Mom's 18-point rules for son and iphone

[Sharnita]

The difference is that parents have the right and even the obligation to set boundaries for their children to protect them and direct their growth and development.

If I buy a book as a gift for an adult I would be rude to tell that person not to stay up so laye reading it that they can't perform at work. I have a right and even a duty to tell my child they need to stop reading at a certain time so they are awake and focused at school. If I buy a game system for an adult I can't tell them what games they can get to play on it in their own home. I can for my kid and many would say I have an obligation to do so.

[Yvaine]

The difference is that parents have the right and even the obligation to set boundaries for their children to protect them and direct their growth and development.

If I buy a book as a gift for an adult I would be rude to tell that person not to stay up so laye reading it that they can't perform at work. I have a right and even a duty to tell my child they need to stop reading at a certain time so they are awake and focused at school. If I buy a game system for an adult I can't tell them what games they can get to play on it in their own home. I can for my kid and many would say I have an obligation to do so.

If it's a matter of giving the kid a bedtime, that's fine! We were saying 7:30 is weirdly late for his age, not that she doesn't have the right to tell him not to call after any specified time. If she'd said 9 (a generally accepted "too late to call" cutoff by many people) or 10, who would care?

And whatever your rights and duties concerning your child, do you not also have a responsibility to protect his privacy? If you make these rules about games and books, do you then blast them to the internet with his full name on them? It's the public nature of the lecture (as well as the smugness) that bothers me the most, I think. Making it public makes it a self-aggrandizement for the mother rather than boundaries for the child. Think of that "who is being served?" question that comes up on here sometimes. The person who is being served here is the mother, by getting all those extra hits on her blog.

[Sharnita]

For people who want to give him privacy there seem to be a lot of people who feel at the same time their personal opinion on how late somebody else's kid should be calling his friends should carry some weight. I don't know why she chose 7:30 and I am not sure it matters being that I am not his parent. Maybe she has noticed behavior specific to him after conversations with friends. Maybe she just wants to set aside some uninterupted time to talk with his family each night.

[Yvaine]

For people who want to give him privacy there seem to be a lot of people who feel at the same time their personal opinion on how late somebody else's kid should be calling his friends should carry some weight. I don't know why she chose 7:30 and I am not sure it matters being that I am not his parent. Maybe she has noticed behavior specific to him after conversations with friends. Maybe she just wants to set aside some uninterupted time to talk with his family each night.

Why would it carry weight? They don't even know me and won't ever see my post, most likely. And I refuse to reply on her actual blog. But I'm entitled to have an opinion, just like the opinions we pass on hundreds of strangers' situations here all the time. No one on this thread has named the kid or sent him a personal email or anything.

[daisy1679]

What is so horrifying about having a 13 yo power down as far as media sti

What's really bothering us is the public self-congratulation his mom is doing, which is not only smug and annoying, but contains his real name and other identifying information. She's blasting their business to the world. They say the internet is forever and I really think parents should think about that before putting their kid's full name out there on potentially embarrassing posts.

And I do think 7:30 is overly draconian for that age. My parents were draconian as heck and I could call friends till 9 on our landline if no one else needed it.

The monthly phone bill and the ownership of the phone are two different things.

He was given the phone as a Christmas gift. Like any other gift, it is now his. This doesn't oblige the parents to pay the phone bill monthly (they could have told him that it was his responsibility to pay the bills out of allowance, chores, babysitting money) but the fact that they are doesn't mean the phone isn't his.

I'm going to agree with this. They gave him a gift of "iPhone and parents paying the monthly bill." It's not how some families would do it, but it's what they did. She calls it a gift and then in the next bullet point says it's hers and a loan. That's just not really in the spirit of "giving a gift." They could just as easily have, like you said, told him he had to pay the monthly bill, or they could have chosen to give him a gift without monthly upkeep on their end.

In all fairness, the boy has been involved in the news story himself. Both the mother and son have been featured on our local news (that's actually how I knew the story, I didn't even know she had a blog - it was never mentioned on the news clip). The son did give his response - you can see the news clip here http://www.fox4now.com/news/185419612.html

[Yvaine]

In all fairness, the boy has been involved in the news story himself. Both the mother and son have been featured on our local news (that's actually how I knew the story, I didn't even know she had a blog - it was never mentioned on the news clip). The son did give his response - you can see the news clip here http://www.fox4now.com/news/185419612.html

Gotcha. I'm not local to the story and only know it through the Yahoo article, which talks about the mom being a blogger and posting this on her blog. And it does have a quote from the son, in which he seems to be upset that she went public with it:

"Oh my God. My first reaction was, why? Why did she really have to do this?" [name] told "Good Morning America" today.

There's an argument that he's on GMA himself and so must be OK with the attention, but to what extent could he say no if Mom wanted him to be on it? I don't know.

I have edited this post to remove the kid's last name.

[Sharnita]

But your opinion is based on what? His personality? His schedule? The persolity an schedule of various friends? His feelings about these rules? His mom has more information abou all of this than you and he is her child yet you feel confident she is draconian or at least too strict and has veen rude to him.

[SiotehCat]

I think its obnoxious.  I think its rude and straight up lying to say first he is the owner and then go on to say actually he isn't.  I think its preachy to say these are rules for everyone. And I think its pathetic this mom is so either insecure or overly full of herself that this list went public.

If he's not paying the monthly bill, he doesn't OWN the phone. Mom and Dad do, and they graciously let him use it.

But then it's not much of a Christmas present.  He wanted an iPhone for Christmas.  If he wasn't going to own it, she could have let him use it at any other time. 

Anything my kids have had for Christmas or their birthdays became entirely theirs.

iPhones have a monthly data plan that someone has to pay for. Whoever is paying is the owner. Sort of like a house or a car. If you pay for it, you're the owner. You may be letting someone else use it on whatever terms, but the financially responsible party is the owner.

I think it's fine if it works for your family, but not all families work this way.

DH and I gave DS an iPhone last Christmas. It's his phone. It was a gift. We pay the monthly payments as part of that gift.

As for the actual list. I thought it was silly.

[Giggity]

Whose name is on the contract? That's who owns the phone.

[Yvaine]

But your opinion is based on what? His personality? His schedule? The persolity an schedule of various friends? His feelings about these rules? His mom has more information abou all of this than you and he is her child yet you feel confident she is draconian or at least too strict and has veen rude to him.

I believe she is rude by making it public to aggrandize herself, and by sounding snide and smug. The 7:30 thing isn't rude, it's just something I don't understand. Maybe it makes more sense to the two of them, I don't know. But we have opinions on strangers based on incomplete information on this site all the time.

[Tiamet]

Whose name is on the contract? That's who owns the phone.

Well, yes.  I think that's the point a lot of people are making - an iphone that has the mother's name on the contract and this many rules about the use is actually the mother's iphone that she lets her son use.

That's fine and in fact possibly even sensible for a 13 year old, but I think it makes for a lousy Christmas present - I've never had a gift that allows me 'X amount of use of my item, but if you don't use it the way I want you to, I'll take it back' and if someone offered something to me on these terms, I'd decline.

If the person making the so called gift then announced their rules in public, I'd be furious.

[Hmmmmm]

I have no issue with any of the rules.  They were pretty consistent with the ones we set with our own 13 year old kids.  Even the one stating we have access to the password and can cancel the service at anytime.

I do think the blogging about it is annoying, but I'm annoyed any all sorts if people who want to live their personal lives on the Internet or in other public venues.  But the woman is probably trying to create some type of publicity for her blog and got lucky with this post.

[wolfie]

I think its obnoxious.  I think its rude and straight up lying to say first he is the owner and then go on to say actually he isn't.  I think its preachy to say these are rules for everyone. And I think its pathetic this mom is so either insecure or overly full of herself that this list went public.

If he's not paying the monthly bill, he doesn't OWN the phone. Mom and Dad do, and they graciously let him use it.

But then it's not much of a Christmas present.  He wanted an iPhone for Christmas.  If he wasn't going to own it, she could have let him use it at any other time. 

Anything my kids have had for Christmas or their birthdays became entirely theirs.

iPhones have a monthly data plan that someone has to pay for. Whoever is paying is the owner. Sort of like a house or a car. If you pay for it, you're the owner. You may be letting someone else use it on whatever terms, but the financially responsible party is the owner.

I have an iphone and don't have a monthly data plan. I can make phone calls and text people when I am outside the house, and inside i connect to my network and so can download games or google or whatever. There is nothing preventing the parents from doing the same thing.

[wolfie]

Whose name is on the contract? That's who owns the phone.

I don't have a contract in my iphone. Does that mean noone owns my phone?

[WillyNilly]

Whose name is on the contract? That's who owns the phone.

My dad has an iPhone... but I guess not really by your rules - see his ife gets a corporate discount on her AT&T bill and so the contracts under her name. Think I should tell him?

Seriously whether the phone is his or not, the mom is absolutely a liar since he says it is his then says its not his its hers. Its one or the other so one of her sentences is a lie. What a nasty gift "merry Christmas son! Moms gonna lie to you!"