When it comes to raising teenagers, one of the biggest things parents struggle with is how to navigate cell phones. How much time should I give my child? When should I give them a phone? How do we handle the phone? What should be the rules around the phone? How do I get them off their phone?
There is so much we have to consider and so many things we have to decide when it comes to teenagers and cell phones.
There are so many resources to help you with this topic. There are classes you can take. There are workshops you can attend. There are things you can enroll your child in so that they can learn better skills for managing their cell phone. There are cell phone contracts you can download. There are so many people trying to help parents navigate this topic.
And yet, it seems like it's still such a challenge for so many parents. And while I would not consider myself an expert on this topic, I do have a lot of thoughts and ideas. I've done a lot of research. I've taken a lot of these classes and downloaded a lot of these contracts and really tried to find a way to navigate this in my own home and with my own family and when I am coaching my clients.
And so today I wanted to share a few
of the most essential cell phone rules we have for our teenagers at our house and give you a little bit of background as to why I think they're so important so that you can decide whether or not these rules would be helpful at your house too.
Before we dive into those rules, I wanted to cover something that I think is really, really essential whenever we have a conversation about teens and cell phones. And that is our mindset about those phones.
Parents have got to stop making the cell phone the enemy, because the more we hate our teenager's cell phone, the more they will love it. We like to think that phones are a problem and that kids these days just are always on their phones. And in some ways that is true.
But it's because they have this one single tool that replaces so many of the things that we used to do as teenagers in this one place.
I don't know about you, but I spent a lot of time reading magazines and taking quizzes about who my celebrity crush would be.
I spent hours sitting by the radio waiting for my favorite song to come on so that I could push the record button at just the right time and make a mixtape of all my favorite songs.
I would totally ditch my family to go find a quiet place where I could just read books for hours on end.
And I will never forget the joy of wrapping that phone cord around my finger and then unwrapping it over and over for hours while I talked to my latest crush or my BFF on the phone.
And even though I wasn't big into video games, I still spent hours playing Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, and when the Nintendo 64 came out, I was our family champion at Donkey Kong Racing.
Your teen's cell phone has replaced... All of these things. For your teen, their cell phone is a form of independence. It's a way for them to differentiate themselves from you. It's a way for them to connect with other people. It's a way for them to learn new things. To create things.
Their phone is a source of entertainment. And it's also a way for them to stay informed, not only about what's happening in the world, but also what's happening with their friends and at their school.
I am not going to pretend that there aren't also a lot of bad things about cell phones.
There are so many dangers that come along with your child having access to the internet in the palm of their hand, but fear will not lead to our best parenting decisions.
When my oldest child turned two, he got a birthday present that I was not thrilled about. My father in law gave him a hammer. It was a small hammer, but it was a metal heavy hammer and a little work bench that he had built out of wood and some nails for my son to practice hammering into the wood.
This was not a present he was allowed to play with on his own. It always required supervision because a hammer is a tool. It's a tool that can break and hurt and injure, but it's also a tool that can build.
And that is the same with your child's cell phone. It is a tool and it can be used for so much good, but it can also be used in ways that are very, very destructive.
So our role as parents is to teach our kids how to use this tool, and that is going to require a lot of teaching on our part, and it's going to require some supervision.
And just like anyone learning to use a hammer for the first time, you're probably going to smash your finger a couple of times. There are going to be some mistakes along the way, and that is part of the process. It's not something we have to be afraid of. It's something we have to prepare for and plan for.
These essential cell phone rules that we have in our family are my attempt to do just that. These are the way that I have found that I can teach my kids to use this technology in safe and effective ways as a tool, while providing them some supervision and some guidance and allowing them to make mistakes that will not have long lasting detrimental effects.
The first rule that I think is essential for every family, and I would highly recommend you consider it in your family, is having a phone curfew. There are a lot of different ways to go about this, but whatever way you decide; whether you have your kids turn their cell phones in at night, whether you turn off the wifi at night, whether you have parental controls that adjust the time that your kids are able to use their phones; I recommend having a set time of night where all cell phones are turned off and nobody is using their cell phones anymore.
I could do an entire podcast episode on all the benefits of having a curfew for your child's cell phone. But today I'm just going to give you a quick overview of a few reasons why it's so important without going into a lot of the details of why.
The first reason is that your child needs sleep more than anything else. Their brain development depends on them getting high quality sleep. Their phone needs to be turned off at least an hour before they go to sleep or it will interfere with their sleep patterns. And thus, their brain development. Many teenagers actually continue responding to text messages after they have already gone to sleep, thus further interrupting their sleep and giving them lower quality sleep overall.
Not only that, but having a curfew for your child's phone can prevent them from getting involved in a lot of the problematic stuff that's happening on cell phones when other teenagers are unattended with their phones overnight while their parents are sleeping.
And while they might see some of that stuff come through in the morning when they check their phone, at least they're not getting involved in it and really deeply entrenched in it overnight.
I don't know about you, but I don't really respond to conflict all that well when I am exhausted, when I am groggy, or when I'm just not fully focused on what's happening.
The second essential rule our family has about cell phones is tech free zones. Now, specifically, we do not allow cell phones in bedrooms or bathrooms or at the dinner table.
Our house is set up on two levels and all of our kids bedrooms are actually on the upstairs level. So we have just made it a simple rule that cell phones do not go up the stairs. Now I'm going to be totally honest with you, sometimes I let my kids break this rule, but I have had really specific conversations with them about how and when they can break this rule.
They need to get permission from me. There has to be a really good reason why they need to be in their room on their phone, and they have to keep the door open whenever they are in their room with their phone. Typically, I only make exceptions to this rule if they are working on like a homework project and they need it to be quiet or they're recording something or something else like that where they really need a little bit of privacy away from our family of eight.
I think this rule is also a lot more effective if you have open conversations about why the rule exists. When phones are not allowed in more private areas, it's much less likely that you are going to be sending or receiving pictures that are more private pictures.
Another reason we like making bedrooms a tech free zone is because our brains are really good at associating the things we do with the places we go. And we want our teenagers brains to associate their bedrooms. with sleep and relaxation, not with talking on the phone, not with texting with friends, not even really with doing homework, because if their brain is on and it associates that location with doing homework, it's not going to be able to rest and relax as well when it's time for sleep.
The dinner table is another tech free zone we have at our house, and the reason for that is just to show our family that we prioritize family time and connection and conversation during that dinnertime block. Eating dinner together as a family has actually been shown to have so many benefits for teenagers, including better mental and physical health, better relationships and friendships, and even better academic performance in school.
I want my kids to know that dinnertime is valuable to me because I want to spend that time connecting with them without the distractions of my phone or their phone.
The last rule that I want to talk about today is not actually a rule at all. It's just a tool that we have used to make managing technology a little bit easier at our house and that is Apple Screen Time.
I have done a ton of research and tried a lot of things and paid for a lot of, um, cell phone monitoring programs, but Apple Screen Time has ended up working the best for us. So all of our family has Apple devices and that is what we use.
But where the rule part of it comes in is that while I think Apple screen time is awesome, I do not rely on any technology to manage my kids screen time.
The way I think about Apple screen time is that it is a way for my kids to remember the commitments that they have made to use their technology in healthy ways. That means I don't just set it up and hope that that limits their time and their access to things I don't want them to have access to and keeps them safe online.
The truth is no software program, no technology is ever going to fully keep your teenager safe on their cell phone or on the internet in general. You have to teach them the skills to monitor themselves, to be healthy themselves.
And so I love Apple Screen Time because it doesn't add a lot of bulk and make it really difficult for them to use their phone, but it does give them some boundaries and it reminds them when there is a boundary so that they can choose to comply with it.
For this exact reason, I set up Apple Screen Time with my kids there. It's a discussion with them to set guidelines for themselves because ultimately that's what they're going to have to do.
And so we have discussions about how much time do you want to spend playing games on your phone? How much time do you think is appropriate to spend searching things on Pinterest? What apps do you need access to all the time for school and studying scripture and whatever other things that they want to be able to do at any time of day and what ones should we restrict to certain times of the day?
And then when we've made those decisions together, it is up to my children to comply with those guidelines that they've set, but they are much more likely to comply when they were their own guidelines for themselves than if they are my guidelines for them.
And of course, I'm going to guide them and direct them and make suggestions. And if they aren't complying with the guidelines that they've set, we're going to have to have some consequences and they are going to lose freedom as it relates to their cell phone.
But I think it's important to remember that the software program is not going to keep your child safe.
I think of it more as a bumper when you go bowling. So the bumpers come out and they block the ball potentially from going into the gutter. They keep the ball in the lane on the right track so that it can hit the pins. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't throw the ball in a way that will get it out of that lane or make it not hit any pins. It's still totally possible to get around the bumper or to break the bumper or bend the bumper or go on top of the bumper.
That is the same with your child and their cell phone. There are ways that they can get around every limitation. But that isn't the goal. The goal isn't to limit their behavior. It's to teach them good habits so that they can limit their own behavior.
There is so much more that we could cover when it comes to teens and cell phones and our mindset and the rules and all those things. But I hope that these three essential cell phone rules will at least give you a place to start in thinking about what rules you want to have around cell phones in your home.
And if you want more help and more assistance, if you are struggling with the whole mindset piece around phones and teens, I would love to help and guide you through that process. https://client.jenbelltate.com/membership/
That is something we can work together more closely on inside of my Enjoy Coaching community, or if you are really struggling with this idea that phones are not the enemy, and you are really crippled by fear around cell phones and technology, that is definitely something I can help you with in a one on one coaching setting as well.
I would love to hear more from you about the rules that you have around phones with your teenagers and how things are going when it comes to phones and teens. And I think the best place to do that is over on Instagram. So come find me @jenbelltate and let's keep this conversation going. https://instagram.com/jenbelltate
