How much 'freedom' do you give your 8yo?

[OkMaybeNot]

I sometimes doubt myself and start to think I'm too strict.

Just from comparing to other kids in his year group and friends with similarly aged children I seem far more restrictive. Wondering if I could get some perspective.

• He doesn't have a games console of his own, they're all downstairs in the living room, he plays them, but...
• Has a limit on screen time
• No TV in his room
• No access to the internet unsupervised, none at all. We look things up together.
• Up to PG films/TV programs only.
• He doesn't go out on his own.

He's 9 in July. His mates at school are nearly a year older than him and I wonder if that could be why they seem more mature and are allowed to do more mature things.

This isn't a stealth boast or whatever. I read this back to myself and I sound like a smug dickhead. I'm not, promise.

My 8 year old is similar although has an iPad mini, she likes Roblox and kids YouTube. She only goes on it when I suggest she has some chill out time so don’t need to limit it. I deleted safari on it but she never new it was even on there. DD8 also got an echo dot for Christmas which is a great hit and seems a good next step.

I've a nearly 8 year old
No games consoles, no TV in bedroom.
No unsupervised internet. Limited screen time. Films up to PG only, and those latter are supervised.
No going out alone.
When we are out and about, must stay within visual range. Mobile phone for holiday/camping use when participating in activities which do not require an adult present ( so we drop off and collect, or when camping, DC can roam with friends as it is a secure site).

I have an almost 8 yo, so slightly younger but I also have an 11yo

Neither of them have TVs or consoles in their rooms - they do have a den that they use to play it though.

I’ve not sat with them to look things up online since they were really small and couldn’t actual write to search for things. We have very robust parental settings and content blockers thohhh (to the extent that some underwear sites get blocked and I can’t look up pubs called The Black Cock for e.g ).

I don’t pay much attention to ratings on films. My 7 yo has watched 12/12A but we use a site liked Common Sense Media to work out why it’s a 12 or watch it ourselves before.

We live on a quiet estate and our 7yo has been allowed to the park on here since the summer. My DD will usually walk him up to meet his friends (arranged with the other mums) and we check on them periodically. My DD didn’t get the same freedoms as previously we lived on a relatively busy road and her friends weren’t as local.

Dd8 is not allowed out on her own. She has a fire which i supervise. She has never had a tv in her room until this xmas. My older dd had to wait till she was ten but dd8 is more sensible and compliant. Shes nine in september.

My 10yo has had a bedroom tv since October only. She's responsible with it.

As for venturing out, she goes up the road for about 5 minutes but there's nothing where we live to walk to, so it's a bit boring! Camping, she has been able to roam a bit since 7/8, we extend the distance we're happy with each year I think!

Internet, we have parental controls on the main household internet so no, I don't sit and search with her! I feel that would be too restrictive. I didn't sit with her at 8 either.

• He doesn't have a games console of his own, they're all downstairs in the living room, he plays them, but...

We don’t have games consoles at all.

• Has a limit on screen time

No official limit, but both mine are out most evenings playing sport. Screen time is downtime as generally we are all over.

• No TV in his room

No, i don’t agree with tv’s in bedrooms. If they are ill or something it’s no biggie to set up a small tv/laptop/ipad to watch on. Now one of them is a teen their phone is blocked from the wifi 9.30pm-7am.

• No access to the internet unsupervised, none at all. We look things up together.

They do use the internet unsupervised but I have parental controls set up so they can only access age appropriate content.

• Up to PG films/TV programs only.

Yep. Although some 12 films i did allow if i thought they were appropriate for their maturity.

• He doesn't go out on his own.

No. Although we have recently moved to an area where they have a couple of friends very close. They’re allowed to go knock for next door or go between houses with their friends. That depends on your area though.

I am the very strict mother of an 8 year old. What they want and what is good for them are not the same!

Same as you Op. I have an 8 year old DS.

He is asking for more independence and we're preparing him to be able to walk to school alone - under five mins and no roads to cross.

He sometimes plays on the park at the back of our house but we agree a time limit for him to keep coming to 'check in' and I can see the whole field from the back bedroom window.

YouTube is limited and on the living room tv because he becomes a robot and it effects his behaviour/motivation if he endlessly watches it.

DS 9 in March:

• Game console downstairs
• Never played online games like Fortnight
• No tv in room
• Very rarely on internet, only really for homework research (not interested at all in YouTube for example)
• hasn’t been out on own but goes on cub camps etc where they seem to have a lot of freedom!
• less strict on films though & he has seen some 12 rates films (avengers etc)

We have a PC set up in our living room that serves as our TV (so essentially an extra smart TV) so any internet searches are done on there with a keyboard, he can grab it any time he wants and search for whatever, but we're usually in the room if you see what I mean. Bit of a weird setup.

We live opposite a shop and he asked in November if he could go and buy things by himself which I said would be great, but he hasn't asked again since!

I have an 8yo
we have family tech. Nothing's hers, she can use the wii/ipad/mac. No fixed limits on screen time, but she does have to ask and we reserve the right to unplug if she's started glazing over.
no tv in room
we're in the same room if she's on the internet
PG films only
she can walk to the corner shop on her own - it's very close with only a car park entrance (rather than actual roads) to negotiate

My 8 year old has a tv and console in the play room. No set limits for screen time I just tell them to turn it off if I think they’ve been on too long. My 8 year old is allowed to play on our street and playground across the road with friends. Allowed to watch some 12 films but not all. I supervise internet access and all devices capable of internet searching are downstairs.

My 9yo is allowed child restricted internet access unsupervised (he can’t delete the history though so I monitor it). He also goes out alone to friends houses a few streets away or to play on the local field. We do limit screen time though and he doesn’t have any screens in his bedroom.
Watches up to 12a films if I deem them appropriate and no tv after 9 aside for rare exceptions (football usually).

*Almost 9yo that should say

our youngest is 8 and some of these rules still apply to the 10 and 12 year olds!!

We have no electronics in the bedroom - TVs, consoles etc. They do have tablets and the older 2 have phones which they can use in their rooms in the day but they go off in the evening and stay downstairs overnight.
Our internet controls are very tight, like a PPs i cant go on ann summers, cosmopolition, The Sun, hollywoodgossip etc etc so we dont watch them on the internet but i know DH occasionally looks through the browsing history.
We all have our own profiles on the PC but DH is the Admin and can look at/control everything.
We know the passcodes to the kids phones/tablets and they know we can look at them anytime.
They all have thier own email addresses but copies of anything they send and recieve also go to DH
We have family sharing on the phones so if they want to download an App, even free ones it sends a message to us and one of us has to authourise it.
We dont limit screen time specifially but we will make sure we are out and about some of the day or we will enforce 'family time' which means, board games, watching a film together or just reading/playing leg etc
regarding age limits on films and games, we read about a film beforehand and decide if we feel it is suitable. Games i leave to DH and he will research before hand, eg Roblux he set it up with the tightest controls etc
We have also taught the children to use the internet responsibly and to never give out any personal info, if they want to write something on the internet we have to read and approve it first. DD once accidentally posted a blank message on a youtube message and she came to me worried about it! if someone tries to befriend them they always show us first so we can deal with it and make sure it is someone known to us.
DS2 age 8 doesnt go anywhere with out us. if we are out he may go out of sight with his older siblings but never too far and he always has defined boundaries to adhere to.

8yo DD.

She has an ipad and phone, I decided not to set limits a couple of years ago and she pretty much self regulates. It's not a forbidden fruit so she mostly chooses to do other things and not spend hours on it. She doesn't have social media although keeps asking for instagram I've said no. Other than that I don't supervise her, she is quite mature and I'd rather she trusted me to tell me when something isn't right. I check the browser history from time to time and never found anything concerning, she mostly watches people unbox things on youtube

She's been allowed to the park across the road since she was 6 with a group of friends. She's recently just started venturing to the shops about a 5/10 minute walk away and across a main road. Her school and the high school is a 25 minute walk away across multiple main roads and she will have to walk to and from high school at 11 so we're working towards this. She'll also be "home alone" until I get home from work at 5.30pm age 11 so this year we'll be working on this... probably just the odd 10/20 minutes while I take the dog out or nip to the shops but it's a start.

I generally find wrt this sort of stuff mumsnet is a bubble and most posters err on the side of protectiveness. I grew up in a working class ex-mining type place where we were out from dawn until dusk, regularly left to sort ourselves out in the school holidays because our mum had to work and holiday clubs were expensive. Without wanting to sound "never did me any harm", there were definitely things we were exposed to which would raise a few eyebrows but we grew up extremely street wise and bloody good at sorting out problems. We used to get on and off buses easily to take ourselves swimming and get a chippy in the city before I'd even got to high school. This was in the early 00s so not too long ago (I'm 26 now). When I got to high school in the naice middle class town a few miles away I was shocked that my new friends were completely incapable of getting a bus to the city for a day out. Literally had to be picked up and dropped off door to door. And very immature and sheltered too. I've always raised my daughter to be a little street urchin like I was and as a result she is very smart, quick witted and will call out things that don't seem right. Works for us!

Those of you who don't let your children play games like fortnite, do you ever consider the social aspect? My daughter is fortnite mad, I'm lucky as she self-regulates and will happy just have an hour, so she is allowed. Her social group, after school and weekends, join and meet online to play together. They discuss it at school. It's not why she plays, she genuinely enjoys it as they all do, but if she wanted to play and I chose not to allow it at all, I would worry about her not being able to chat to friends about the thing they all have in common.

We allow video games, I don't know why people don't have them at all. I just don't understand it. I honestly see nothing wrong with a bit of time playing a game they enjoy. Clearly taking out those who become addicted - that's a different subject.

We check on films before my eldest watches (mostly for romantic scenes!) but don't always check on music - I don't feel entirely comfortable about censoring music but then we don't listen to rap with explicit lyrics in our house anyway (rap as an example as I know there's a lot of explicit stuff out there). We do listen to rock, which can include some but it's not so obvious, if you know what I mean. She's also going to know the words...that's obvious. I was shocked at first when I realised she knew words aged about 9 but it's a part of growing up. The important thing is knowing how they're used as expression.

Back to films, they're usually a 12 or less anyway as she's not interested in anything older. I think back and was watching Dirty Dancing and Grease at her age and the complexity of some storylines went over my head! If she wanted to watch a 15 I'd probably check it first but I wouldn't feel comfortable with it tbh.

At the risk of sounding sniffy, Fortnite has a PEGI 12 rating, and is a first person shooter game - so no, I don't worry about the social aspect of not being able to join in: I worry about the fact that many primary age kids are allowed to play it. (It was actually mentioned by the lead on a safeguarding course I was on the other day as an example of unsuitable stuff primary age kids are accessing (particularly where they're able to interact with strangers, but just generally the content, too).)

My DS has school mates who play it and plenty more who don't, but is adept at picking up stuff like the dances to be able to fit in any with references. As his parent, I feel my job is to make sure he's protected and accessing stuff that's suitable, not fitting in with those in his peergroup who are allowed to play things that I don't think are suitable.

Sorry, got sidetracked - OP, our rules are pretty much identical to yours.

I let my 8 and 9 year.old.go.to the shops on their own- it's.up the road and I can see them. They are allowed to have sleepover at friends homes. No tv's allowed in bedrooms and iPad given to me at 9pm.

They bake, cook, dance and have a lovely healthy lifestyle. I think it's enough to keep them busy with extra curricular activities x

i have a nearly 9YO and our rules are similar.

They will NEVER have consoles/TVs in their room, always in the den downstairs. Gaming only for weekends. tv screen time limited through the week.

DS is allowed to go to the neighbours house to play on his own and walk home (but his mum texts me that he's leaving and vice versa!)

DS has watched some 12/15 films but they are fantasy ones - hobbit, pirates of the carribbean, star wars. we dont let him watch 'real life' style 12/15 where it would include sex/swearing.

i will let DS go to the corner shop and back (about 6 houses away).

These rules wont be changing in the near future! and i have no interest whatsoever in what little jimmy from school may be allowed - my house my rules!

ohflip thankfully DS is not really tech orientated (neither are DH and I) so he never asked about fortnite. but no, i would not consider a 'social' argument as a good enough reason to let him do something i didn't consider appropriate and shooter style games in my view are not appropriate for children. I have no issue with being 'the bad guy' on things like this.

I have a 7yo heading towards 8 soon.

We don't have game consoles or tv in her room, but she does have a tablet and can access you tube and the internet. We don't restrict it, but I find she normally only goes on for half an hour in the morning.

She can play out in our village as long as she doesn't go up to the A road on one side, and as long as she lets me know if she goes in a friend's house.

She gets £1 pocket money a week and she can spend it as she likes (there are no shops she can walk to though, so I have to take her).

But I am more rigid about things like homework, piano practice and bedtime which are set in stone.