Proper Phone Etiquette
Does your teen know how to ask for somebody on the telephone? It seems like such a simple thing to do and yet many of my teens’ friends struggle with it.
Here’s the scenarios:
Our home phone starts ringing. I drag my tired butt up off the couch over to answer it. I say, “Hello.” I’m greeted with, “Hello?” And that’s that. Nothing more. No “Hello, Mrs. Young. May I speak to Keaton?” Just, “Hello.” My response is usually, “You called me. You need to tell me who you want to talk to.”
It’s not just one friend who does this. Many of my teen’s friends do this. In fact it’s not just my (almost) fourteen-year-old’s friends who do it. Some of my sixteen-year-old’s friends do it too. In fact my kids may do it too. I don’t know for sure because I rarely hear them on the phone as they typically use their cell phones.
So I decided we needed to have a discussion about proper phone etiquette just to be sure.
Today it may be too formal to expect a teenager to actually say, “Hello, Mrs. Young. May I speak to Keaton?” but there has to be a happy medium. With caller ID I usually know who it is that is calling. And I usually know who they are calling for. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still ask for the person you want to talk to. At the very least the caller should say, “Is Keaton there?” after I’ve answered with “hello.”
What are you expectations for the caller when somebody calls your house for your teen?
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POSTED IN: Communication
1 opinion for Proper Phone Etiquette
Gayla McCord
Aug 3, 2008 at 4:58 am
With three teens, we get much of the same. Caller I.D. is wonderful isn’t it? I always know who I can give grief to and who might not handle it so well.
Each of the boys have their own cell phone, so we don’t get that so much anymore.
Now on the otherhand, I do let them answer those unknown caller or toll free incoming calls - I let them get in practice on productive sarcasm that way :)
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