What fairly normal things do you not let your DC do?

[Mayflyoff]

I won't let my DC have candles, my 14 yo is not impressed. I also don't let them go on fairground rides, though I'm OK with permanent rides at theme parks. Are there things you don't let your DC do, that their friends seem to do?

Actually I’m with @drspouse on this one. My kids don’t have devices in their rooms and I don’t plan on changing that any time soon. At 13 and 14 they still need support and supervision. They have quiet space to do homework without being in their rooms and can watch/listen to whatever they need to. I don’t want them scrolling on phones at midnight, and want to easily keep an eye on what they’re doing online. That might change when my DS is 17 and doing his Highers but for now there’s lots of places they can do their work without needing to use their bedroom.

TBH I also have a device free bedroom, no screens, tv or work in there so it’s pretty normal in my house.

But that is an issue @drspouse why don’t you trust her

I am with you that she is 11 and too young for social media but that is different to not trusting. Children can be far better at judging these things than you think

as I said I have always been with mine who is now 16 and she is very good at it - becuase starting now no it isn’t just your job to keep her safe it is your job to do that alongside giving her the tools and trusting her to in a slow and methodical way

because I assume high school is about to hit you and that is very tricky to navigate my advice start talking and trusting her

because you are right social media is like a motorway but it is for everyone

Sleepovers

As it happens all our bedrooms are device free DD and DS have record players as both like music to sleep
DD works downstairs (she is now) so I think a bedroom should be for sleeping and creating a calm environment

I think there’s a difference between not trusting your child and recognising their limitations/capacity. I trust both of my kids but I also recognise they are kids, with the immature, incomplete thinking that comes with being kids.

So, if they have their phones in their bedroom they’ll end up messing about with it all night, and be tired and irritable the next days. That’s one thing if it’s the weekend but quite another if they’re in school unable to concentrate. They aren’t old enough yet to avoid the temptation to watch cat video til 3 in the morning, so we have a house rule about screens in bedrooms. That will change and adjust as they get older, and I’m sure they’ll make mistakes, but 13 isn’t an adult with adult cognition so we need boundaries.

I don't want my adult kids having candles. I just think they are really dangerous

I do lots of things that I expect my children not to do - drink alcohol, go to bed late, watch age restricted tv shows. I also do lots of things that they don't have to do like work and cook dinner every night.

I'm okay with the concept of them realising I swear but they can't.

I agree @Jellycatspyjamas but there should be rigid boundaries expectations of behaviour that everyone has even adults and then the boundaries that should be continuously moving and growing as they grow with them - age restrictions are a great one for example DD and I watched a 15 recently that we would never have done when she was 13.

but we should trust them with the age appropriate stuff

candles - both DD and I have terrible allergies so burning candles is a no. She does have a couple to look pretty and smell nice but not to burn!

as an aside I think we put far too much into the idea that an adult cognition is somehow fine because it isn’t adults also sometimes so stupid things and make mistakes - big ones

As I said before, if a 15 year old girl is sending nudes then imo there’s more to discuss than which room she took the photos in. Ideally she would be able to decide not to do this because she respects herself, has good self esteem that doesn’t rely on others, knows her own values and can defend them, is able to say no, understands the risks and can see the potential consequences. She shouldn’t have to be prevented from doing it by banning devices in her room. (Which won’t work anyway - if you’re already catching your 11 year old with her phone under the covers then presumably even she could have posted photos by now if she wanted.)

I’m not really talking about 11 year olds tbh, obviously they need their tech to be monitored carefully. It was more your idea that she would never be allowed any device in her room, so I’m talking about older teens who need the freedom to learn to make decisions for themselves in a safe environment with plenty of support. Ideally also safe in the knowledge that their parents trust them, and that therefore it’s ok to trust themselves. And I don’t need to read posts about 15 year old girls having been there with DD and her friends and talked some of them through some very tricky situations.

Ideally also safe in the knowledge that their parents trust them, and that therefore it’s ok to trust themselves.

I think that trust is essential, not just that I trust my kids but that they can trust that when they do get it wrong I’ll be there to help them through whatever it is. I’ve been talk to my DS recently about how there are very few things that can’t be fixed as long as I know what’s happened. He needs to trust that I think highly of him, and will give the benefit of the doubt , while also holding clear boundaries.

Ah yes. My kids are at uni now and we sometimes look at a random videos of them and their friends when at primary school eg recreating a dance from Strictly, or performing a ‘play’. Such fun memories. The 4am Lego building session, not so much ;-)

Because she isn't trustworthy! Whether for reasons of immaturity, thinking we are foolish, or impulsivity, she just isn't.

There are some things we DO trust her with, even though she doesn't always get them right. We can send her to the shops for milk, fruit, and a tin of beans and she will go to the shop, spend they money we've given her on things for the house, but forget that we said fruit and instead buy cheese, and even if told not to, she will also buy herself some sweets. She can be told 1000 times that the snacks in the cupboard are for her to take one to school each day next week, she'll say yes, and then eat 4 of them over the weekend and complain on Tuesday there are none left.
She'll tell her flute teacher she was late for her lesson because she was late out of school, when we know she was late because she got home and decided to start doing something else instead of heading off for flute.
She goes "to bed" and puts on her pyjamas but then we come up later and discover she's been merrily emptying my jewellery box in our bedroom or playing with her toys in the study instead of doing anything towards trying to go to sleep.
She tells me she's brushed her hair when I can see it's a bird's nest.

Obviously she'll get better as she gets older, but she can't be trusted with quite a lot of really important things. Even if there are 15 year olds who can be trusted not to scroll all night on their phones, I very much doubt she will be one of them. So we'll increase our trust in other areas, like we are doing.

@NormaMajors1992coat she doesn't have anywhere to post nudes, thankfully, though I don't think she'd take them, she takes loads of selfies, and she doesn't have any social media to post them on. She could be emailing them to people but she isn't doing that, at least.

I think we have a different view of trust - she sounds like she is an on the immature side of 11 and that’s fine but you are going to have to change boundaries

Is she Year 6 because it sounds as if High School is going to be an adjustment

All of these are things that I would expect an 11 year old to be able to do, or at least, most of the time. I wouldn't put this in a "not trustworthy" bracket, but would consider it significantly behind her peers in terms of maturity and general skills/independence.

Do you not think an adult can assess their own risk?

How do you know she hasn’t got social media and isn’t emailing photos, just out of interest? It’s pretty simple to hide that kind of behaviour if she wanted to.

Unless they’re going to live with their parents for ever, at some point DC need to learn how to sleep in an environment where their use of devices is not policed. Kids who move into university halls will be sleeping within reach of a phone and a laptop at least. So they need to figure out what’s best for them and find a way to do it. Not allowing them to work things out on their own tells them that you don’t trust them, don’t see them as capable of deciding things for themselves, don’t think they should have autonomy. It’s really damaging for older teens to get these messages from their parents imo. Not to mention counter productive - they’ll just find ways of doing it secretly and will be less likely to come to you if things go wrong, because they know they’ll get a pointless bollocking.

Unless they’re going to live with their parents for ever, at some point DC need to learn how to sleep in an environment where their use of devices is not policed

Some kids really need a bit more scaffolding than others - I trust that folk here know their kids and their capacity.

I am not sure the ones that still think they can police adult children do and it’s hard having a parent whose anxiety driven thought process still wants to out barriers up.

some kids do need more scaffolding and maturity is not the same for everyone and for everything and I agree it is about creating an appropriate scaffolding for the child you have - and that won’t be the same for every child or even siblings DD and DS need different approaches

it you cannot let anxiety about choking/setting things on fire/cycling on roads be part of it

Completely agree. I do think though that deciding now that DC will never be allowed any devices in the bedroom and may only chat to their friends or watch videos or revise in communal areas of the house is odd and sends all kinds of damaging messages to the child. And it doesn’t teach them how to manage their own use of phones etc, which is a really important thing they need to know.

She goes "to bed" and puts on her pyjamas but then we come up later and discover she's been merrily emptying my jewellery box in our bedroom or playing with her toys in the study

This sounds quite childish behaviour for an 11y old. So perhaps this is why you seem more anxious and restrictive than many. I kind of get that now.

My now 20y daughter would never have considered sending a nude pic. She thinks it’s crazy to do so. We have spoken so much re the risks of the internet and social media from an early age. Because once they have left home, they are on their own and have to be able to protect themselves.

Even the title of this thread acknowledges that being so restrictive is not usual: what “normal” things do you prevent your kids from doing? Perhaps it’s not what the OP meant, but the word “normal” can be very biased.

I am not sure the ones that still think they can police adult children do and it’s hard having a parent whose anxiety driven thought process still wants to out barriers up.

Thats a fair point, really by 16/17 parenting is much more guidance and support than rule following and parenting needs to gradually move towards a good degree of independence by then.

Record players?! 🤣

We control her internet use, the sites she visits (all have to be approved by us and DH checks her site visits) and the emails she sends (we set up her login).
She is immature (to the PP) and is still in Y6. And trusting her is EXACTLY what I've described - asking her to do something and trusting that she'll do it. Not thinking she can do something different and get away with it.

She's not very socially savvy but she's pleasant and playful and the other children seem to like her (call for her to play in the park, come to her sleepover etc) so we suspect she will find her group in high school.

She's able to discuss who is behaving unsuitably, and why they might be doing it, we don't have much to compare because her older brother has SEN and is not really able to do that. There's lots to build on but she is not able to handle the responsibility of any unsupervised access at the moment, and given her general immaturity has always been the case, we suspect for quite some time to come.

Her friends divide into about 1/3 supervised access and 2/3 limited but not really supervised (no phone shut off in the evening, no supervision of messages but no social media yet).

I think there has always been parents who are OTT and don't let their kids grow up.

This thread reminds me of 4 siblings I knew off, who all still lived in the family home, all retired (some might have passed on by now). None of them had ever been married or had a partner.

I often wonder what happened in that house when they were in their young adulthood when they should have been out meeting people spreading their wings getting ready to settle down.