My eleven-year old has her first phone: we’ve entered a minefield.
I didn’t receive the memo, handbook or manual when I became a parent.
You know, the one that tells you how to navigate each stage of your child’s development; how to keep them safe from threats and dangers in the real world and online; and how to make the right decision throughout their lives, especially in the years in which they depend heavily on you to stay alive.
I really wish that memo or book existed, but I know it doesn’t. There is no blueprint or roadmap to follow. There is no comfort zone to stay within. There is no clear path that if trodden guarantees great outcomes. To safety. Happiness. Fulfilment.
What’s left is your experience; judgement; research; thinking; over-thinking; gut instinct; values; principles; and, your guesswork. All that’s left is making your best way home. To paraphrase (and misquote) Tom Hagen from The Godfather: all that’s left is our friendship and our love.
The overwhelming sense of responsibility that I feel as a parent - thankfully as part of a two-person team (with the added bonus of the second parent in my team being smarter and calmer than me) - is something I wasn’t prepared for and is now something, in the spirit of being a therapist, that I am accepting as inescapable part of the deal of being a parent.
There is not a world in which I won’t feel this bone-crushing sense of responsibility for my daughter’s wellbeing; for her safety; for her. I know that now, and although it is stressful every day, it is also the life I chose and the life I love. Loving someone as much as I love my daughter is a feeling that I would rather die than be without now that I’ve had it. Along with my extraordinary wife, Miss J’s mum, my daughter is my everything. My absolute everything.
That context - that reality of how I experience being a parent - is why the recent milestone we have passed as a parenting and child team has felt so significant - because it has been. We knew the day would come - we couldn’t resist it forever, as much as we would have liked. But it has been a milestone that has taken some thinking about, preparing for, and executing. Again, without all the answers in a memo or a step-by-step guide.
Our daughter - aged 11 and in her summer holidays between primary school and starting secondary school in September - now has her first mobile home. *Cue nightmare-waking screams or Damien’s tune from ‘Only Fools and Horses’ (Carmen Burana: O Fortuna).
Aaaaaaggggghhhhhhh, where’s that damn memo?!
As in most successful relationships, partnerships and teams, we divide up the areas of work, expertise and responsibility, assigning the tasks to the person best-placed to undertake them. Dr J and I are no different in our parenting team. One of my assigned areas is technology, the internet and online safety.
I know a little about this, despite not being sent the aforementioned memo, as I work with teenagers in my counselling room and in schools throughout the working week. I hear horror stories most days of the damage that can be done using mobile phones and the ‘Wild West’ that be accessed through those devices and their iPad and laptop cousins. I have also been aware for some time that we would need to help Miss J navigate this world and so have been engaged in extensive research and reflection on this subject for years.
I read Jonathan Haidt’s seminal book last year on the “lost generation” and have listened to endless podcasts on young people and online safety. I have undertaken training courses. Watched documentaries. Read article after article in the New York Times, Irish Times, The (London) Times, Financial Times and many, many other earnest publications. I have also challenged my own liberal, free-market leaning, and at times libertarian tendencies, and am now strongly in favour of a legal ban on smart phones and social media for under 16s. I have done my research and my reflecting. I have discussed my reflections with Dr J many, many, many times and have tested the waters with some like-minded and equally-terrified fellow parents. I have been on my own journey to get to the place where I was ready to order the iPhone and set it up for Miss J. And order it, set it up and hand it over we have now done. How’s it going I hear you ask.
Honestly, so far, so good.
She is still alive. Safe. Happy. And hasn’t changed her personality. So far.
We know this is a long journey with many a twist and turn but we are grateful for how it has started. But in the spirit of no complacency and the much-overdone meme, we know that how it starts doesn’t always reflect “how it’s going” in the future.
We are really happy with how Miss J has handled the first week or so with her first phone. It’s such a minefield but we are so far - all of us - in one piece. How did we get there? Where did all my research and reflection get me? Where did we land?
Nowhere especially involving rocket science and brain surgeons, but somewhere involving common sense and hopefully some effective structures and processes. We had lots of conversations over many months about the phone and being safe, creating healthy boundaries, and drawing up shared rules. These rules were not imposed by us as the parenting team but designed by all three of us as a family team. We have all signed up to them.
We took time to ask what Miss J wanted to do with her phone, who she wanted to be connected with, and what she felt would work for her. When she suggested something we didn’t like or feel comfortable with (e.g. using Snapchat) we took time, over several conversations, to walk through the pros and cons and spoke openly about the risks and dangers alongside the possible benefits. We managed between us to reach a point in which we were all happy - more or less. A parental veto/override was hardly ever needed as we managed to find consensus on virtually every area.
There were one or two areas - groups chats being one, in which the parents wanted much more restrictions (family ones ok, no other chats ok unless those in the chats - the friends - were all signed up to the same ground rules). *Narrator: so far there are no non-family group chats in operation.
As an aside, I know some will say the safest thing to do would be to avoid phones completely and just say no completely. I understand this but I also understand the implications that would have for my daughter for her connections with others; for her social life; for her isolation; for being left out; and, for feeling different. We took the view that better to be inside the mobile phone world with robust guardrails than outside feeling lonely and missing out on the positives it brings.
The rules we have agreed (and are subject to review, updating and tweaking) as the story develops are included below. Not out of smugness or a smart-arse sense that we’ve got this right, but in the spirit of sharing to help others navigate the minefield we are current tip-toeing through. They are also shared in the spirit of welcoming feedback and advice. They are shared too in the recognition that just hoping for the best or praying for some government or social media company intervention to help us is unlikely to come any time soon or any time at all.
We are left to work our way through the minefield, finding a way - like all things in life - that is tailored to our own needs and the needs of our individual child. If you are on this journey too: good luck. I hope you find your own way through it.
By the way, if anyone does have a copy of that memo, handbook or manual, they are very welcome to send me a copy. Thank you.
Our initial rules
Messages to dad/mum must be replied to quickly
Phone to be answered when called or message sent from dad/mum to explain why we can’t answer it
Location settings are always left on - never turned off
Phone battery must be kept charged - not falling below 40%
Phone off and put away by 8:30pm each night
Phone stays downstairs each night - after 8:30pm - in the kitchen cupboard
No phones at dinner table/when eating
Dad to review phone whenever he asks - no delay in handing it over
Dad will check screen-time stats each week
iPad time to be reduced if using phone
Never let anyone use your phone or send messages to/call anyone from your phone unless it’s an emergency
Phone to be kept safe in bag/pocket when out in the street - not carried in hand
Passwords are never changed without dad’s permission
Only agreed contacts allowed
No group chats on WhatsApp or messages - except family chats
No photos to be sent to anyone that you wouldn’t send to dad/mum
No Tik Tok
No Snapchat
No Instagram
No Facebook
Pinterest is allowed
Roblox is allowed
Any apps must be agreed by dad before they are downloaded
No calls / FaceTimes can be made without asking dad or mum first
Text or message someone first before calling them to check it’s ok
If anyone joins a call without being agreed by dad or mum, you must leave the call and check it’s ok with dad/mum
Other rules can be added/changed at any time by dad/mum