When you have a daughter....

[Blarg]

I don't think he was making his decision purely arbitrarily, but because he had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the negatives involved in having his kid poke around with her phone all day. Not agreeing with his reasoning is entirely different than saying he has none.

I also don't think some simple, exceedingly minor restriction on a kid is something to think will define a relationship or even impact it much. I certainly don't think it is the key that unlocks the door of how a relationship really works and is all about. It's friggin' text messaging fer cryin' out loud.

Some things about this whole line of argument are simply based on falsehood: that the dad is just trying to arbitrarily, to the profit of no one, exerting his authority. How that ever even became a line of argument, I don't know, but think it was a mistake.

Some are outright silly, and seem to smack of a fear of genuinely interacting with one's own kid. Do you have to avoid all conflict with your kids, over anything, at all cost? Is any single little thing really a portentous stand-in for the entirety of your relationship? If it is, god forbid you should ever tell your kid she can't have some ice cream today, or the family is doomed. DOOOOOMED!

Seriously, you will have conflicts with your kids no matter how scared of them you are and how much you try to grant their every wish and morbidly obsess over whether you have still not done enough for your little angels.

Turning such simple situations into elaborate metaphors, and allowing that kind of thinking to get other than a laugh between family members, is the definition of spineless, muddle-headed parenting. Sometimes your kid is going to have to clean up their room. Sometimes they're gonna get mad. Too bad.

The way you show love for your kid is not obsessing over what you buy them and how much, and whether you give them every little privilege or toy, but how much time you spend with them, and maybe how much time you even WANT to spend with them, and how much love you show when you do. Frankly, I'd have traded every christmas present I ever got to have been able to believe my stepfather loved me, and as ridiculously authoritarian as he was, wouldn't have minded if he were even more so, if at the same time I felt he gave a damn about me. It's not the things that count, nor the rule set, but the love behind it all, or the lack thereof. I don't think a kid getting whatever they ask for (or even all that much in the way of material goods) is a particularly big deal at all, and is often very harmful to them.

If you love them, let them know it, spend time with them, and treat them as people rather than lifestyle accessories, then the rest of it doesn't really even matter. And if you don't do those things, no amount of obsessing over whether they have this or that minor convenience, privilege, or luxury is going to do a thing to fix your relationship.