The phone...

Oh the dreaded phone.  We love it, we hate it, we can’t live without it.  It’s time to get him his very own but YIKES!  We make the leap and do it because we will be leaving him home alone for short periods (that’s a whole other blog!). 

“Cory: Hey Siri. Call ‘Kellen is the best brother’ (this is how he shows up in his contacts). Siri: Okay. Calling ‘Kellen is the best brother.’”

The problems present themselves quickly – text after text after text.  Phone call upon phone call upon phone call.  How are we going to manage this?!?! 

Cory has always loved the phone

I inquire among my friends – “does anyone know someone who can create an app?”  We have got to figure out how to reign this in.  An ideal app would restrict texting so it would have to be one for one – send one, receive one not send 50, receive one, send 50 more.

Phone calls would have the same restriction.  It would also prevent communicating with anyone who is not in the contacts. We find someone who can build apps but they tell us that Apple won’t allow an app with those kinds of restrictions.  The cell phone providers have their own way but it doesn’t have the functionality we’re wanting.

Eventually I figure out that if we don’t give Cory the code to unlock his phone, it will do most of what we want.  Mike and I put ourselves as contacts in the Emergency section of his phone so he can call us without unlocking his phone. 

If someone calls him or texts him, he can respond one time.  He did figure out that he could use Siri to bypass the locked phone so we had to disable voice commands. We make sure his caregivers have the code so the phone can be unlocked so he can access apps when it’s appropriate.

He can’t initiate a call or text but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He just asks if he can call or text someone and if the timing works, we unlock the phone, let him call or text and then make sure he locks it again.  Then he gets to wait until they call or text back.  This is working for us – for now.

If you have found anything that works for you, please share in the comments.