Fine. I’ll admit
it: Our older daughter, at 10 years old,
has a cell phone. We call it the “house
phone” since we gave up our landline many years ago and became a totally
cellular family. The house phone,
however, is used almost exclusively by our older daughter. Fine, I’ll admit it: I use it to sometimes
call myself when I misplace my own phone, but that’s neither here nor there.
More and more, my daughter gives out the house phone number
as her number. And more and more, as she
becomes more independent and does more things without the direct supervision of
me or her daddy, she takes along the house phone. When it became clear that
this was “her” phone (shhh… don’t tell her I said that!), we sat down and went
over some ground rules.
The first rule was this:
We paid the bill. Because we paid
the bill, we had a right, at any time, to confiscate the phone for any reason and
to read any text or listen to any message. We also explained to our daughter that this
was not to be “mean” and ensure that she has no fun, but this was for her
protection. When kids gain a little
independence, they have a tendency to push the lines of decency, and we wanted
to make sure she didn’t cross that line nor that she was the target of any
line-crossing.
She actually seemed relieved when we set those
expectations. She even thanked us for
the responsibility. What do you
know? We haven’t totally screwed her up. Yet.
Faithfully, we check messages in front of her, but we also
spot check them unannounced and with her being unaware. So far, her texts have consisted of “I like
cookies.” “Yeah.” “K.” and “<:}”
I have no clue.
Up to this point, since we are the parents and since we
are paying the cell phone bill, we have not had to involve the law in order to
see exactly how and when our daughter’s – I mean the house – phone – has been
used.
Arizona, however, had a law before their legislative bodies
that would allow parents to get a warrant for the phone company to surrender
text and phone records for their minor child’s phones. Either parents pay a lot better allowances in
Arizona OR they have a bunch of parents who clearly don’t understand their jobs
as parents.
The main reason for this legislation is that parents want to
have easy access to their child’s communications so parents can keep their
children safe. I completely understand
this. Without the help of a judge and
court time, I actually do have easy access to my child’s – I mean the house – phone. I ask for it and she gives it to me. If ever she fails to give it to me, I turn it
off and she looses a slew of privileges in her not-yet-too-active life. There was once an instance of a text being
sent at an inappropriate time. The phone
was out of her possession and not for her use for a period of time.
We did not need a court order or a judge’s ruling to
implement this grounding. Why not?
Because we are the parents.
Maybe Arizona should save time and let the cell phone bill
go. Perhaps a bill that requires parents
to actually do a little parenting would be more worthwhile.
