I recently picked up a new mobile phone. It’s shiny, it’s new and as I’m a sucker for all sorts of shiny and new technology, I love it. I’m one of those people who would wait in line for the latest phone. Maybe not overnight, but I’m not ruling it out. I know, I’m a cliche waiting to happen.

Anyway, I’m not a tech blogger by any stretch of the imagination, so this post isn’t about the ins and outs of my new phone. However, the arrival of the little white box did cause an outcry in our house. And it went pretty much like this….

“I want your old phone”

“No”

“I want your old phone”

“No”

And then just repeat until someone is crying and it’s probably going to be both of you. You might want to throw in a few “it’s not fair” and “I never get anything” as well, just to mix it up or you might get bored before the game is really over.

Eventually one of you will storm into their bedroom and cover their head with the doona, crying at the injustice of the world. The other will probably pour themselves a glass of wine and wish they’d been smarter and hidden the new phone until they were in a better place to deal with it.

I’ll leave it up to you to guess which is which…

However, all this has led us to think about what age Poss might be able to have her own mobile phone. We’ve tried a “one-step-better-than-a-toy-phone” but she quickly lost interest in it, stopped charging it and now has lost it.

She struggles to remember her school bag/lunch box/homework each day, let alone a mobile phone, and once even returned home without school shoes. Without. School. Shoes. I’m still not sure how that happened. To be honest, it doesn’t bode well for a “real” phone.

In saying that, there are moments when it would be really useful, especially as she’s at making her way to gymnastics twice a week (which sounds more impressive than it is – she has to walk across an oval, still within her school grounds) and then we pick her up from there.

We’ve been held up once or twice and while I’ve been sitting in traffic, cursing everyone within a 5km radius, I have mused on how much better it would be to be able to just call her and let her know we were on our way. Instead I just let the anxiety eat away at my insides, imagining all the horrors that might occur while she’s waiting for us.

But is that really cause to allow her to have a phone? Probably not. She’s ten. But she tells me that lots of kids in her class have phones. I’m not sure if that’s a lie – it possibly is – I’m sure I remember spinning my mum a similar line about VCR’s when I was her age… Yes, I am that old.

It brings me to my question though, and I suspect I’m not the only one: at what age do you think we should give into the mobile phone argument with our kids?

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This post originally appeared on About a Bugg.