It's always nice when you can boast that your offspring is an over-achiever.

When news reached me that children aged between 12 and 15 are the nation's biggest texters, sending an average of 193 messages a week, I smugly realised that my 14-year-old makes these part-timers look like pathetic amateurs.

Having just forked out a king's ransom in order to provide her with a phone which is far more impressive than my own, I forgot to tick the box saying I wouldn't require paper phone bills sent to me on a monthly basis.

When the first one came through, I thought the phone provider had sent me a the first draft of War and Peace: a huge stack of paper, detailing every call and every text my daughter had made, fell through my letterbox, practically smashing the tiles in the hall. In one month, she'd sent more than 3,000 texts.

That's a text every 14 minutes. One every nine minutes if she sleeps for eight hours a night, one every five minutes if I choose to believe that none of said texts were sent while she was at school (hollow laugh).

It was a proud moment. My child hasn't just smashed Ofcom's research, she's obliterated it into anti-matter – either that, or she's employing someone to text on her behalf, which is enterprising.