Parenting Blog

The Gift of Teenage Autonomy Is Now Free On Amazon

This teenage autonomy post is brought to you by Amazon and The Motherhood. All opinions expressed above are honest and unbiased, as always.

Amazon For Teens_My Girl and her Phone_Teenage Autonomy

I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think I knew what ‘autonomy’ meant as recently as 5 years ago.

The concept of it, sure, but the word ‘autonomy’ itself? No. I’d have probably guessed that autonomy was the study of automobiles. I’m bright like that.

As a parent though, you cozy up real quick with the idea of autonomy once your kids reach that magic age. For you and yours, that age could be 13 or 10 or 6, I dunno, that’s why it’s magic. [wink wink]

Kids need, nay, crave autonomy and it is our job as their wise, thoughtful parents to slowly turn on the faucet, the autonomy spigot if you will, to satisfy their youthful thirst for independence.

Because a bird can’t spread its wings in a cage, y’all!

Nary a week goes by without a delivery person dropping off a brown Amazon box (or seven) at our front door. With Prime, you know, you can order anything, whenever, and it’s all in your loving hands in a flash.

My teenager has been craving this experience too and now, with Amazon Autonomy…no, that’s not really what it’s called…with her own Amazon login she now has it. And I have the security of approving each of her purchases or setting a pre-fixed spending limit. I’m going with the former, to start with, because I don’t want anyone to drown in the pool of autonomy by turning the faucet too far, too fast.

Amazon For Teens Order

The Gift of Teenage Autonomy Is Now Free On Amazon

Amazon has introduced a new way for teens to shop online and for Prime members, share select benefits, offering dads like me a way to stay in the know while his teen starts to fly on their own!

Teenagers now have the ability to enjoy many of their parent’s Amazon Prime benefits — the Free Two-Day Shipping, Prime Video and Twitch Prime. My 13-year-old is wasting no time in doing just that! However, setting up a login isn’t exclusive to Prime users – all Amazon customers can take advantage of this new way for teens to shop.

I started her off with a cool hundred bucks this past weekend, just to see what she’d do, and she immediately got a jump on her holiday shopping, ordering a sweet gift for mom and only spending $12.97 in the process! I know all this because I was prompted to approve the purchase (it’s a darling item, one I can’t actually describe for you here because mom reads everything I write). When it comes time for my teen to buy her old man a little something for Christmas, if I’m not being too presumptuous assuming I’ll land on her nice list, I’ll turn off the parent approval function in favor of the spending limit so that I don’t see what it is she’s picked out for me. Something tells me she’ll use some of her cash to support Soles4Souls through Amazon too. My teen is generous like that.

While I won’t have to approve the order with my gift(s) in it, an itemized notification will still be delivered (this is true for every order placed by your teen), so I’ll just swipe away that text notification without reviewing the order. I wouldn’t want to spoil the thrill she gets from a loved one opening up a present she’s so thoughtfully selected — she gets this from me and I’m very much in love with her for it.

I trust my teen and I want to give her this kind of teenage autonomy to shop, to surprise, to spend a bit of money without shackles. Amazon now gives my teenager and yours this exact freedom, the freedom they deserve, the freedom to make smart shopping decisions with access to Amazon customer reviews and comparison shopping tools. At the same time, Amazon gives us dads and moms peace of mind knowing that if our teens make a mistake, if they accidentally order something they didn’t want or weren’t yet ready to commit to, Amazon is there to help with their A to Z guarantee.

Amazon For Teens Order

Kids need to fail in order to someday succeed — I bang on about this a lot, about letting them err when the risks are low and the consequences less…consequential. It’s reassuring to know that Amazon is a safe place for teens to make mistakes and that makes the decision to grant teens this level of autonomy an easier one for us parents.

Setting up your teen(s) with an ancillary Amazon login is a snap. You’re the one to get the process started by entering their deets, shipping address(es) they can choose from (maybe they want to order and ship straight to mom mom or to a cousin who lives far away), payment method(s), and making the pre-approval/spending cap decision. Amazon will then fire off a link via text or email to your teen for them to finish the signup on their end.

Easy peasy! Your teen will be shopping on Amazon just like mom and dad in no time at all, all with their own login.

Parents can add up to four teens ages 13-17 to their Amazon account for free and if you’ve got Prime, those sweet benefits are shared too — so Free Two-Day Shipping, thousands of movies and TV shows on Prime Video and Twitch Prime are available to your teens at no additional cost.

If autonomy means I end up with an incredible gift from my teenager, bought on Amazon, wrapped with care as she always does and placed under the tree this year, AND she gets to experience the freedom to explore Amazon from her own login and learn to make smart shopping choices, then I’m happy to turn that faucet a little bit more.

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