Congrats on a well written article. I have six children My oldest three 18, 16 and 13. Over the summer they have each been gone at camps for various reasons. Over the next three weeks each of them will be gone at one point or another. My personal opinion is let them go. Let them learn that you love them but that your a normal parent who cares! We use “smart limits” at AT&T and we can shut there phones off for any reason. We shut them off for family dinners, church services, after 1030 on weeknights and 12 on weekends. We can program the phones to block numbers but still be able to get ahold IF necessary. A child needs to know that there parents love them but kids AND parents need space. I sat in a school board members office a couple of months ago and one of the board of directors told me that the biggest issue teachers have in giving the kids today a good education is parents lack of ability to require kids to perform and to allow kids to have what ever they want, whenever they want it. My husband and I are looking forward to a semi quiet next couple of weeks and maybe just maybe the kids will come back appreciating us. Loving us and not telling us how much we are stiffling them with curfews (we think we are the ONLY parents of children who have curfews, most of our kids friends don’t have them or there so ridiculously late it doesn’t matter anyway) and rules. I think parents need to let kids explore (within reason) because they will be on there own before they know it and I for one don’t intend to be the parent that wakes us with my 25 or 30 year old child still buttering there bread and them asking for 5 dollars for gas to get to there lousy job!!