Teenage Daughter

[warpedskydiver 0]

I am very lucky, my daughter is respectful and only crabby at times.

She is a great student (gifted) and into community service, horseback, does house chore and no bad habits other than letting her room get messy.

What a relief.

The problem is that boys are starting to notice her...

14 yrs old and looks like 21 with huge boobs, blond hair slim and very nice.... good thing she still has a little bit of a baby face.

That's OK, I have a lot of ammunition and I can hit something moving at long ranges.

[futuredivot 0]

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The problem is that boys are starting to notice her...

Have some targets framed. The man targets with a good grouping at the crotch will send the right message.

You are only as strong as the prey you devour

[Nightingale 0]

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The youngest is 16 and has been banned from the computer (other than supervised homework) for about 3 years since I found her using the search term "naked" with a list of young teen idols. She will continue to be banned until she is at least 18, living on her own and able to purchase her own computer and internet service.

This is just my take on this from what I remember from when I was a kid, as a teacher, and from what I see my cousins doing today: It seems like all you've done here is removed her behavior from your supervision and control and pushed her to be sneaky. Punishments like that don't teach kids to behave better... they teach them to hide their bad behavior better. Does she still have a myspace and facebook account? probably. Is she still on the internet? Absolutely! She's just accessing it from friends' cell phones, smartphones, and computers that you don't have access to. She's online at the library, internet cafes, and you bet she's seen those naked celebrity pictures and then some on her friends' iphones.... all outside of where you can monitor her. And now, if some predator really does stalk her on the internet, you don't know where she's getting her access, so you wouldn't know where to direct the police to start looking.

And honestly, banning a kid for five years for being curious and searching for something inappropriate when they were thirteen seems a little excessive. Maybe a conversation and using it as a teaching moment, restriction of a few months, and subtle installation of a keystroke logger to see if your conversation stuck would've been more appropriate than a "banned for life!" approach.

[skyrider 0]

Gotta agree, keep it at home, so you CAN check up on her, and why make sex dirty for her? she will just want it more!

Better looking at pictures on the net, than the real thing back stage!

BUT, she is your kid, that is simply my opinion!

[regulator 0]

25 thousand text messages in a month? were her fingers bleeding at all? That's astounding.

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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I haven't seen my 17 year old neice without her head tilted down texting away since she got her cell phone. -Seriously. I have NOT seen her not texting, unless she's asleep. She texts while she's eating or talking to you (which REALLY pisses me off ).

That could be easly resolved with the Firefly phone. There are two (!) buttons on the basic model, one for mom and one for dad for emergencies, plus 50 preprogrammable numbers, no texting, no problem. Not cool enough? Well tough, then you get nothing.
Most of us here grew up without cell phones and computers and turned out fine. Sheesh...

http://www.fireflymobile.com/glowphone/

Wow, that's perfect!!

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[regulator 0]

Do you think you would ever take your daughter with you to the drop zone anytime? I mean if they think skydiving is cool (what kid wouldn't) then why not get them to learn how to pack and keep them busy so they're not texting so much, or getting into trouble. Or do you some of you feel differently?

[warpedskydiver 0]

She is not in trouble...

Yes she has been there to watch everyone else behave badly.

[Thanatos340 1]

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25 thousand text messages in a month? were her fingers bleeding at all? That's astounding.

That was total texts (Sent and received)
Also if she copied 15 Friends on a single text, It counts as 15 texts.

But yes, 25,000 texts was just on the other side of ridiculous.

[Nightingale 0]

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About 3 months ago she asked to use her pocket money to have "unlimited" texts. No problem and fair use policy allowed up-to 3000 texts a month which I did not think a human could exceed! She managed 7000 texts in a month - resulting in a bill of £400!

Ok... I'm confused. Did she have "unlimited" texts, or did she have 3000 texts? It appears she asked for unlimited, knowing she was going to text a lot, and that was a very responsible thing to do. Did you tell her the plan was unlimited? Did the company tell you the plan was unlimited? Or did the company tell you the plan was 3000 texts, and did you pass this information along to her? Or did you choose a 3000 text plan instead of the unlimited plan she asked for? If she asked for an unlimited plan and was given a 3000 text plan, it's understandable that she exceeded it, if she thought the plan was unlimited.

Did you attempt any kind of negotiation with the phone company? I don't know how it works where you live, but I know if I call my phone company and say "Hey, I totally overextended my minutes/texts last month... how about we change my plan to compensate for that from now on, and hey, can you make it retroactive?" They've said yes every time and saved me hundreds in the process. It never hurts to ask.

[Thanatos340 1]

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Do you think you would ever take your daughter with you to the drop zone anytime? I mean if they think skydiving is cool (what kid wouldn't) then why not get them to learn how to pack and keep them busy so they're not texting so much, or getting into trouble. Or do you some of you feel differently?

Depends on the DZ.
Took my daughter to the DZ at about 13 and she learned to pack. It was a Bad idea. The DZ is an Adult playground. the language and general behavior is not appropriate for a 13 year old.

Also as she got a little older, Certain assholes like to see how far they could push me with inappropriate comments.

I have been to other dz`s that I would not be concerned about. But pretty much any larger DZ, Not a good idea.

[nigel99 466]

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About 3 months ago she asked to use her pocket money to have "unlimited" texts. No problem and fair use policy allowed up-to 3000 texts a month which I did not think a human could exceed! She managed 7000 texts in a month - resulting in a bill of £400!

Ok... I'm confused. Did she have "unlimited" texts, or did she have 3000 texts? It appears she asked for unlimited, knowing she was going to text a lot, and that was a very responsible thing to do. Did you tell her the plan was unlimited? Did the company tell you the plan was unlimited? Or did the company tell you the plan was 3000 texts, and did you pass this information along to her? Or did you choose a 3000 text plan instead of the unlimited plan she asked for? If she asked for an unlimited plan and was given a 3000 text plan, it's understandable that she exceeded it, if she thought the plan was unlimited.

Did you attempt any kind of negotiation with the phone company? I don't know how it works where you live, but I know if I call my phone company and say "Hey, I totally overextended my minutes/texts last month... how about we change my plan to compensate for that from now on, and hey, can you make it retroactive?" They've said yes every time and saved me hundreds in the process. It never hurts to ask.

Yes part of growing up is learning to read things like Terms and Conditions - she sat and read the T&C's. Our provider has "unlimited texts" but with a fair use policy of 3000. She knew this and for a couple of months she kept the text counter set on her phone so she knew exactly how many she sent a day/month. With all due respect to the couple of posters here who send thousands of texts a month, I can't see a "valid" reason to send that many texts (3000) - whether you are 13 or 30, so I have no problem with the fair use policy restrictions.

On the phone company, she knew the rules and flouted them. To accumulate that many texts she was texting till 1am on School nights - her curfew for texting was 9:30pm. She broke a number of "rules" and it does her no harm to be "punished" by someone other than her parents (i.e. the phone company). She has accepted responsibility and has agreed to work 100 hours (unpaid) to pay of the debt. Sure I am going to be called "father" rather than Dad for the next few days but I can live with that.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[Nightingale 0]

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Yes part of growing up is learning to read things like Terms and Conditions - she sat and read the T&C's. Our provider has "unlimited texts" but with a fair use policy of 3000. She knew this and for a couple of months she kept the text counter set on her phone so she knew exactly how many she sent a day/month. With all due respect to the couple of posters here who send thousands of texts a month, I can't see a "valid" reason to send that many texts (3000) - whether you are 13 or 30, so I have no problem with the fair use policy restrictions.

On the phone company, she knew the rules and flouted them. To accumulate that many texts she was texting till 1am on School nights - her curfew for texting was 9:30pm. She broke a number of "rules" and it does her no harm to be "punished" by someone other than her parents (i.e. the phone company). She has accepted responsibility and has agreed to work 100 hours (unpaid) to pay of the debt. Sure I am going to be called "father" rather than Dad for the next few days but I can live with that.

Cool, as long as she was aware of the policy and understood the consequences for breaking it. I do think that calling the policy "unlimited" when it does have a limit is misleading, though, but that's another matter entirely.