I've just got a phone bill for £400! It turns out that my 16 year-old son has met a girl on the internet who lives a few hundred miles away. As well as talking to her endlessly on on MSN, it now turns out that he's also been phoning her on her mobile. A lot. He has agreed to pay back the money but he doesn't seem to have grasped why this might be a problem. I'm concerned about the very idea of meeting someone online but he tells me it's totally normal and everyone does it. What should I do?

My 13-year-old son is truanting. He's been steadily going off school for the past year or so but I thought it was just a phase that would pass. However he seems quite open about hating it. He didn't really bother to hide the fact that he had stayed at home instead of going to school; he just said school is boring and that there's no point in going. What should I do?

At only 14, double gold medalist Eleanor Simmonds is an inspiration to us all and has voiced her support for Staying Positive (EPP CIC) - a free workshop for teenagers living with long-term conditions.

If your teen has not yet completed the UCAS form – especially the personal statement - the Christmas holiday should be used to get this finished for sending in by 15 January, writes Anne Coates, author of Applying to University The Essential Guide.

Our daughter is 13 and I'm worried she's wasting money on her mobile phone. We bought her a phone for safety but she uses it to talk to and text friends. It's on a contract where she gets a reasonable amount of free call minutes and texts but we've noticed that her bills are claiming most if not all of her pocket money. I think she could be doing something better with it than spending it on phone calls but perhaps I'm being too harsh?