DSD's phone contract

[Dollyparton3]

A bit of background: DSD is soon to be 16, she's had a phone contract for two years which has resulted in major conflict with her, all related to her online activity and her mum refusing to co-parent.

About a year ago, DSD was posting some very suggestive imagery on Instagram, pouty, cleavage showing etc, on a public profile which we told her to lock to private. She was 14 at the time. Her mum told us if DH and I had a problem, we'd have to discuss it with her. DSD of course was having none of it from DP and her mum refused to enforce it as it gave her good point scoring opportunities against DP.

This culminated in a heated discussion after parents evening which was the only opportunity for DP to get the two of them together to talk and enforce DSD's online safety. ExW said in front of DSD that DP was being a bully and to ignore him. We then didn't see DSD for 6 months.

Since then, DSD has continued to do whatever the F she wants online and we have to pick our battles extremely carefully.

Her mobile phone contract has now come up for renewal and of course she wants to upgrade her phone. We responded with "OK, that's fine, as long as your mother takes the contract this time" Our theory on that is that if she has the contract, she can take the responsibility for the next two year.

ExW has now sent a message via DSD saying she "doesn't want to" take the contract in her name. I've did to DSD that her mum needs to pick up the phone and have a chat with DSD's dad about it as I'm sick of The children being used by their mum as pawns to bully.

DSD has said "she won't do that" so now we're at loggerheads and DSD is upset.

Baring in mind that we're the non resident parents, and we met years after DP divorced so I'm not a factor here, WWYD? I refuse to back down on this and DP feels the same.

Is there a solid reason why the RP should be on the phone contract?

I would have cancelled the contract the first time she defied you. I would absolutely do so now. As others have said, replace it with a PAYG and tell her if she wants to communicate with 1000 strangers, she can pay for it herself.

We've decided we're going down the the SIM only route, and yes I agree that it's madness, but that's what she wants to spend her money on. When she's desperate for a car in a year's time I'm saying nothing!

But yes to be honest, when she didn't see her dad for 6 months when we told her to lock her Instagram account to private her mum dis and said nothing so she in turn also enforced DSD's right to sulk.

I personally think you are going very wrongly about it and your OH is risking his relationship again, not because of his standpoint, but because of how he is going about it.

HE and noone else agreed to the contract (and decent phone?) in the first place. Then he had concerned about her use of that phone, but instead of confronting DD and disciplining her accordingly (take the phone away and only give it back with conditions) he defaulted to expecting mum to sort it out. Mum said that he was the one who gave her the phone in the first place, so it was his issue, which I would agree with this position, the same that if mum agreed to her going away with some friends and things went wrong, mum and mum only would be responsible for getting her back.

Now contract is for renewal, it is the opportunity for dad to discuss rules with DD. After all, it would seem that whatever she's done in the past 2 years hasn't caused her any issues, so maybe, just maybe, he could try to understand better what she does on phone rather than assume that it is so bad, he is refusing to get her another phone. If he then decides that he is still very unhappy about her use of it, then he should just say so and refuse to get her another phone. There was no need whatsoever to get mum involved in it. It is his decision and has nothing to do with her.

He did confront DD first, but when DD lives in another house and visits EOW you're pretty limited on how far you can discipline your child. That's when it fell apart, because the mum wouldn't get involved or discuss it with DSD. There's no co parenting at all from the mother!

Dolly you can't make her Co parent if that's not what she wants.thats her choice.all you can do is parent the way you think is best.nd leave exw to do same.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions, we're cancelling the old contract and switching her SIM so her number stays the same. Cheers all!

I agree with ellie. You (your OH) had the contract, so you had the power to do what you wanted with the phone. You could have taken it from her when she was over. She would of course have had a huge tantrum and maybe refuse to come back, but it would have been your decision.

You can't expect mum to do the dirty job when she didn't agree to that phone contract in the first place. It's quite unfair to expect her to pick up the consequences of the error that was made by giving this phone without rules over its use.

As said, would you consider it to be co-parenting if her mum decided that she should go to spend 2 weeks on an exchange abroad, and then got into trouble there and wanted DD to come back, but called her dad to tell him that he should go and get her and that not agreeing to do so was him not willing to do co-parenting?