Should children be permitted to answer the phone?

Probablynot. Children under the age of 12 or 13, bar or bat mitzvah age, should not be permitted to use the phone freely.

One reason is that children can be manipulated. They are not capable of handling business calls satisfactorily. A child who is very young will not understand many things that the person at the other end says.

Imagine asking a child to leave a note to call back. You say "Call Bill," and the child says "How do you write Bill?" You say "B-I-L-L" and the child asks "How do you make a B?"

Granted, some parents make this an important issue in their homes. They teach young children how to handle the phone in a mature and adult way. This section does not apply to them. Those parents do not make the listener entertain the children. They don't have overly long answering machine messages, in which the child shows off while the people wait to leave their message.

In such families, where the children receive the proper training, they should certainly be permitted to use the phone.