Teen learning responsibility

[Klove76]

Does anyone else think that teaching a 14 year old responsibility when it comes to paying for phone contract is acceptable. Has a part time job and does pay every month but mother in law thinks this should be paid for by us but we want to teach that if you have committed to a contract/agreement you have to pay for said goods. We think this will start to prepare for when she enters grown up world are we wrong??

I would not allow a 14 year old to have a contract unless it’s a monthly rolling one (no commitment).

I see it as my duty to pay for my children’s phones if I want them to have one for my convenience (travelling to school & in ds’s case access to her science revision programme). If they go above their allowance for social media etc they pay.

The contract is in parents name but first two months bill was over limit by quite a substantial amount hence 14 year old starting to pay for bill as it is mostly social media usage and contacting friends

I think you are going the right way, it's never too early to learn responsibility, youngest child at 13 burnt a carpet with a candle, made her pay the excess on insurance claim.

That’s the difference you see. If Dd & Ds go over they have to pay first. The parents should at least put a cap on the contract.

My view is that parents pay for the monthly contract.
DC often don’t understand how much mobile data certain apps use. Explain that texts and calls are ok but usually sending photos eats into their data allowance. Using YouTube, music apps etc at home comes from the home WiFi so try to limit data-hungry app usage to WiFi.

We pay the monthly contact, he has a cap of £5 on his phone but if he goes into it he had to pay however much he goes over. We also will not extend his data etc.

If you get a monthly contract with Tesco mobile (and perhaps others too I guess) you can set a cap on spending so they will not be able to use data or send texts if the cap is breached. I think my 13 yr old's contracts is £24/month and we have a £2 cap on that. We pay for his phone. He does have trouble working out that you can't have money twice - for example we sold his old tablet for £30 but didn't get the money straight off as they were testing/evaluating it. But I gave him £30 as he was going shopping and wanted the money. When I eventually got the £30 from the tech shop he couldn't understand why I kept it and didn't give it to him again!

We pay £7 a month for the dcs phones - they have plenty of data and if they ran out they just won't be able to access it. They have plenty of minutes and loads of texts too. It has really never been an issue.
I do however agree with teaching kids responsibility, I think that is vital but we all choose to do it in different ways your MIL should butt out of course but she is offering an opinion to you, just as we are - none of this is set in stone.