Conference moira::parenting

    Several choices ... install a 2nd phoneline that she must pay for ...
    if it is available in your area, get the 2nd phone number option for
    one line, where each has a distinctive ring ... then you wouldn't
    be jumping up all the time to answer her calls.
    
    Charge her 25c per call longer than 5 mins.  
    
    Give her say 2 mins to get off the phone when you've told her you need
    it, and charge 25c per minute after 2 mins until she gets off.
    
    Charge her 25c for ever call that comes in for her that disrupts your
    mealtime.
    
    Stuart

    As a "gabber", I can honestly say that as a teenager, short of standing
    me on my head, there was NOTHING that ANYONE could do to make me get
    off the phone - unless the option was to see that person, in person.
    
    The only way my mother got her phone back was to allow me and my
    boyfriend to be together more.  But even then, when we got home, we'd
    call each other again ....!  I'd opt for phone line #2 that she pays
    for!
    
    

Yow!  I would have owned my parents a mint if I'd been born to .1!!

I'm not the parent of a teenager, but I was a teenager who spent *hours*
on the phone during my high school days.  Can you sit down with your daughter
and mutually agree on "rules of the phone" including penalties for breaking
them?  Before you do this, you may want to clarify in your own mind what
problem you are trying to solve.  For example, is the problem:

	- you hate seeing your daughter attached to a receiver
	  for most of the evening
	- you are unable to make calls when you need to
	- you aren't receiving your phone calls
	- something else entirely...

Your base note sounds like the problem is the first on the list, but I 
suspect you'll have more success with your daughter if you can articulate
a problem that she can relate to.

Your daughter may have nothing in common with the teenage me, but here's
my anecdotes:  my parents were divorced and remarried so I had 2 homes and
2 sets of parents.  One set seemed to arbitrarily get annoyed by my phone
usage and we had no "rules".  They would occasionally just tell me to complete
my conversation for no apparent reason.  This felt unreasonable to me --
what's wrong with my using the phone if they didn't need it?  I didn't 
respond particularly well to this.

The other set of parents let me talk as long as I wanted when I wanted.
I responded very well to this :-)  When they expected a call,  they would 
let me know so that I wouldn't hog the line.

At least, that's how I remember it :-)

Good luck!

- Deb

    Well lets see,
    
    When Lolita was that age, she was restricted to no calls over 15
    minutes and no more than two calls an hour during "prime time."  We had
    some arguments about this, but I paid the phone bill, so those were my
    rules.  when she comes back from college the same cycle starts up, so
    one thing you need to do is get used to the fact that teenagers have a
    permanent plastic growth growing out of the side of their heads.  The
    arghuements about phone usage have gone down over the last couple of
    years, but occaisionally they do crank up still.  
    
    Oh joy, and I get to go through this again in 6 years, and again in 13!
    
    Meg
    
    

Neither my older sister nor I were big phone talkers as teenagers, but my
younger sister was.  My parents handled it this way :

   - They got call-waiting and my sister paid for it.
   - If they needed to make a call she had to get off the phone.
   - If a call came in for them while she was talking, she had to end her
     call and let them take theirs.

Other than that she was free to talk all she wanted.  At first, her calls
were limited to 15 minutes at a time.  She didn't like that so she was 
actually the one who suggested that they get call waiting.  She was willing
to pay for it in order to have unlimited length calls.

                                               Tracy

I would like to offer a different perspective.  It is entirely possible
that your daughters time on the phone is a very healthy thing and that
the best solution would be to get her a seperate phone line.  I recently
read a book on communication differences between men and women, while
broad statements can be misleading I found much sound advise in it.
The book stated that the friendships of males are based on shared experiences
and that womens friendships are based on communication or shared "secrets".
Your daughter is experiencing friendship via your phone.  The only trick is
to not allow the phone habit to interfere with the rest of her life particularly
her school work.  Also are you aware that you can restrict times for calls
simply by installing a two line controller from radio shack.  It works this way,
establish ok calling times say 6pm to 9pm and then simply check the line outside
these times.  If your daughter violated the time then simply tell her to
hang up the phone, and then place the dial tone on hold, the phone company will 
automatically disable the line until you call to restore it or remove the hold.

The two line controller with hold sells for $30.

    My son became one with the phone this year, I think it is directly
    related to the first year of Jr. High.  We have call waiting on the
    phone, it allows me to get through when I need too, regardless of who
    has the phone in use.  With that in mind we have several established
    rules.  

    The first being what are reasonable times to be on the phone;
    there are no early weekend calls, no late night calls and no dinner 
    hour calls.  If there is a call coming in, he puts his friend on hold
    answers the call and returns to his friend to let them know he will
    call them back.  Incoming calls have priority.  When we need the phone
    we get the phone.  

    I agree with the previous note that it can be viewed as a way to 
    socialize.  Matt has a friend from summer camp that he keeps in touch
    with.  They have managed to play entire chess games over the phone. 
    Both have chess on a PC and they run their games simultaneously.  
    
    My opinion really boils down to it is part of the teenage culture,
    lay down some basic ground rules and hope this is the worst you will
    have to face for the next 4 - 6 years;-)
    
    Tracy
    

I agree with .3.  Try to determine exactly what it is that bothers you.  If 
it's the sheer volume of time, call waiting or a second line won't help.

Our daughter will be 14 in about 2-1/2 months (I'm pretty precise, because we 
are negotiating the scope of her birthday party.  She started with 40, boys 
and girls.  We started with 6, girls only :^)  ).

She gets her homework done and her grades are reasonable, so it's not just 
the time.  When we are bothered, it is because we are either expecting a 
call, or need to make one.

We are fortunate.  My wife runs a couple of small businesses, so we can 
justify a second phone line.  Also, Lara has to get up early to go to school, 
so she is usually in bed by 9:00 or so.

The phone is very important to kids that age.  They aren't "mobile" yet, but 
they have an intense need to socialize.  Keep that in mind; if you try to put 
restrictions on, you may get a reaction that seems to you way out of 
proportion to what you expect.

Clay  

    I could have written note 1!! I refuse to get call waiting. I have set
    a time limit. 15 min conversations, no more than 2 calls per hr. They
    are not allowed to use the phone until after I come home from work, ( I
    have a long commute, and I am a single parent).
    No calls after 8:00 pm on school nights, no calls after 9:00 pm on
    week nights. Thats the rules, they don't like, OH well. But it does seem
    to work out. They still love me. :)
    
    Sherry
    

    Thank you for all your relpies.  I think I will talk to her about
    putting in her own line that she will have to pay for.  She babysits
    every weekend so she can afford it and all her calls are local.  I may
    also go to Radio Shack and check that phone monitor out.
    
    kim

   Well, you could always put in a pay phone...   
   
   
   Its a joke!  (Well, sort of...)  :-)  :-)
   
   So... this is what I have to look forward to... I have 3 girls and a
   boy, the oldest is 5... it should be fun in a few years... :-)  :-)
   
   - Tom

I also meant to respond to some of the suggestions in .1.  If you implement 
any rules, remember that teenagers have a very acute sense of "fairness" and 
"hypocricy" and they don't react well at all to rules that don't apply 
equally to everybody.

>    Charge her 25c per call longer than 5 mins.  

Be prepared for her to put a stopwatch on YOU, especially if you're 
"gabbing".
    
>    Give her say 2 mins to get off the phone when you've told her you need
>    it, and charge 25c per minute after 2 mins until she gets off.

Be prepared for her to put a stopwatch on YOU if she's expressed a need to 
make a call that is important to HER, especially if you're "gabbing"/ 
   
>    Charge her 25c for ever call that comes in for her that disrupts your
>    mealtime.

This would seem fair to me only if your mealtimes are very regular, and only 
after she's had time to warn her friends.  And be prepared for her to 
remember every phone call for YOU that disrupts your mealtime.

If your mealtimes are important to you, a suggestion that's somewhat parallel 
to this one is that if the phone rings at during mealtime, REGARDLESS of who 
the call is for, that it gets answered with "Sorry we're eating dinner, she/I 
can't talk now.  Can she/I call you back later?"

Clay

    Hi Clay ...
    
    Well, I have an 9 year old who was starting to be the phone junkie
    and we told her that she had two choices ... either voluntarily be
    more phone use courteous OR we'd do those things I mentioned.
    
    She of course said that the charging rules were not fair ... so I
    asked her simply who pays for the phone service ... "Dad does" ...
    so who should get priority in using th ephone ... "Dad and Mum should"
    If I pay for the phone is it fair for you to hog it ... "No" ... If
    you do hog it, is it fair for me to charge you for it ?  Thoughts ...
    "Yes I guess so".
    
    She voluntarily became more phone responsible.  She asked her friends
    to avoid calling around supper time etc Suppertime window being 5:30 -
    7:00.  It's not perfect still, but a lot better than it was.  My wife
    and I were going up the wall with continually answering the phone to
    "Is Hilary there ?"  Oh and the last thing ... We asked her to answer
    the phone more often and more clearly (she used to whisper terribly 
    when answering the phone so the person on the other end could not
    hear!)
    
    While they do have a sense of fairness and hypocricy ... following the
    fairness argument to its logical conclusion seems to work.. Ie
    as long as I pay the phone bills, I get a bigger hand in saying how it
    is used.  But at the same time, I too am reasonable in honuring
    requests to oget off the phone too!!! (Usually!)
    
    Stuart

	This doesn't apply to your situation exactly but is a lesson
	that I learned from my parents that is important to
	remember with teenagers and phones... make sure they
	understand the expense of long distance calls!!  When my
	brother was a teenager, he met a girl who was vacationing
	in our town for a week (Wolfeboro NH... resort town).  She
	was from Conn or NJ.  Anyhow, she went back to her hometown
	and for a month, my brother called her, after everybody
	was in bed for the night and talked for 2-3 hours (10PM-midnight).
	Well, the $900 phone bill (I'm not kidding here) came in and 
	my parents hit the roof!  I don't quite know how they handled it but
	I do know that the phone calls stopped.  Thing is, I don't think
	Jeff realized quite how much his nightly phone calls would come
	out to be.  He was as shocked as my parents when the phone bill
	came in and was made to realize just how expensive long distance
	calls were.  He did know he was doing something wrong when he
	was making them (or else he would make them during normal hours)
	but faced with the reality of oweing my parents $900 (which he
	probably never payed back completely), he wised up and ended his
	long distance relationship!

	This would also apply, of course, to children and 1-900 numbers.

	Karen		

    
>    Well, I have an 9 year old who was starting to be the phone junkie
>    . . .
>    While they do have a sense of fairness and hypocricy ... following the
>    fairness argument to its logical conclusion seems to work.. Ie
>    as long as I pay the phone bills, I get a bigger hand in saying how it
>    is used.  

No disagreement there.  The problem is that "I pay, therefore I say" type 
arguments -- which really amount to displays of power and authority -- don't 
work as well with teenagers as they do with pre-teens.  You get into 
discussions like "fine, then I'll quit school so I can get a job, so I can 
pay for my own phone line" type discussions.

And when dealing with teenagers you expunge "logical" from your vocabulary.

Clay

Clay,

This is a 9 year old teenager ... we commonly get "Fine --- I'll do xxx"
arguments.

The I pay, I say arguments aren't presented in exactly that manner ...
It goes more along the lines ... "Did you know that it costs over $20
every month for that phone for just local calls ?  That's enough to
keep you fed all week."  That approach usually seems to have more effect.
Otherwise, she'd just give up her allowance!

We find emotionally logical ways of presenting things like this ... because
pure logic does NOT work well ... you're perfectly right.

Stuart

    When our oldest (now 19) started looking like she had a phone receiver
    permanently attached to her ear, we tried quite a few things.  The ones
    I remember are:
    	- no calls after 10pm or before 9am
    	- calls during meals are asked to call back.  period.
    	- if she was on the phone longer than 10 minutes and we needed it
    	  then she was to hang up asap.  Same applied if we were expecting
    	  a call.
    	- no taking the phone into the bathroom!
    	- I always call home just before leaving for home to see if
    	  anything is needed from the grocery store.  So, she was not to tie 
    	  up the phone when that call was expected.

    Actually, what we found even more aggravating was when she got her
    license and was out of the house more often.  We felt like an answering
    service!

    We had the phone problems too.  This is how we resolved it.
    
    - Call waiting
    
    - Ring mate (we don't have to answer her phone or beeps when we are on
    the phone.  Her friends will call back if no answer as we have an
    answering machine.)
    
    - TWO hour limit per day on the phone (she was free to choose when 
      and how long she talked to any one friend and this has worked
    wonderfully.
    
    - No incoming calls past 9:30 no outgoing calls past 10 and off the
    phone by 10:00
    
    - The best thing is the respect we give each other on the phone now.
    We set boundries -- "Mom, I'd like to use the phone at 7:30 to make a
    call." or "Lisa, I'd like to use the phone in 10 minutes"
    
    We now have a Foster Boy living with us who's the same age so now it
    has to be divided three ways and it works. (Thank God my husband and
    7 year old don't really use the phone!)  
    
    By the way the 2 hour limit is not even an issue now because we really
    use the last bullet the most and what a peace of mind.
    
    Good luck.    

    Just a word of caution with their own phone lines.  My daughter (now
    19) wanted her own phone line when she was 15 or so and my condition
    was that she have a part-time job for at least 3 months or full-time
    (when she graduated, of course) for 6 mos before she got her own phone
    line.  Until that time we gave her ringmate, cause like someone else
    mentioned, we were an answering service.  This way we didn't have to
    pay for a new line but just a few dollars a month for ringmate and
    call waiting.  REason for such a strict condition on own phone was
    because if she quit her job guess who gets stuck with the bill?  The
    phone is in your house and she is underage so.....
    
    We had an added problem in that both of my teenagers went to a regional
    school so they had no local friends.  My phone bill was over 100.00
    per month.  When my oldest moved out it dropped 50.00 / mo till the
    next one started and on and on and on
    
    Now I am happy to say my 19 year old has her own phone line and they
    both share the bill and my bill is down again.  Oh yes, one more thing
    I did was get a block on the phone so that they could not dial 1,
    no long distance calls.  Block was 7.00 to have installed and nothing
    to remove so I planned on doing it every summer or long semester
    break but now they have their own phone.
    
    Good luck 
    Nancy

What is "ringmate"?

Also, I believe in most areas, you can block access to 1-900 numbers.  That's 
not an issue with us yet, but if it becomes an issue we'll do it in a 
nanosecond.

Clay

I believe it has different names in different areas, but essentially,
you turn your phone into a single party party line ...

Thus you end up with 2 or more numbers ... each number has a diferent ring ...

normal  <ring>pause<ring>pause etc
line 2	<ring><ring>pause<ring><ring>pause
line 3	<ring><tr><ring>pause<ring><tr><ring>pause
etc

where tr is a very truncated ring.

So this way you only pay for 1 line into the house, but a little extra for
the exchange lines.  It is often not available on older exchanges where
per exchange line cost is high ... or in high number demand areas ... or
where the ringing generators cannot generate the various ring patterns.

Stuart

    Seems to me .1 is essentially unenforcable.  Do you want to spend all 
    your time keeping track of phone time, and then COLLECTING and
    convincing her to pay you what she owes? This method seems to me to 
    be an excellent way to generate even more friction between you and your
    daughter. 
    
    I suggest the 2nd phone line with HER paying for it.  That way its
    clean cut and HER responsibility.  If she can't afford to pay for the
    2nd line and falls behind on the bill too bad, she loses the line.
    
    If it really came down to it you could have an UNLISTED # for your
    number and list her number. That way you wouldn't be getting calls from
    the boys who couldn't get through on her busy all the time line.
    
    Yeah I guess I have suggested a hard line here.. but, after all your
    dealing with a TEENAGER and that demands a hard line, right?
    
    Smile
    
    Jeff

>    Seems to me .1 is essentially unenforcable.  Do you want to spend all 
>    your time keeping track of phone time, and then COLLECTING and
>    convincing her to pay you what she owes? This method seems to me to 
>    be an excellent way to generate even more friction between you and your
>    daughter. 


Jeff,

The idea is not really that it should be enforceable .... it is to draw to
the child's attention that a) phones cost money, and b) that others in the
household have a right to the phone too.

As I said, in our case with a 9  (going on 5, going on 14) year old, it had
the desired effect.  After a couple charges, she now generally respects the
right of others to the phone and that we do not want to be disturbed at
supper or late in the evening.  When her phone use became again unreasonable,
a few weeks ago, simply asking her if she wanted phone charges again, her
phone use returned to reasonable.

Stuart

    Good point Stuart. How do you handle all those incoming calls from
    friends?
    
    Jeff

    She has the opportunity to tell her friends that we do not appreciate
    calls from approx 5-7 or after 9 ... if she gets a call in that time
    from a friend who knows, and it isn't an emergency then .....
    
    Cough Up!
    
    She got a call from a friend over the Easter weekend at 10pm!  She got
    the call, and was overheard to say ... "you'd better not call me again
    so late ... it'll get me in trouble!"
    
    It's not quite like an inconsistently carried out threat ... and I put
    it to her that way ... We'll put up with "abuse" occasionally, but if
    it gets too bad then we'll warn her and then start charging ...  There
    is always the warning ...
    
    Stuart

    
    There is, I believe, a program where youcan pay only for the calls you
    make.. 
    Pay per call, sorta
    
    Jamd

    This is called individual measured service ... and is offered in areas
    where there is essentially free local service.  IMS is usually cheaper
    only for incoming busness lines.
    
    Stuart

    Thank heavens I don't yet have a teen, but at 7 AJ has "discovered" the
    telephone.  He arrived home within the first week of school with
    several boys' AND girls' phone numbers, crayoned on paper scraps,
    crayon cover pieces, etc.  
    
    First things first, he is 7 and he is only in the first grade.  I guess
    maybe I'm from a different planet, because I didn't think it started
    that early.   First rule I made was a little different, since it
    appeared that he was exchanging phone numbers with most of the kids in
    the class.  I said I wanted him to ASK first if it was OK with the
    child's parents to give out their phone number. ( I'm thinking in the
    sense of many people have unlisted phones, they pay for the service for
    a reason.) Then once he demostrated to me that he could dial the phone
    and speak clearly and sensibly, I allowed him 2 calls per day, we set
    the timer and he was allowed 5 minutes per call.  He MUST ALWAYS ASK
    first before even touching the phone (see the next paragraph) Period!
    
    A couple weeks ago I had stepped outside of the house for no more than
    10 minutes to do something.  He was already in the proverbial doghouse
    for having a week of horrible behavior, he met me at the door with TWO
    scraps of paper, and announced proudly that he had called soandso and
    soandso, this was almost 7p.m. at night taboot, kind of late by first
    grade standards.  Well I guess he had it coming, or maybe y'all are
    going to think I'm the wicked witch, but I took the scraps of paper and
    tore them up, and threw them in the wastebasket right then and there. 
    He was forbidden phone use for 2 weeks.  I guess it really pushed a hot
    button that I couldn't turn my back on him for 10 minutes, could've
    been PMS but that's secondary.
    
    For the older kids, the one cost saving thing I hae discovered is
    something called "Bay State Service" on my phone.  I have had the
    service for ages, and is a real cost saver.  You get basically 2 hours
    of calling in the 617 and 508 areas for a fee, not much can't remember
    exactly how much right now. (it used to be all of MA until a 
    couple years ago, I lost the ability to call 413).  If you exceed the
    two hours  you do pay, but it ends up being about a third of the normal
    toll call charges per minute (let's say .10/min as opposed to .30/min).
    For me this is good, I still have family and friends who live quite a
    distance, sometimes it is the only communications I may have in months. 
    It isn't good from 9am to noon weekdays only, that's regular toll
    charges.  I will frequently tell my sitters on the weekends that they
    are free to call their friends, and toll calls are no object. So far
    not one of them have abused it.
    
    Second, I have a friend with two teen daughters.  When I call their
    home and a daughter is chatting on the phone with a friend they MUST
    put me on hold (call waiting) and release the call with the friend so
    the adults can talk.  Admitedly sometimes I feel guilty cutting the
    teen's call short, especially since I too have only called to chat. 
    But it's a no questions asked situation, they just do it! 
    
    Oh spare me, is this what I have to look forward to???? AUUGGHH!!!
    
    Lyn

    My kids are also early phone users (so far not abusers) - aged 7 and 9.
    They both ask first (sometimes they want to call a friend at 7:00am on
    a Saturday).  And we have no lengthy phone calls.  I'm just waiting for
    the day when the feminine voices start calling.  My first grader
    collects phone numbers too.  He likes to memorize them for future
    reference.
    
    -sandy