u/Itstimeforcookies19

Our child is 12. We gave her a phone at 11 because she needed to be able to contact us while performing volunteer work over the summer. We told her the rules of the phone would include monitoring the phone to make sure was safe and responsible and not communicating with anyone she should not. We weren’t crazy about her having the phone but she had an iPad already. She’s a super responsible kid. I do check her text messages. Everything has been fine though I did learn of a mental health concern that it was certainly valuable to learn of that I found out about only through her phone. We have followed up with that appropriately. I would like to stop monitoring her texts. It feels like an invasion of privacy and boundaries are extremely important to me. It’s point of emphasis in our home to have privacy and boundaries. How do other moms handle this?

Edit- I want to thank everyone for the thoughtful and helpful responses! I wish I had time to respond to everyone but I read all the comments. I was feeling bad this morning and that I was crossing a boundary but your comments have helped me understand that it’s just parenting and she knows the expectations. She does have a diary and I would never read that and the comments helped me see the difference between that and the phone too. Thank you!! 🩷

We are planning on traveling to Italy late sept through early October. 10 to 14 days. Flying into Venice, flying out of Rome. We are US based. The trip was planned based on my child’s school schedule. We do year round school and this would be her fall break. For reasons that don’t matter here she is switching schools to a traditional calendar school so no more fall break. The school year will begin in August. When school begins we can make a request to the school for her absences for the trip to excused if we can provide sufficient detail that the trip will have educational value. If approved we can do the trip. But we can’t make that request until school begins in August leaving less than 2 months to plan. We plan to travel by train once in Italy but I worry tickets won’t be available? I also worry tickets for some attractions won’t be available? Flights may be limited but I think we can find something. It’s just 3 of us. The timeframe for the trip cannot be adjusted because we are meeting another family member in Italy who has already scheduled their entire trip.

So it’s either try to make the original dates work with very little time to book things or not go on the trip at all. Please give me honest opinions on whether bookings are even going to be possible in this timeframe. I’m not trying to make something happen that isn’t possible. I don’t need that stress. Thanks in advance for the advice!