Best Frugal Phone for Kids

     Every month, my kids have a court-supervised visitation with their biological father.  It's court-supervised because he was abusive during my marriage to him, both to me and to the children.  We've had the same basic procedures in place for several years now, with only occasional issues.  At last month's visit, I reluctantly agreed to let them swim at a hotel my ex was going to stay at.  He chose a hotel this time because his parents wanted to see the kids.  They are in their early 80s and so I try to be accommodating when they do come, which has been very rare.  I think the kids deserve a relationship with them, and vice versa.

     Well, that last visit was a big bust.  When I got to the hotel, I saw that it was not in a very good part of town.  I had already voiced my concerns to the supervisor but my ex was not budging on the location before the visit.  During the course of the visit, my oldest son (12) was sent to the parking lot unsupervised a couple of times to fetch Grandma's purse or put it back, and left to walk his grandparents around in the rain from the pool to the hotel room, while his biological father took off for the room so he wouldn't get wet.  As I said, these folks are both elderly, and both disabled.  My former mother-in-law has foot deformities from RA and can hardly walk.  My former father-in-law was blinded by gunfire in WW II and needs constant assistance.  This is not a job for a tween who weighs 80 pounds soaking wet!  For the car trip, the supervisor had no idea my son was gone until he'd already been sent on the errand.

     It also came to my attention that my ex sprayed my second oldest boy with a water gun while he was on a raft in the 8 feet.  He wouldn't stop, despite several pleas from both my son and the supervisor!  Eventually he knocked my son under the raft, and he was stuck under it and my ex just laughed and didn't help him back out.

     There were several other things that went on that day that made the kids furious.  They said -- we are the kids, they are the adults.  They are supposed to make the rules, tell us what they are, and take care of us!  Due to these events, I did contact my lawyer and the kids each wrote their version of the day's events, so I have it on record. 

     I called the supervisor after the visit to try to clarify what happened -- I was not accusing, just wondering what happened.  There are two sides to every story, after all!  She began to yell at me and told me that my kids are making it all up and then excused herself from the phone call before we could really address the issues at hand.  My kids are not perfect little angels, but they are not liars.  Also, I read their individual accounts and they line up very, very well.  They each wrote them in separate rooms of the house so they were not comparing notes.

    At any rate, I told the kids that I thought one of the (many) solutions I am going to undertake to prevent this stuff from ever happening again is to give them a "safe phone", a phone to be used for visitations so that if they feel unsafe or uncared for they can call me.  The phone will be in my oldest son's hands and is only for situations in which they really feel they have been wronged.  This isn't for "My little brother scratched me or called me a name."  This is for "D-- (my ex) left me under the raft to drown and laughed at me and Ms. B------ (supervisor) did nothing!"  (Yeah, that one really gets my dander up, to say the least!)

    So now I am left with a week of time in order to set up a new phone for the kids.  As you may have seen from my previous post, money is crazy tight right now, but this is a necessity for their well being and security.  I have a now-defunct Kajeet phone in a drawer that I could use, but their rates were not the cheapest.  I have another older phone that I could maybe buy a prepaid plan for, but we did that once before and ended up losing close to $400 on the deal because you have to restock your minutes every two months or else lose them, and they changed the renew date to two days earlier on me without any warning, so I lost it all!  I am not too savvy with current cell phones on the market.  So I am open to suggestions on what type of phone or at least what type of plan might be great for very low usage but that I could carry from month to month.  We have a Safelink Wireless phone for the general family use but I need to carry that on me during visits in case the supervisor needs to call about anything (or now if the kids need me).