The difference between trying to control vs. manage a teen-ager is all in how you approach the situation.

A management approach meets the following six criteria:

1. The parents are clearly in charge

2. The teen, over time, learns and earns the ability to be more and more in charge of herself

3. There is a clear map for continually building trust and responsibility

4. The parents have a way to monitor the progress of the teen

5. There are clear consequences when the teen demonstrates that she cannot be in charge of herself (just as in the real world)

6. There is a clear map for how to earn back trust and responsibility.

The 6 criteria applied

Applying the six criteria to the issue of the phone, here are a couple of ideas you can try.

One is to start the teen out with a certain amount of phone time each day, say, 15 minutes. If they are able to honor that amount of time, say, for three months, they earn an additional five minutes of time, and so on.

If they violate the limit, they lose five minutes and the three months necessary for earning more time begin again. (The numbers here are just an example. You can change them to fit your own situation.)

Checking this out with our criteria for managing teen-agers, we see that the parents are clearly in charge, the kid has a way to earn more responsibility and trust; the parents have a way to monitor growth and progress; consequences are clear, and there is a map for rebuilding trust and responsibility when it is damaged.