One downside of having an unusual childhood -- even if it is by most metrics a good childhood -- is that it might make it much harder for the kids to relate to other kids as they get older.<p>> “Conformity is overrated,” I tell them jokingly, but that is small consolation when you are the only kid going into tenth grade without a smartphone. My oldest son wants a phone badly because everyone else has one, but that’s not a compelling enough reason to buy him one.<p>It's easy for parents to completely misjudge how the child will be affected by being the only one in their class who has to live by different rules. In some ways, this feels more like a sociological experiment the parent is interested in doing, when really, the parent should be setting up the children for success in adulthood.<p>> For instance, my son cannot participate in any classroom activity that involves a QR code, a fact I’ve had to point out to his teachers. Sometimes it’s hard for my kids to find information about group projects or extracurricular activities when social media is used to communicate with students, as opposed to updating a website or sending an email.<p>Come on.