Broken Rules = Broken Phone

First, the funny thing about this post is that it was my 10th grader's idea. I had not even thought about turning it into a post, but here it is. Not related to homeschooling , but a part of our life.

The cell phone has been a source of trouble from the get go. I was reluctant to even get my son a phone as the ole' "Everyone else has a phone!" argument was used and that usually brings the "no" wall right to the front of the conversation. The biggest infraction has been talking to girls that have not been ok'd. The rule was that he could exchange numbers and converse with actual people that he meets (not virtual people) and if it was a girl, that he had to get her parent's permission to call her. That worked fine for us in the beginning, but then a "girl who had dialed a wrong number" friend showed up that decided to call and text all throughout the night, send inappropriate text messages and etc...

There was the minutes situation too. I was buying minutes for him as needed, (it was a prepaid phone)but it seemed that whenever I needed to call him he could not answer because he "ran out of minutes." I was buying them, but never got to use any of them. The solution: he had to buy his own minutes. Well with that responsibility came this certain freedom of ownership of who he called, when he called. It became a constant issue where I had to baby-sit the phone during times that the phone should not have been in use. He was no longer allowed to have the phone in his bedroom.

Two weeks ago Tuesday, at 12:45 a.m. as I headed for a nature trip, I saw the light was on in his bedroom. I went to the door to see if he was okay and he was sitting suspiciously on the side of the bed. I knew immediately that something was going on so I ask for whatever it was that was interrupting his sleep. He reached under his pillow and pulled out the phone. I had had enough.

It is with deep sympathy that I report that his phone tragically fell on my hammer....7 times!

I have changed my rules. The phone is now in a zipl*ck bag. He can have it in his room all he likes now.