A parent’s worst nightmare – my pre-teen is turning into a mobile phone monster.
Last Christmas, the big presents were Rock Band, and a mobile phone for my daughter, then just 11. We were optimistic and thought she would be different. She wouldn’t become a textaholic like all the rest.
Bzzt. Wrong answer. I’ve just taken the phone off her for the second time because she’s running the pre-pay balance down too far. The first time, she got through her three-month allocation in about five weeks. There were 60c left – not even enough to make that emergency call, which is what she has the phone for.
Three months is too long for her to try and keep track, I thought, so I devised a sheet where she writes down her balance every day, and compares it to how much she should have left on the phone. Three weeks in all had seemed well – she was writing up a figure every few days, and seemed to be tracking nicely, even under-using the phone a bit – but then I offered to check the phone (which I was always going to do, I’m not that wet behind the ears), and the admission comes out, she’s been lying and writing up false records.
So the phone’s with me again. The deal is, she loses it until the balance catches up with what the balance should be, which will be about the 3rd of October. Which makes me think again about why she has the phone.
From a kid’s point of view, mobile phones are not emergency contact devices. I need my daughter to have one of these, but it’s not the fully-functional mobile phone she currently has (or doesn’t have, just now). She wants something she can use to keep up with her friends, who are texting away furiously. I need her to have something so I can text or talk to her, to make arrangements and so forth. So that’s my first issue – how to separate the two uses. Might mean two phones. I’ll need to ponder that one.
The second issue is, how do we (she and I) make sure that her use of the social interaction tool that is what a mobile phone is for kids, is balanced and doesn’t adversely affect her life? I’m not prepared to fund a mobile phone habit. My daughter gets pocket money each month – she can use that to pay for her top up. One thing to watch out for is late night contacts. Young people are apparently the most sleep-deprived in our society because they stay up very late communicating by text. So I think the mobile will be spending nights with me, switched off, and doesn’t get switched on again until it leaves the house in the morning.
So, I have about three weeks to ponder this. I’ll talk it over with her father – he is a secondary school teacher, and has lots of experience with kids and mobile phones – and after 3rd of October, we might have a new scheme to put into place.
And this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that she lied and misled me, something she doesn’t normally do. That’s a whole different kettle of fish.