Somewhere along the way, I realize that apps like TikTok and Instagram are impervious to Apple’s Screen Time limit. They

She loved to sew. With a needle and thread, she would make dresses and hats and shoes for her dolls. Before I got around to buying her fabric, she used construction paper. My brother gave her a small wooden artist manikin one Christmas. She made clothes for that too.

My husband and I said she could have a phone when she turned 14. That’s when Bill Gates said he gave his kids phones, and he knew better than we did about tech. But my daughter was starting to use my iPhone, and I wasn’t controlling her time or restricting content.

Those societies who ended up being successful at Covid tried to “crunch” the curve — as in, reduce it to zero. Their goal wasn’t to “flatten” the curve — to lessen Covid, to live with it, to reduce it to some “manageable” level. It was to eliminate it. It was to have no Covid cases. None. Zero, zilch, nada. Forever.

Bill Gates knew best. We should have waited until she was older. Smartphones aren’t like TVs; they’re like crack. And little by little, our daughter has chipped away at our rules and resolve. Insidious apps have made things worse, as has sloppy parenting.

She wasn’t allowed TV on school days, but we were lax on weekends. She didn’t watch much TV anyway. She was too busy doing something else. When friends came by, she would show them her art books, page after page.

We told ourselves she only wanted one because her friends had them. It was a status symbol. We didn’t want her to be like one of those people who are denied TV or candy in childhood, only to become addicts later. She’d grow bored soon enough, just like with the TV. We gave her an iPod Touch that Christmas.

Of course, the iPod Touch wasn’t like the TV, and she never got bored. It was more like a gateway drug. Not long after getting the iPod Touch, she started pushing for a real phone. She would be starting a new school in September, she argued, and taking a bus for the first time. She couldn’t call me with the SIM-less iPod Touch. The August before she started her new school, we bought her an iPhone SE. It’s been hell ever since.

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ve spent months weeing in the dark because the bulb has gone in the bathroom and there are so many more interesting things to purchase. And weeing in the dark provides me with a sense of danger. Anyway, one bulb that isn’t boring is the humble CFL — it uses one-third to one-fifth of the electricity of a normal bulb. Which is loads. Drop £6.99 for two on Amazon, swap all the bulbs in your flat for CFLs, and stop crying every time you open your electricity bill.

It’s a rainy Saturday. She’s an only child. She wants to talk with her friends. I don’t see any harm in FaceTime. We exclude FaceTime from the hour limit. She wants Roblox. All the kids have it, and it seems harmless enough. She’s building her dream house. I tell myself it’s creative and she can play it with friends. Then there’s TikTok and Instagram. She’s underage, but she says her friends all have these apps. Initially, I refuse, but she wears me down. I let her get private accounts. I tell myself at least she’s learning dance routines and taking photos. Then she wants Snapchat. I cave again.

With an iPod Touch, we could control both time and content. Yes, she was young, but we would teach good phone habits and manners early. No more than an hour a day. Never after 7 pm, and she couldn’t sleep with it in her room. No phone at the table, nor on family outings like walks in the nearby woods.

My daughter used to be an artist. She would spend hours in the TV room, not watching TV, but on the floor surrounded by scraps of paper, beads and string, making collages and jewelry, or copying cartoon characters into notebooks.

In 2012, Vanguard released a research report titled “Dollar-cost averaging just means taking risk later.” The report examined the historical performance of lump-sum investing vs. dollar-cost averaging.

At ten, she asked for an iPod Touch. She was desperate to have one. All of her friends had either iPod Touches or iPhones. For months, she had been carrying around a phone she made by stitching yellow and black fabric around cardboard. She made a bee for a logo. She called it her Queen Bee phone.

If the idea of investing an entire lump sum stresses you out to the point where you lose sleep at night, then dollar-cost averaging is fine. But, the most rational decision would be to simply invest the entire lump-sum and be done with it.

Vanguard examined the probability of lump-sum investing, outperforming Dollar Cost Averaging in rolling 10-year periods going back to 1926. They found that for U.S, U.K, and Australian investors, lump-sum investing outperformed Dollar Cost Averaging 67% of the time.