Messaging grandchildren

Kim_kim

I bought both my grandchildren iPads.
My daughter has them linked to her apple account as they are 8 & 5.
I’d like to be able to message my grandson & he reply, like whatspps each other.
He doesn’t have a phone number so doesn’t have whatapp, my daughter doesn’t want him to have a phone either.
Obviously she’s worried about internet safety.

Are there any safe messaging apps for children?

J_B

If you have an iDevice then you can iMessage them

Kim_kim

J_B wrote: »

If you have an iDevice then you can iMessage them

I have an iPhone and an iPad.

I’ll have a go at iMessage.

pramsay13

It's possible to use whatsapp without a mobile phone.

I use google hangouts with my younger ones which needs an email address.

d123

pramsay13 wrote: »

It's possible to use whatsapp without a mobile phone.

How do you do that?

System

There's always good old Skype!

Your daughter can go through the various security settings so that no-one can "find" your grandchildren and contact them. I was happy let my son use it on the home PC from the age of 6 and he was happy to let me check his account for any dodgy attempts by strangers to contact him. There never were.

[Deleted User]

d123 wrote: »

How do you do that?

Possibly they mean you can use it on a tablet without a sim but you do need a mobile phone number. My wife uses it on her Fire tablet and I set it up with her dumb phone number, you just need to reply to the confirmation text on the phone itself (from memory).

pramsay13

d123 wrote: »

How do you do that?

You can use a landline number to sign up.

tempus_fugit

Do you have an iPhone or iPad? If so the simplest option is just to use iMessage. Some people won't move to an Android because they would lose the use of iMessage, so it must be brilliant.

Kim_kim

tempus_fugit wrote: »

Do you have an iPhone or iPad? If so the simplest option is just to use iMessage. Some people won't move to an Android because they would lose the use of iMessage, so it must be brilliant.

I have an iPhone and an iPad, they both have iPads.

JohnDorian

The only issue with using iMessage might be that as it is your daughters account they are using, she will also receive all the messages. As long as it wouldn’t bother her too much, iMessage would be the simplest solution.