Mom Arrested For Taking Away Her 15 Year Old Daughter’s Phone

I've actually written in the past about wondering when is the appropriate time to get my daughter a phone.  She's a 4th grader and many of her friends already have their own private phone.  My issue has been that "phones" are only phones because we choose to still call them that.  In reality, they're pocket sized computers with access to the internet and all of the things that come with that.  Additionally, they're not cheap and my daughter can't even manage to make it through winter with the same pair of mittens.

This story of Michigan adds a whole reason to think about getting  a phone for a child.  The level of "entitled attitude" in this story is pretty crazy.  In a nutshell, a mom took her 15 yr. old daughter's phone away as punishment for some trouble at school.  The parents are divorced and the daughter complained to her father who then called the police to report the phone as stolen.  He told the police it was his phone that had been stolen which may have been the case since cell phone companies don't do contracts with 15 year old kids.

You'd think that this would be something that a quick conversation with the officers at her door would have fixed, but that wasn't the case.  When police arrived, she explained the situation, but it didn't matter.  She had broken the law and they were going to place her under arrest.  She asked if she could voluntarily turn herself in on Monday since she had a four month old baby who was still nursing, but they refused.  They took her into custody where she spent two hours in a holding cell until she could post bail.  Believe it or not, this ridiculousness actually made it to trial a couple of weeks later.  Thankfully, a sensible judge dismissed all charges when it was made clear that this was just a parent handing out a reasonable punishment.

I'm not sure if Dr. Phil has heard about this yet, but if so this teenage girl and her father sound like good potential guests.  Ridiculous!