I bought my four-year-old her own phone.

It freaks people out to hear my daughter has her "own phone", a fact she is frequently telling everybody, but it is not a cellular phone and it doesn't even have a screen, instead it is a corded phone that lives in my office. It is a VoIP phone that works using a normal phone, which plugs into an adapter that a corded phone then plugs into. I don't have one handy, but apparently a proper rotary phone would work, too. There are a number of similar services that more or less function the same; we went with Ring Ring Club because of the speed dial functionality and because you can bring your own phone. I purchased another adapter for her cousin in Arizona so they can call each other whenever they want. She can call out to regular phones too. Each individual number button on the phone functions as a speed dial she quickly memorized and only phone numbers it can connect to (sending or receiving) are numbers I've added to the service. The result is she can operate this completely…