What's happening in your life?

I think your mentions of your grandad are entirely appropriate. It seems to me that the NHOTW is a forum where we are equally ready to hear about the greatest struggles and the smallest triviala in members' lives. No NHTOWer is an island.

Say as much about it as you want. It's healthy to talk about such things.

Nobody seems indifferent. Very pleased to hear the old man continues to confound.

In this house we have few rules, but one that is enforced is two spot checks per calendar month of my sons smartphone. I was informed not twenty minutes ago that I couldn't check it because his dad has agreed to cover the bill instead, meaning I no longer have the right. I'm in shock. The man can barely cover his own bills, he'll be in for an unpleasant surprise when he sees what his sons come to.

I think I've made a rod for my own back on the above. By not being a strict disciplinarian, he doesn't take seriously the few things I am strict about.

Namely technology use, handwritten thank you cards, and contributing to conversations with adults (having done other things aside from computer stuff and football - like attending exhibitions, a broad range of film, reading books, knowing fashion and going to music events and the theatre, travel, and having a grasp of current affairs - so these things can all be discussed).

To be fair he is very good at these other activities, having done them from before he can remember. Chiefly I think he's developed a schizophrenic attitude to money, which is my fault. He has access to £100 a week from his own accounts, and he can do whatever he likes with it, no restrictions. That has been the case since he turned 12.

But I pay for almost everything, so on the one hand he has complete freedom without consequence with what he almost views as play money (despite it not being an insignificant sum), and on the other the knowledge that almost everything wanted beyond that limit will be covered anyway.

I feel annoyed that his father (who has never paid anything, nor been asked to) has agreed to pay the phonebill purely so I can be undermined in my own home. Technology usage is one of the very few red lines I've always had.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you make spot checks of your son's phone? Is it for financial reasons (to see that he hasn't run up a huge bill) or young person's protection reasons?

If it's the latter, then who pays the bill has nothing to do with who gets to check the phone, I would have thought.

Fangirl Three wrote:If you don't mind me asking, why do you make spot checks of your son's phone? Is it for financial reasons (to see that he hasn't run up a huge bill) or young person's protection reasons?

If it's the latter, then who pays the bill has nothing to do with who gets to check the phone, I would have thought.

Yes, protection - it's not really the billing. It's about an open dialogue - who is that person? How did you get their number? In what context do you know them? Not even to pry, but to say ok fine that makes sense, or it doesn't make sense so I need that explained, and potentially will want to see a few of the communications there.

And an increasing focus on, you know, it's illegal to take certain types of pictures of yourself at your age, to send them, to receive and be in receipt of certain things that others send. Don't act in the heat of the moment, don't be embarrassed to say that it's going on without your consent, or that there is any pressure to respond in kind.

Don't do it, don't accept it being done. It's unpleasant under all circumstances - our equivalent was a flasher in the park, and that was never attractive. At best it's grotesque, at worst actively threatening. Those kinds of things, that kind of dialogue. Bullying - being or doing it.

I have friends who kept their kids do anything with phones or online stuff, and I think it's a terrible idea. Yes for their safety, but equally for their ability to spend time on and express informed ideas on all kinds of other things. Not helpful to becoming fully functioning, courteous social beings with a broad range of interests and skills.

So negotiating boundaries as a transferable innate life skill is the other main purpose of it all I guess. Get used to doing it now, naturally, just with the phone - no high stakes. I'm not about to read every message, insist on flinging open the bathroom door, or print out his search engine history and use it to wrap a bible to leave on the bed.

But the irresponsible layabout has just ridden roughshod over all of that and caused an argument about something reasonable being done reasonably. 'She's not paying now so tell her to stay out of it', and he can't see any problem with that. I'm no disciplinarian but in comparison I've had to be, and he can be the fun one right in the sweet spot.

So I don't think I'm being unreasonable at all, and it will be scaled down over the years ending up in it being entirely his property and responsibility, probably at 16, or 15 if a particular maturity and immunity to peer pressure is evidenced.

I don't think you're being unreasonable either. Young persons' guidance and young persons' phone bill funding are completely separate issues and the only thing that they have in common is that they both require occasional phone checks.

I have, throughout his life, smacked him a handful of times, one or two of those times with unintended force. I didn't feel great about it, I don't think it was helpful, I wouldn't do it now. And it wasn't about his behaviour so much as how I was feeling, so that was just fundamentally unfair. And I recognize that as wrong.

But he has a lot of leeway - basically unless it's hurtful to someone else or stupidly dangerous to himself, he can do it. From the word go he's been taught to ask himself 'how might that person feel about this?'.

Now we all take risks, that's life. But my point to him has always been risk doesn't have to equal reckless. And I'm open with him that I often took the two as the same thing, and never failed to pay for it somehow.

Tech/social media has advantages, I'm not saying it doesn't. But it has really significant downsides that 12 is too young to negotiate alone. I think we are all really lucky it wasn't around when we were growing up because I really think it would've made life a living hell.

I remember someone setting fire to my friends hair on the top deck of a bus. We knew her, so several of us bombarded her family house over several nights using a rota system, with threatening calls, and the police were called. Had we had all the tech available now, we'd have gone further and harder, and been in serious trouble.

The day after Diana admitted to bulimia on Panorama two girls in my year came in the following day and both, seperately, said to me that they were now seriously considering it as a way to maintain a svelte look. Had we all had social media, they could've easily ended up on those pro eating disorder sites being encouraged.

There was a really precocious 13 year old when I was 13 (far more than I was). The summer she lost her virginity to a boy in the year above, a virtual telethon of Chinese whispers ensued and reached virtually everyone by the first day of the new year.

The poor girl ran off in tears, and some jealous 15/16 year olds stripped the (even more poor) boy naked in the street to see what he had that was so special. Imagine the trouble and trauma of that being filmed and shared as it now would be.

I'm sure we've all got memories like that of being that kind of age, and the main thought it leaves you with his 'thank god we didn't have social media and private mobiles'. So, this will not be the end of the discussion under my roof, and the new status quo won't be allowed to stand.

It is interesting to imagine my own past taking place in a modern technological era. There'd be 3 main differences I think:

1. All my indiscretions and mad behaviour aged 15-21 would be recorded somewhere
2. The increased interconnection would have vastly amplified the poisonous social bitchery I was involved with then
3. But as a trade-off there would have been much less isolation, I would have been able to connect with other people who were in the same boat.

You can only take the thought experiment so far, though, because a lot of my experiences simply wouldn't have happened. Like the occasion on which I waited on a street corner for an hour for a group of people with whom I was supposed to be going to a party, but who had decided to go somewhere else, and had phoned my house with the news just after I'd left.

I can see the advantage if you are desperate for information you can't get or are denied, to find likeminded people, all of that.

But I think unrestricted is dangerous (I realise that's a little contrary to the advantages I've said above, which rely on it not being restricted).

I'm not trying to filter things for him. We don't have taboo topics in this family, never have. None of us believe in them or in hiding how you feel.

I just reserve the right to ask 'who is that and how do you know them?'. It will need to be resolved in my favour because I'm 37 and he's 12, so that's that.

The fight back begins this afternoon. Probably as I type in fact - he's being picked up in the car by George, my lovely elderly handyman, and taken over there for an evening of running errands, car cleaning, and will be eating whatever George is having.

He will be put to use cleaning my car to my specific instructions - fully vacuumed after first being sprinkled with baby talcum powder (imprints the carpets nicely and diffuses in a subtle comforting aroma I find), the leather upholstery soaped with jasmine Fragonard soap, waxed and polished inside and out, no streaks on glass or bodywork, chromework gleaming like a mirror at risk of blinding passers by on a sunny day, white walling of the tyres gone round with a bleached toothbrush...

He can't complain - if an old man can do it to those standards, he's got no excuses that will wash.

After this and a quick meal he hasn't chosen, he'll be getting down to some chores that George himself needs doing. Then he'll be driven home for me to personally inspect the car. The three of us will come upstairs to discuss our respective evenings over a pot of tea and a slice of cake each. Pointedly, I'll be serving this using the silver he refused to polish before Christmas.

After this civilized run down of the day, we can get to the heart of the matter - my house, my way.

I've just had to take my mother by the lower face and physically put her out of here. She was waiting for me, drunk as usual, snarling and screaming - this time about equity release so she can have a lavish time on the lash.

Everyone in this building would've heard everything. I can't believe anyone would be so selfish as to fritter away everything that had been given to them. The aggressive drunken entitlement she declares everything with is sadly typical.

She's always been the same - a pink Jensen sports car wrapped with a silk bow for her 17th birthday, and waiting for her after breakfast in bed, was sold by the lunchtime so she could spend the summer on Italian beaches, which she was on by the very same evening.

She even walked out of one of her own weddings because the best man was better in bed. My grandparents always considered the way she had been brought up and allowed to get away with everything to have been their greatest mistake.

I was 8 and my brother 10 when she decided we would be fine for a month while she went to New York. It was my fault (almost never his when she both of us to choose from) that I'd used a suspicious tone of voice when telling my grandparents that things were fine and she was merely 'out'. She was able to deduce this from the other side of the Atlantic.

Explicit denials from all four of us that I had conveyed everything by tone of voice alone didn't convince her that I wasn't entirely responsible for her being summoned home by her father. She's always been like this. Everyone else is destined to either facilitate her quest for fun, or become a loathed obstacle.