More and more often I am reminded that the work was worth it.

During the Summer, on a Friday night while I was out of the country and The Boy was with his other parent, I got a text to say that for some reason he had run out of data on his mobile phone. I saw no benefit in investigating the reason because it wasn’t going to change the position we were in right then, and the risk of the perception of assigning blame was high.

<Key moment>

I explained that one night in February, because of something I left running on my phone, I ripped through my 4Gb allowance of data and *another* 5Gb for which they charged me by the meg.

So… his concern was he had no data on his phone until Monday, mine was the cost of data add ons.

In the process of laying out the concerns he came up with a possible cause of the data usage, and admitted that it may be his own fault. I thanked him for thinking about the reason, and said that while I was interested in his discovery, the reason for the data usage would not change what I was willing to do going forward.

I asked him how much data he thought he would need before we saw each other (and he got back to WiFi) on Monday. He said he thought 1Gb would be enough, and asked if he could get that add on. This solution met both of our concerns. I thanked him for being so clear in his messages. He got the add on, said thanks, and was gone.

The next night, about 24 hours later, I got “I think I underestimated how much data I would need”. I told him that he could get up to 4Gb of data total but that my expectation was that he would not get all 3 (he had already used 1 over the last 24 hours) at the same time. I thanked him again for his communication and his openness to hearing my expectations. He said thank you again, and was again gone.

Roll forward to Monday and we had a chat about data going forward (he has another 2 weeks with his other parent within the billing cycle). We agreed that we needed more information before we made a plan.

Information sources:

1. Reach out to the phone company and check that he got his full allowance (he thought he hadn’t)
2. If that came to nothing, ask the company if they could sell us a bundle (ideally with a discount)*
3. If they couldn’t then buy the data 1Gb at a time**

* at this point we would have to figure out how much he would need
** at this point we would have to agree to a spending limit

Then, knowing that he was in a good place I said…

Me: Who do you think should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (I obviously asked the wrong question) Do you think I should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (Wrong question again) Do you think you should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (Wrong question again) Do you think we should share the cost of the extra data?
Him; Yes

I thanked him again.

I chatted with the cell phone company, keeping him in the loop throughout. Yes, he had been given and used all of his monthly allotment of data. No they do not sell bundles larger than 1Gb and yes, each Gb would cost €3. Then they suggested pulling forward his renewal from the 28th of the month to today… this way he would get his monthly allotment (again) for the monthly renewal cost which was about 1/5 of the cost of the same amount of data if we bought it by the meg.

It is essentially buying an extra month mid month and it meets both of our concerns… enough data for him, not a huge amount of money for me.

Me: Your monthly rollover has happened
Him: Cool
Me: So the whole thing came to €24 and I am proposing we split the cost 50:50
Him: I was thinking 10:90
Me: That is awesome that you are willing to pay for 90% of the cost
Him: Psych. Yes, 50:50 is good.

We shook on it and I asked if I could give him a hug, which he willingly gave. I thanked him again for his willingness to work with me to find a solution that worked for both of us.

3 years ago that <key moment> would have gone a different way, and it would have ended up with him having a meltdown 2500 miles away from me. This Summer it moved to shared experience, empathy, gratitude and problem solving.