by Henry Case

Created on: December 16, 2009

Text messages, picture messages, Internet access, ring tones, hour-long conversations with the boyfriend - there are lots of ways for your teenager to leave your cell phone bill looking like the Pentagon budget. But fortunately parents now have a few options when it comes to managing their kid's access to cell phones.

First of all, it is important to figure out exactly why your child needs a cell phone. Of course, every parent wants to be able to reach their child at any time to make sure everything is okay. But beyond that, does your child really NEED to use a cell phone? In other words, if they don't have a cell phone with all the bells and whistles and unlimited minutes, will they die? Don't ask them that, because you already know what the answer will be.

Another thing to consider is, will they be paying any portion of the bill? If you child has a part-time job or money from an allowance, are they willing to pay their part of the bill? Because if they are not, obviously the cell phone is not that important to them.

Once you know why your child needs a cell phone, what they will be using it for, and if they are paying for a portion of the bill, it will be easier to narrow down the various choices you have when it come to cell phone plans.

Most teenagers probably spend more time text messaging than they do talking on the phone. So, it is important to figure out if your child will be sending text messages. If they will not, make sure you call your cell phone provider and completely disable access to text messaging. Because believe you me, their friends will send them text messages and they will respond. And every one of those little texts will cost you about $0.10, depending your cell phone plan. If your child will be using text messages, it is best to pay extra for a text messaging bundle than to risk getting a big fat surprise in the mail.

Minutes are next. How many minutes will your child use? If they are not allowed to use phones in school, and minutes are free on the nights and weekends, we are simply talking about the time from when they get out to school until 7 or 9 p.m., depending on your plan. How many minutes could they possible use during that time? The answer is staggering. So make sure that you tell them how many minutes they have each month and make them responsible for paying anything more than that.

Parents can monitor cell phone usage by going to their cell phone provider's website and checking the usage. If there are multiple lines on the account, the usage should be broken up by each phone number. It would be ideal to check the usage once a week, and if you notice that your child is coming close to using up their monthly allowance of minutes, you need to either take their phone away for a while or tell them that they will have to pay for the extra minutes, and text messages, that they used.

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