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The old line goes that if 100 monkeys type non stop for 100 years (or some amount of time) they will, collectively, produce the entire works of Shakespeare.
My husband and I don't know about that, but we did figure out recently that if you let baby play with your cell phone for a few months he'll eventually learn how to use the web browser. And he'll rack up a pretty good phone bill that no amount of "No really, the baby did it," will get you out of paying.
At first we thought our now 15-month-old’s insane fascination with the cell phone was because big brother’s photo was on the screen. You could hand him the cell and he wouldn’t be satisfied until you opened it and there was brother.
“Huh,” he’d laugh when he saw the picture.
But soon it went beyond that. He’d take the phone, put it to his ear with the wrong side facing out and start talking. "Hey-doh. Eh? Eh? Yah yah yah yah yah.”
We always thought, “Oh, how cute. He thinks he’s talking on the phone.” We never thought that eventually it’d be costing us some money.
It didn’t start, at least the money part, right away. But maybe, in retrospect, we should have seen the warning signs.
Once he called a newspaper source who gave me a call right back (not so cute). Another time he called 911 (really not cute). But it wasn’t until this month that we realized we might have a problem.
When our usual 85-dollar cell phone bill was almost twice the normal amount, my husband called the company to see what the deal was.
The charges, the company representative explained, came from someone sending a text message and downloading . (I’ve never sent a text message in my life and what do you mean I’ve had web access on my cell phone?)
When my husband explained what he already expected - that our kid’s random button-pushing had somehow accessed the phone’s web browser - the representative wasn‘t buying it.
“Whoever it was had to know what they were doing,” the woman said. "Because they have to negotiate the choices. And then you have to agree to the terms."
"Which consists of pushing another button?" my husband asked.
“Yes.”
When the woman gave the dates and times of the usages we found they coincided with the times the little one would have used the phone: early morning, when mom’s getting ready, and at night when mom gets home from work.
The times it happened during the day - when mom’s phone is usually at work - was on the weekends.
So my husband and I were faced with a choice: take the phone away, and maybe in the process teach him limits, or simply cancel the text and browser services to keep from being charged?
I’m sure most KC moms would have just taken the phone away. Am I right?
Well, we cancelled the service.
And as I’m writing this, with a fussy baby at my feet, his dad is going for the phone. I guess we all have our weaknesses.
I'd probably cancel those services, too, especially since you didn't use them yourself. And I'd probably let the baby continue to play with the phone. Maybe you should get him his own play cell phone and tape a photo of your older son to it...I think you did the right thing. Can you "lock" your phone? (You might want to look up the four digit code for unlocking first.) Babes have a way of knowing whether it's your actual working phone or a castoff.haha! we also have our services canceled - we found dh phone reaching out for the latest news feeds all by itself (side button activation). we would never use the services anyway. we seemed to have a plethora of old cell phones we can't use anymore because we seem to change services or upgrade the phone every two years. we would charge one up and give it to the baby. we would even put it in the ringer selection menu.my phone has "airplane mode" which keeps the phone on but you cannot call or do anything that eats up minutes (and money)When I got my new cell phone, I continued to charge my old phone, so it would light up and make all the beeping sounds, but since it was an inactive phone, they cannot make a call. How DO they know the difference between a new and old phone anyway?!That's great! Someday it'll seem funnier, I'm sure, after the bill is paid. Sounds like you have a future reporter on your hands. It's amazing how they know, though, which phone you use and which is old or fake. Mine always did! If you decide to still give him your phone, or an old one, remember the slobber from a baby can get in the keys/batteries/USB ports and break it. Also, I heard the baby can get shocked by wet (more slobber!) charging sites/USB ports. I think that happened to my daughter once, but it was hard to tell. She just started crying after playing with it.
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