One of the two main Swedish daily newspaper ran an article today about 34 particularly useful iPhone apps. I looked through the list quickly but found none of them useful. What I really need is an app that will automatically delete text messages. If it could delete them before they reach my iPhone that would be even better.

Daughter's daily text message output, as established a year ago using proper statistics and a calculator, averages somewhere around 70-80 a day. I can inform those of you who are not familiar with iPhones that they display the text messages to and from a particular contact together, chronologically, under each other. Even if only 10-20 0ut of the 70-80 text messages that Daughter sends on a day are to me I have to scroll through screens and screens of messages even though I keep clearing the conversations. These messages are grim reading let me tell you.

 The top three categories of messages these days are: petitions for money (cinema, coffee shop, birthday gifts for friends), demands for money (Kung Fu, dance lessons, fancy haircut, fall shoes, mandatory Kung  Fu club T-shirt, mandatory Kung FU club T-shirt second time because the money the first time was spent on something else)  and factual statements about that spending money in the near future will be required (bus pass, school activities, school photos, new glasses).

Before Daughter turned 18 recently and was allowed by law to go anywhere she pleases the top three categories of messages used to be: petitions to stay out later than agreed, (escalating within 2-3 messages into) demands to stay out later than agreed, (invariably turning into) factual statementes later during the evening about exactly why Daughter was coming home later than agreed. The last category of texts were the most stressful as Daughter WOULD get scared walking home alone at 2 or 3 AM after all and liked to stay in touch all the way home.

We availed ourselves of this tried-out system during our nine-day stay in Paris this summer. The trip which was greatly enjoyable also gave me some opportunities to observe Daugher's elegant technique for making instant friends anywhere. Sauntering up to some street musicians and saying: "Hi. What are you guys doing tonight?" resulted to my surprise not only in a corteous reply but usually in evening plans.* 

We switched phones in the evenings. I preferred Daughter to have the phone with the unlimited subscription when alone at night in Paris. Right before midnight when Daugher was supposed to take the last subway the negotiations would begin. "Mom, I just met such a nice person outside of Notre Dame. May I stay over at her apartment?" Giving Daughter my phone also had the advantage that some information remained in the mornings. Daughter is quite technology savvy so I guess she was just too lazy to delete the evidence, but none of the text messages to or from Kevin, The Girl (The Girl had a French name that Daughter forgot and was embarrassed to ask for again, or Guillaume (Daughter butchered the spelling) contained any references to anything worse than Reggae or drink.

Parenting is a lonely business.  In the midst of the toughest negotiations with Daughter I would receive incensed messages from my sister who was wondering how I could be so irresponsible as to let an 17-year old stay alone at night in Paris, alternated with phone calls from my aunt who lived downstairs who asked why I was so riled up about something so natural as a young person wanting to stay out.

Daughter performed her job of gently prying my control off very well.   The greatest scare was when her Dad had given her 50 Euro as a gift. "Mom, I have a great idea! If you let me miss the last subway then I can spend my money on a cab!" Luckily Daughter was swayed by my argument that two Swedish students had been murdered that summer by a taxi driver and agreed to take the last subway. After nine days I was proud of the way Daughter could take on the world for what it was worth without endangering herself too much.  

If any of you know the Mayor of Paris, please tell him that I love him for having the subway stop running before 1 AM. If any of you know an app that will soften the blow of unpleasant text messages from one's children, I am definitely interested.

 *Note to my American readers: In Sweden, kids, as a rule, do not go away to another city to go to College. The country is too small. All that crazy experimenting and boundary pushing takes place, alas, in full view of the parents. On the other hand, fighting for your freedom against a parental figure, negotiating and winning, seems to have some advantages to your model.