On Snapchat, Roblox, video calling and growing up way too fast –

As your children get older, you regularly face new challenges. Nomi is now in group 5 and sometimes she grows up a bit too fast for me. We now have to make decisions about phones, social media, et cetera. Recently we ran into something again, when I heard Nomi talking in her room at half past eight in the morning. Naive as I am, at first I thought she was just talking to Lenn or Elena. But when I said ‘Would you like to join me on Roblox’, I went to see what she was doing.

snapchat

The day before she had added a classmate on Snapchat and soon after that they were on a video call. I get that she likes that and that’s fine too, but not too often. They then call each other and then they play Roblox together. That was completely new to me, but apparently that’s what they do at that age and well, that’s fun for them too. But not at 8:30 in the morning.

Phone goes down at night

Nomi often takes her phone upstairs in the afternoon and I don’t mind. At night that’s a different story, then I want her to bring her phone downstairs. Recently, that went horribly wrong. She had taken her phone upstairs anyway and I didn’t realize that (silly, and that won’t happen to me again (I hope)). The next morning I saw that she had sent me a video via Snapchat at 1:30 AM. Nomi claimed that she thought it was morning at the time, but that makes me pay more attention to whether her phone is really downstairs.

Half past eight in the morning

That morning she went down to breakfast and then went upstairs with her phone. I was still half asleep (I’m really not a morning person), but when I heard her talk about Roblox I went upstairs anyway. “What are you doing?” I asked her. “Oh, I was video calling and playing Roblox.” Nomi’s classmate’s mother was ahead of me and had already told her not to call at that time. But geez, I didn’t know that you have to make such agreements about that at this age. From now on, she must first ask if she can make video calls.

‘Can I keep calling during dinner?’

The other day I told Nomi to come down because we were going to eat, and apparently she was still on the phone with her classmate. She came downstairs calling and she casually asked if she could keep calling during dinner. Of course that was not allowed and fortunately it was accepted. And the next day I heard her say something along the lines of ‘I don’t think I’m allowed to call during dinner’. No girl, you can’t.

We now have good agreements about it and she is no longer constantly calling. She now knows to ask first and not to call before school or late at night. But gosh, I really wasn’t prepared for this stage. It’s probably easier with Lenn and Elena, but everything is new with the eldest of course. And then you first have to discover things, but in the end it turned out somewhat well.

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