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" As Peter and I sat waiting for Anna&amp;#039;s chorus concert to begin last week, we found ourselves discussing some of the same issues we&amp;#039;ve been having with her - primarily her attitude. She&amp;#039;s been overly sarcastic and downright disrespectful to both of us on too many occasions, We know this is all part of her moving into her teenage years, but disrespect is something neither of us is willing to look the other way over. It&amp;#039;s okay if she wants to disagree with us. It&amp;#039;s even okay if she wants to be mad at us. She just has to do so politely. One of the things Peter and I are in complete agreement on is that Anna spends entirely too much time on her phone, particularly at bedtime. I mentioned that I had started taking her phone at bedtime (and gotten an explosive amount of pushback from her on the issue), and Peter agreed that on school nights, this is a rule we both need to enforce. Her defense is that she&amp;#039;s only playing Minecraft and listening to music (we have her password and can easily check texts), but that&amp;#039;s not the issue. The issue is that she&amp;#039;s not getting enough rest, period.  So after her concert, Peter called her over to where we were standing. I let her know that there was a new rule in place, and we&amp;#039;ll be taking her phone at bedtime on school nights. She immediately turned and gave me a piece of her mind on that one, but didn&amp;#039;t get too far into her tirade before her father (to his credit) cut her off and reminded her that (a) she needs to speak to her mother in a more respectful tone and (b) he bought her the phone, pays the phone bill and he can take it back at any time.  She bit her lip, looked at the two of us, then turned on her heel and walked to my car. I got her phone that night without an argument, and again last night as well.  Co-parenting: 1, Sullen pre-teen: 0. I&amp;#039;m not deluding myself that her teen years will be easy, but it&amp;#039;s good to know that Peter and I are on the same page about these kind of things still. Does your child have a phone? How do you regulate the time they spend on it? **Follow Ellie on Twitter or Facebook** "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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