be using the watch.  My husband feels that he should be allowed to keep the watch.  I feel that he is not showing good character while using the watch, with the lying and using it when he shouldn't be.

What should we do in this situation?  Any advice?[/quote]

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