DAUGHTER’S ADDICTED TO IPHONE

Dear Coleen My daughter is 10 and all her friends have an iPhone. We reluctantly gave in and got one for her birthday. She also has an Instagram account and now she spends the whole time on her phone, taking selfies and posting them.

We try to take control and impose time limits, but it’s become the source of so many arguments. In fact, it’s become the only thing we argue about and my husband and I keep blaming each other for it.

I wish we’d never got her the phone but we can’t take it away because all her friends have one and she tells us she’d be incredibly left out.

How can we take control of this battleground?

Coleen says I think you have to put up with the battleground, and don’t let her win. You’ve got to impose rules and stick to them at all times, despite all the screaming.

If you allow her to go on it for a couple of hours and she kicks off afterwards, only let her have it for an hour. If she kicks off again, take it off her and she’ll soon realise that if she argues, she doesn’t get it at all. And there may be days when she doesn’t get it at all. This is hard of course. It’s far easier for you and your husband if she’s on it, distracted and not getting angry. But you need to be strict about things and follow through on threats so she takes you seriously.

If you do this for a week or two, going forwards it should get easier. She’s only 10 so she’s lucky to have a phone. And she shouldn’t really have an Instagram account until she’s 13. But you’ve allowed her to, so you must now impose some tough guidelines like time limits and where she’s not allowed to have it, at the dinner table or in her bedroom after a certain time, for example.

You have to stick to these guidelines otherwise things will just get worse as she gets into her teens. Good luck.