Cell Phone Bill Shock
I have officially joined the ranks of parents with cell phone bill horror stories. My teenage daughter went for more than a year without going over the minutes allowed monthly on her first cell phone. Not only were my husband and I thrilled about that, she also didn't lose the phone itself. Then she discovered text messaging!
Needless to say, the number of messages my child sent and received in one billing period amounted to more than most monthly car payments. The majority of it happened during our spring break trip to visit relatives in California. The separation from her friends was obviously too much to handle, so she kept in constant touch through her fingertips. We had warned her about not talking on the phone too much, but did not specifically mention texting. I guess the rest of us were enjoying ourselves so much, we didn't notice her very busy hands.
The lesson has been learned. She is on a payment plan to reimburse us for the big bill. She will be doing a great deal of babysitting in the future. As for her phone, we could have opted to change our plan to "unlimited" text messaging, but we chose to eliminate texting completely for now. We survived without it until this point. I like her having the phone for safety reasons and for the convenience of being able to get in touch with her instantly. For now, we'll just have to do good "old-fashioned" talking on the phone, instead of texting.
