October 22, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Parenting, Technology
It’s the question of the day at Gizmodo: Do you ever turn off your cell phone?
Myanswer is an immediate obviously of course never!. Being a mother/working mother of a special needs child, that slender metal and plastic device is a lifeline. Ok, I do turn the ringer to “silent” when I’m teaching but I really appreciate that the screen lights up to show me who’s calling………
[...] Do you ever turn off your cell phone? Obviously of course never, but that’s me. [...]
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Jeff lives in New York with his wife Jill and two small sons. He is the author of Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie and Alex the Boy: Episodes From a Family’s Life With Autism, and maintains a sit... more
Jill used to write frequently about food, until having kids made writing frequently impossible. She is the author of "Have a Nice Trip," first published in Brain, Child Magazine, which is her resp... more
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
I never turn mine off, either. With three kids, I just need it on. I think pre-cell phone, I’d have to have had an arrangement with the administrative folk in the sciences office to come get me if anyone called, but…now we have cells. And I also have mine on “silent” as a teach…and I use it as my watch, while I’m at it because many of our classrooms do not have clocks.
We don’t have clocks either in our classrooms……..cell is also the alarm clock for our whole household!
mine never goes off either… but our oven timer runs our house.. when to stop an activity, when to turn the tv off, when it is someone elses turn, when to go to bed
I rarely use mine when I’m out of the house…I’d be surprised if it was turned on 3 times a week. We’re lucky that my husband works from home, so if I’m out and about the schools can get hold of him, and since our emergency contact (and my best friend) works at the school board office there is always someone available if there’s an emergency with one of the kids. My kids are pretty medically stable now, and now I just find that I very much value the time when I’m not “connected”. I’m definitely a throwback.
I’m somewhwere in the middle on this one. I DO turn it off when I go to bed. I keep it on vibrate during the day but I don’t always answer it.
Of course, Nik is no longer in school either so there’s far less likelihood that anyone is trying to reach me for something truly urgent. And I text waaaaay more than I talk on the phone.
Mine goes off at night when we’re all home together and gets turned back on the minute the girls are out the door in the morning. As you say, it goes into silent mode when I’m teaching, but it’s on all day long in any case.
Cell phones turn OFF??? I never knew…
I use it so rarely that it occasionally shuts off when I forget to charge it.
Nope, but I’ve been carrying around too much, and I think this weekend I will turn my phone off — if they need me, they have my house number or e-mail!
The first time I tried to turn off my phone to reboot it, it took some effort as I didn’t know what was the on/off switch!
I never turn mine off either.. in fact ever since I broke my leg on my own front stairs with a baby in my arms… i carry my cell phone when I go to get the mail.. get the trash etc.
My dad teaches at the University and often forgets to turn his phone off. If I call during class I am normally put on speaker phone then asked to participate in the day’s lecture. He teaches Psychology, so I generally fit right in