I remember our kitchen phone mounted to the wall and it had a long cord. If you wanted to have a long chat sitting down, you had to stretch it to the steps and sit there. It was certainly more undivided attention than walking around with a cordless or cell phone doing other tasks at the same time.

I spent many teenage hours on that phone talking to my best friend or boyfriend. Such good memories.

My kids don't like to talk on the phone at all. Alex will talk more than Michael. They are more into texting as it seems all kids are now.

I honestly think that schools should have a semester long phone etiquette class required. I'm forever trying to get them to use proper manners on the phone! Maybe I'm being silly, but carrying on a conversation on the phone starting with a polite hello and ending with a nice goodbye shouldn't be that hard.

I blame some of it on caller ID. They just get too casual because they know who is calling. Sometimes I call home and one of the boys picks up and doesn't even say anything. Then I ask why they didn't say hello and they say "I knew it was you and you called us". Just say hello so I know someone is there!

Then there is rushing me off the phone. After I ask them something or tell them something they need to do I get "OK mom, bye" even if I'm not done. I really don't know how to teach phone conversation skills. I know part of it is because they have a cordless or cell phone sitting on the couch while watching TV or playing video games and I'm "interrupting". Maybe I have to get a phone that only reaches to the stairs....


IMHO, if they are not smart enough to turn the notifications to silent before sleeping with their smart phone, they deserve to be disturbed.

I actually use my smart phone as an alarm clock on my bedside table, but I turn it to alarm only before going to bed so that every e-mail, text or FB message doesn't disturb me. It's called common sense - something seriously lacking a lot these days!