I am a parent of a younger child and yet I struggle with picking the right battles to fight and when it is time to talk about values, when it is time to let him

I am a parent of a younger child and yet I struggle with picking the right battles to fight and when it is time to talk about values, when it is time to let him learn resilience, and when it is time for immediate action. First, let me tell you that you did well trying to explain to your son the reasoning behind your decision _so far_ to not buy an iPhone. It is always good to explain why you took a decision than simply saying "No". Second, I think you should approach this tactically. There are three causes/problems here, each needing a different reaction: 1. (Immediate) Your son is bullied and that should stop. This is serious and requires immediate action on two sides: 1.a. Work to stop the bullying behaviour (as many people pointed out here bullying is a behaviour that has many triggers, it happened now to be the phone) 1.b. Help your son vent and talk about how he is feeling while trying to minimize the psychological harm caused by bullying. I don't know exact how to do this, but I am sure there are resources for this. 2. (also immediate) Recognise that your son is probably feeling left out of his social circle. Action -> Buy an iPhone today. There is no good way around this if your kid's social circle is already using iPhones. Your values are not the fight on this level. Your kid belonging is. No amount of discussion will fix this. The feeling of not belonging is powerful and deep, it is a survival or protection mechanism. So even beings with a mature "neocortex" are not able to think their way out of this feeling with ease. 3. (long term) Here we talk about your values and what you want to transmit to your kid. Android vs iOS is not a value. What are you really trying to teach him here? I don't know what value you are trying to teach, but be sure that buying an iPhone now will not break nor make that value. 4. (long term for you) I say this with an open heart as something that I am still learning. There is a balance between trying to teach my son a value and recognizing when he is a different person than _should_ and _will_ most probably pick up his own set of values. He might not like what I like and our world-views might get challenged between us. Here the most important thing to do (allegedly as I only have a small kid) is to try to create a space for you both to share your feelings and feedback. While having a hard conversation the important thing, in this case, is to focus on making sure you both understand each other side, respect each other side, and then maybe reach a common conclusion. If this appears like a prescription please ignore the tone. I am writing this more to me than to you trying to put in writing some things that I try to wrap my head around when taking decisions related to my kid wellbeing.