Parenting Question

[FlameBlade]

Phsaw. My preteen-monther is devoid of reason 99 percent of the time.

[Phoebe]

At least it's good to know I'm not alone, as I stumble around humorlessly this morning.

[Phoebe]

How do I disable Google and prevent new apps from being downloaded onto a phone, such that it works as a phoning and texting device and not an internet device?

[Mike]

I have Verizon, and they offer FamilyBase with all sorts of parental controls. I do not know the cost (if any). I imagine your provider offers something similar.

[Tahlvin]

But a flip phone.

No, seriously, don't even try to bother blocking apps or certain functions on a smartphone. Chances are the kid will find ways around it and have to hide that behind your back, or other stuff will go wrong with the phone. Either accept it, or avoid it completely. You can setup the parental controls that come with the phone, such as the iPhone's feature where we have to approve any apps that our kids want to purchase. But beyond some of those common sense features, I think much of the rest of those "parenting apps" (like one that essentially disables the phone until the child responds to your text message) are just feeding the nightmare that is helicopter parenting.

[Mike]

I'm actually with Tahlvin. You have good kids. Keep an eye on things, take common sense precautions, communicate and trust.

With our kids, we just take away phones if it is warranted. Hasn't happened often. If you think they MUST have a phone on them, use Kyle's solution: keep a shitty prepaid burner flip-phone on hand as the "punishment phone" when they lose their good phone privileges.

[Phoebe]

We have some tricky situations for drop-off and pick-up that the cell phone really enhances but I basically don't want that phone to have internet access for a long time. Our provider does not offer anything like this, alas. I just basically want to scrub the link to Google browser. Airplane mode would be perfect if somehow you could still have texting.

[Phoebe]

Other adult of house also needs parent. Dog has had vomit/diarrhea problem. Penultimate boss angry with sad ox who merely does job as it must. Give up on day.

[Zen]

[Eliahad]

[Mike]

Me too.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[bralbovsky]

I found it useful, when I had three teenagers, to treat them the same way I treated my mother-in-law who had dementia. The same way I would like to be treated when I have dementia, and not at all like I was treated as a teenager. Humanity, patience, a firm grasp of consequences, and a little also like a toddler. (One gives a toddler a choice: "Would you like to wear the blue shirt or the green shirt?"which is an illusion of choice because you've already assumed the shirt part. Having said this, many, many of the 'choices' in our lives are like this. Presidential candidates, clothes - or any other merchandise for that matter, - cars, work, most everything. Teenagers and mothers in law need to be gently reminded that they are not, in fact, the masters of their fates, that life is a multiple choice question, that we haven't yet discovered how to step out of the river we call time, and step back into it wherever we like, and that it is rude to put someone on hold who is standing right in front of you.

I am so keenly aware of my own failings that it makes me gentle with the failings of students, children, mothers in law, administrators...etc. There's such pressure to abandon humanity (not the collective, the principle), and I find fierce insistence on it remarkably persuasive.

[Phoebe]

Dude you are some kind of wise genius and I am not even exaggerating. I have some irrational beliefs that can't be shaken out of me and one of them is that weird things will happen at weird moments for a weird reason. If you could have been a fly on the wall in my day, and then been inside of my head when I read that post... Damn. It came at a very useful moments as a reminder of what's important to me.

[Stan]