With our really long “hurricane break” from school (we missed 30 DAYS) and no real plans for how to get through that time, the way we did for summer, I found myself constantly telling my boys to go outside and play.

Wanting them to go roam the neighborhood, find friends to play with, and basically do anything other than just sit in front of a screen, playing endless hours of Fortnite.

But I also wanted a way to stay in touch with them. My oldest has a Phone, but my 10 and 12-year-olds do not. A Relay is a perfect solution for tweens (and younger… and if you don’t want your teen to have a phone!).

You can learn more about them by watching this Facebook Live (or I’ll tell you more about them below, if videos are not your thing).

A Relay is like a walkie-talkie, only it runs on a cellular network, so you don’t have to worry about the range. You can actually be in different states and still be in contact with your child. But for my purposes, we’re in different parts of the neighborhood or maybe a child is at a sports practice or at school. With a press of a button, you can get a message through to the Relay.

You can use one Relay and the app on your phone to communicate or you can communicate between the Relays that you connect. I have three of them, so I can either give one to each of my kids or one to each of my younger two who don’t have phones and use the third one for me.

They are durable, so no worries if your child drops it. And there is NO SCREEN. My oldest got a phone earlier than I would have liked because I was worried about getting in touch with him. But I wasn’t a big fan of it since that opened the door to social media and texting. But the Relay solves this problem- we can be in touch, but this doesn’t give access to social media or a way to contact anyone other than the Relays he’s connected to.

Plus, the Relays are GPS enabled, so you can check in on where your child is. It’s super convenient and gives me a lot of reassurance when my kids are out running the neighborhood like it’s 1985 again. It was also a big relief that the kids had these when we went to Disney World last month. 

One is $99, two: $149, and three: $199 (as of Oct 25, 2018). Service is $6.99 per month, per Relay. You can find out more info on Relaygo.com or feel free to ask me whatever questions you have!

My non-disclosure disclosure: I won a three pack of Relays back in September. I am under no obligation to write about them- I just think it’s something a lot of you would be interested in so I wanted to share!