Corded Communication

Teaching Preteens Telephone Tact

By Megan Kopp

How do you teach your child what is and is not acceptable regarding telephone use? Is there a secret for cultivating respect for one of the most popular appliances in your home? The following suggestions should help you instill a sense of caution without pressing too many panic buttons.

Start as soon as you think a child is capable of answering a phone, and establish rules for use. "Begin with practice calls," says Evelyn Petersen, parenting columnist and author of Growing Responsible Kids (Totline Books, 1997). "Ask a family member to call and have them give a message."

Lisa Bacon, of New Zealand, agrees that practice makes perfect. "I think you can tell a child something until he is blue in the face, but children learn a lot more by doing, and that applies to phone skills as well as anything else," she says. "Basically [my children are] encouraged to answer the phone if I am busy. So I am semi-teaching them as they are doing it. After the call I explain to them, for example, how to announce themselves on the phone instead of just saying 'Hello,' and how to nicely ask who is calling instead of 'Who is it?'"

Petersen recommends establishing the following safety precautions and procedures for telephone use:

Keep a spiral-bound notebook and pencil beside the phone for messages. "Loose messages get lost too easily," she says. If your entire family uses the notebook system, it becomes the standard to check "the book" for incoming calls. By the time your child is 10, they should be pretty comfortable with recording the time and date, who called, what the message is and a phone number to return the call.

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• Talk about it!