VALLEY Parenting : Surviving the Teen-Age Years : Calling for Phone Limits

If she could, teen-ager Michelle Lachar jokes, she would have a telephone surgically implanted at her ear.

Like most teen-agers, she has found that the phone is crucial to her social life. Though parents may curse Alexander Graham Bell, experts who work with teen-agers say phone chat is good for development.

“Talking on the telephone allows teen-agers to socialize, to make intimate connections in a safe, non-threatening way,” explained Bonnie Geary, a Northridge therapist and mother of two teen-agers. “It fulfills the need to come together, which is important for adolescents, and is less risky than talking face to face. Parents should understand this and give teens (phone) time and privacy.”

Michelle, a 14-year-old freshman at Chatsworth High School, guesses she spends three to six hours a day on the line. “There’s no life without the telephone,” she said, ensconced in a beanbag chair in a corner of her room, phone plastered to her ear. “It’s a way to keep in touch with friends. If you can’t drive to see people, you can communicate by phone.”

Mom Carol rolled her eyes and moaned that getting Michelle her own line “may have been the biggest mistake of our lives.” She and her daughter have running debates about the time Michelle spends on the phone and the time it takes from family interactions.

For parents like Carol Lachar, setting telephone guidelines may be crucial to domestic harmony. Rules can minimize the annoyance of busy phone lines, late-night ringing and missed messages. Geary said that one useful measure is to establish first phone rights for parents, which means that teen-agers must relinquish the phone if a call comes in for Mom or Dad. Another is to agree on how early or how late calls may be received.

Call waiting can ease the problem of a constant busy signal, and so can giving a child a separate line, though it also takes some control away from parents.

Calabasas dad Fred Granich set firm rules for his 14-year-old daughter, Ruth, refusing to get her a separate line or a portable phone in an effort to keep some control.

She’s on the phone “constantly” from 3 to 5 p.m., but Granich imposed a 5 to 8 p.m. moratorium to allow for dinner, homework and adult phone time. Ruth can receive calls until 9:30 p.m. on school nights, but if her grades slip or behavior problems develop, phone privileges are disconnected.

One girl gets around her no-calls-received-after-10 p.m. edict by having friends beep her; then she calls them back from her room.

Teen-agers do need some privacy, Geary said, and Granich sometimes uses that to his advantage to get his reluctant daughter to hang up if she’s been on the line too long: “If she’s talking on the phone in my room, I’ll flop down on the bed. That usually gets her off.”

Marc Weiss, 14, a Granada Hills High freshman, makes most of his calls from his bedroom so he can have privacy to joke around with his buddies--male and female. “Sometimes I call for homework or just because I’m bored or to catch up with old friends,” he said.

Although he’s had his own line since he was 12, his parents refused his plea for a beeper, which he wants because when he’s in a different part of the house he can’t hear his phone ring and misses calls.

While some boys can really rack up phone time, girls are generally the biggest chatterers. When boys ring someone up, it’s usually for a purpose, said Geary. “They’re making plans, deciding where to meet, etc.”

Granich definitely sees a difference between his daughter and middle son, Jaimie, 12, who rarely makes outgoing calls but does receive them--mostly from girls. Jaimie seems bewildered by the whole concept.

“By 12, the girls are really phone-savvy,” Granich said. “When girls call, he doesn’t know how to have a conversation.”

Some girls can be downright aggressive, sighed Northridge mom Rhonda Silberberg, who fields calls for sons, Adam, 13, and Jason, 14.

“The girls are pushy and rude,” Silberberg complained. If Adam can’t come to the phone, for example, the girls demand to know where he is and ignore her request not to call past 9:30 p.m.

Teen-agers today have myriad choices. There is no utility charge to plug an extra phone into a jack, but adding a line runs from about $75 to $180 for installation, with monthly rates of roughly $8 to $11 for basic service.

Then there are the options--call waiting, call forwarding, conference calling, automatic dial-back--not to mention the almost limitless choices in the phone itself, from high-tech portables to those resembling cutesy cartoon characters.

While technology marches forward, it may seem to some parents that this teen-age period of electronic chatter will never end. Others, though, have discovered unexpected benefits. According to Carol Lachar, when Michelle is socializing by phone, “at least I know where she is.”