It can be a scary thing to raise an odd-looking child.

In the best of circumstances, we come to parenting already loaded down with our own memories, baggage, and fears. Then, when we meet our darling baby and find that they look… well, unique… we suddenly worry a thousand times over that this child will be the target of every bully and the butt of every joke for the rest of their life.

It can be overwhelming.

But over time, and day by day, we equip our child to handle the loud questions, the finger-pointing, the snarky comments, and the mean encounters with humor and with grace.

This takes a lot of intentionality: talking about every encounter; equipping her to answer the questions herself; going out into the world together — a lot.

And with time and effort, we find ourselves satisfied that they’re growing into a well-rounded, socially empowered, and uniquely confident individual.

But… that’s just real life.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on virtual life.

Addy was very young when social-media culture took off like a rocket.  Constant comparison, airbrushed photos, self-loathing of flaws, body insecurity… it became rampant among teens, and I was deeply concerned about launching a soon-to-be-teenage girl with an odd-looking face into that world.

Her childhood was also the era when younger and younger kids were being given devices like iPads and cell phones to occupy their attention and connect them to the world — for better and for worse.

There are enough heartbreaking stories of bullying in real life; opening up the portal to connect our odd-looking daughter to the seemingly infinite flow of virtual bullies, too, was a gamble we didn’t want to stake her development on.

So, in a rather unusual move among our peers, my husband and I decided to NOT get Addy a cell phone.

This means that Addy is now sixteen, and she STILL has no cell phone.

No iPad

No phone number.

No social media accounts.

Obviously, we’re not anti-internet; I’ve been blogging about Addy’s face for years, and my husband and I both have multiple devices ourselves so we can access the internet 24/7. But our children don’t — especially the odd-looking one who stands out.

We had other reasons to keep devices away from our kids, too: our increasing awareness of the impact of screens on cognitive development, strong addictive tendencies in both our family lines, our own lost hours scrolling, and a high value on real-life interaction skills. All of these things made us a natural fit for analog parenting.

But Addy’s face was definitely a big factor. A young girl’s confidence is already on shaky ground in the best of circumstances. Bullies are already a risk in real life for a girl with an odd face. For us, it was critical to control the flow of comparison, trolling, and negativity into Addy’s developing brain and character by limiting her engagement with the world to real life. We simply closed the door to the infinite virtual world. We’d heard too many horror stories.

An Important Note: Please know that we do NOT judge you if you make different choices. We have MANY friends who need to equip their kids with communication devices for various reasons! I’m simply sharing our experience here of making the choice to leave that can of worms closed entirely.

When other parents find out that our kids don’t have cell phones, the first question we field is this:

Hasn’t that kept her unplugged from vital connections and aspects of our now-so-virtual life?

Well, let me answer that with a story. 

Once upon a time, recently, Addy was involved in an activity, and the adult leading the activity set up a virtual group chat for all the girls.  (This adult is savvy & awesome and did everything right.)  Addy, who did not have a cell phone (and still doesn’t) missed out on the group chat.  She was not “in the know”. 

Sounds terrible, right? 

Missing out on virtual social interaction with her peers?

In these formative teen years when friendships are everything?

Yikes!

I recognized this disconnect, and I took Addy aside and said, “Listen hon, I’m really sorry.  I know your friends are all connecting on this channel, and you’re missing out, all because your dad and I won’t get you a phone.  That can’t be easy, and I just want you to know that I see that.”

She laughed at me, shook her head, and told me what she was really missing out on:

Within hours of this awesomely intentional adult leader setting up the supervised group chat… a “shadow chat” was set up, which included all of the female peers… except one.  They picked a girl they didn’t like, and excluded her from the group chat. And this shadow chat became henceforth the primary channel of the girls’ communication.

Addy, not being part of this virtual group of females, was not part of this exclusion.  She wasn’t part of the singling-out. She wasn’t herself singled out & excluded.  She missed out on the alienation.  She missed out on extra teen-girl drama and politics (as if real life doesn’t bring enough of them!).

So while I am no parent’s judge – you do what works for you – if you can avoid the phone, please do.  It will help your unique-looking child avoid that whole extra universe of “Even More Ways To Be A Stinky Teenager” (with all its accompanying messes, insults, comparisons, gossip, and exclusions).  Real life has enough of that stuff; spare your odd-looking kid the extras, if you can.  

We have many dear friends who struggle daily with their teenagers to stem the flow of negativity coming through their handheld portal to humanity’s cesspool. They set up blocks; they turn off their wi-fi; they add trackers; they search histories; they read texts… and they’re exhausted.

But avoiding that portal altogether is, in my experience, a simpler — if rarer — choice, and it’s one I heartily recommend for anyone launching a unique-looking teen into a world full of stinky humans.

It’s not that avoiding a phone will avoid all the drama. All the same dramas exist in real life; they just come in more manageable doses in any given day, because they’re limited to physical reality. (There are only so many humans we can encounter a single day. But virtual access is practically infinite.)

Avoiding the phone can help you stem the flow of overwhelming negativity long enough to help your unique-looking child make it through these vulnerable years of cognitive development with her identity and self-esteem intact.

Fun fact: We did recently break down and get a phone for our three kids (ages 12, 14, and 16)… but it wasn’t quite the phone they had been waiting for:

It’s right there in our kitchen / dining room / living room. (We have a small house, so it’s in the middle of EVERYTHING.)

Even the dog conspires to listen in to the teenagers’ conversations.

There have been moments, as above, where I’ve questioned the wisdom of keeping our kids out of the world of virtual interaction with their friends. But then, without fail, those virtual interactions unnecessarily go sour (exponentially more than in-real-life interactions going sour), and we’re reminded that it’s still okay to make our kids focus on the real world for now.

The real world has enough stares, questions, pointing, and sneering. We simply wanted to keep Addy (and her odd-looking face) shielded from an endless stream of more of it. And it’s turned out to be a fabulous choice for all three of our kids.

(Our 12-year-old daughter doesn’t agree, but she’ll be fine.)

So if you’ve been waiting for permission to stem your kid’s handheld access to the cesspool that is the modern internet… consider it granted. Your child might balk, whine, beg, or cry. That’s okay. They probably did that when you wouldn’t give them an entire jar of frosting to eat at once, too, because you were looking out for them. You do what’s best for your kid, even if they don’t like it.

And if you want them to exclusively focus on the real world now, then you can. It’s still the real world. Empower them there now. Teach them how to communicate and handle conflict in the real word. Teach them how to make eye contact and have a conversation. Teach them to observe the world around them and be aware of each situation. These skills aren’t easy for anyone to learn, and it can require even more daily intentionality when you add an odd-looking face to the mix.

These skills will translate to the virtual world at the right time, too. Your child will be perfectly capable of carrying on with life virtually when they’re ready to get their own personal portal to that world. But they will have skipped a lot of unnecessary heartache and drama and energy drains and time drains along the way, especially in that oh-so-tricky time of awkward teenagerhood and social drama.

I do find it funny (and perhaps ironic) that Addy’s face has been plastered on the internet for over a decade now. I’ve been blogging about her and posting pictures of her for many years. Obviously, I’m not averse to the internet; I love connecting with all of you! I’m more pragmatic than paranoid.

Therefore, this isn’t a matter of sheltering my kid from reality; it’s simply a matter of helping my child develop into the human she has the potential to become, without the trolls of the world having unlimited access to cut her down 24/7 in this most vulnerable time.

In all, it’s been a remarkably simple and easy way to keep our odd-looking teenager safe from online bullies: don’t allow them a portal to her at all.

No site-tracking, no time-blocking, no contact-tracing, no erased-history-recovering, no negotiating, no internet controlling, no Wi-Fi-password-changing, no text eavesdropping, and no long letters to senators about how dangerous Meta is to teens.

It’s been absolutely delightful.

If you have any questions about getting to (or through!) the teen years, please feel free to reach out & leave a comment below. I love hearing from and connecting with other parents like you, and I’d be happy to share more of what’s worked for Addy!

P.S. Yes, she has her driver’s license, and she’s driving. Without a cell phone. She has to know the route ahead of time. Like we all had to, once upon a time. 😁🚗🗺️📌

P.P.S. Yes, we sent her off with a group to travel for a couple of weeks this summer, and they traveled to Europe. So she traveled to Europe without a cell phone. Her birthday present ahead of that trip was a digital camera so she could take pictures. I didn’t know exactly where she was at every minute; she was fine with that.