14yr old dd - mobile phones what limits do you suggest?

[Allthenamesiwantaretaken]

hi all, new to this board and writing on behalf of my fiancee who wants some advice about his DD. Am sure an extremely commom problem, but she is permenantly glued to her Blackberry, all through mealtimes etc etc its driving him mad, any tips on how to control it, what limits has anyone tried that have worked well etc. She is extremely well behaved an absolute delight to be around so all in all very lucky, its just the phone problem and how to tackle sensibly and fairly any advice gratefully recieved

I have a 14 year old daughter. The rules we have are: meal times, phone is left on side, away from the dining table, turned off and stays there until we have all finished eating. Bedtime the phone is turned off and left downstairs. If we are talking to DD and a text comes through then we finish any conversation before she is allowed to look at it. Its PAYG and a set amount (£10) a month. If she uses it before the month is up, tough! She waits til the next month for her next top up.

I have 14 year old DD with a Blackberry too, our rules are very similar to Positive.

Phone is put away at mealtimes and left downstairs at bedtime. DD's phone is on contract so she gets unlimited texts and 300 call minutes per month, we think it's better value for money than PAYG (it costs about£20) but obviously it's down to the individuals circumstances etc.

Texting, Facebook , BBm etc are just how teens communicate these days, for a lot of parents these things werent around when they were teens, so we're having to make the rules up as we go along!

Your fiance's DD sounds lovely, so I'm sure she'll be okay with whatever restrictions are put in place, as long as they're reasonable and justifiable.

Above advice spot on. Plus, insisting on no passwords or copies of passwords given to her dad.

Fantastic, those are the kind of things we had in mind but wanted to sense check that they were fair, thanks x

Yes same here, blackberry off during homework time, mealtimes and left downstairs when they go to bed otherwise they would be glued to BBM all day and night.

I suppose not massively different from us driving our parents mad keeping landlines tied up all night :-) thanks