My daughter is 12 years old turning 13 soon.
My wife’s been struggling with letting her walk home from school and go places around the neighborhood with her friends.
So we finally caved on getting her a phone as a trade off to letting her have more independence.
We let her have a cell phone with the following rules:
-it’s our phone not hers
-she has to keep it charged and keep it with her when she’s not home so we can see where she is.
-she has screen time limits of 5:30 daily
-she has to answer when we call
-she acknowledges that we will be monitoring her messages and communications for her safety.
-she can’t use social media apps like tik tok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
-wear a whoop so we can encourage each other to be active and not let the phone give us bad physical activity habits.
So far so good, but I’m worried she’s not active enough already before getting her the phone.
Since the pandemic we kept her home from school so she would not have to wear a mask all day.
She developed poor habbits because all of her physical activities (hockey, karate, school) went out the window.
She wanted a dog forever and we finally capitulated because she promised to take care of him.
I thought she would be able to go on lots of walks etc with the dog … but he was a demon for the first year and we still have all the scars to show for it.
She is back in real school this year which has been great for her mentally and physically, but since the pandemic she only seems to be interested in playing games with friends, listening ti music and drawing … she plays hockey once a week still but quit karate.
I bought a meta quest to try to encourage more physical activity in games, but she got tired of that quickly and didn’t really give anything but beat saber a shot.
I don’t want to force her to enroll in physical activities, but I’m looking for tips on how to navigate this over the next couple of years as she becomes a young woman and more independent and opinionated.
She’s a great kid, does well in school independently and doesn’t get into trouble.
Anyone have any good resources for how to be a better parent and how to raise a teenage girl the right way?
