Are you serious i am 15 years old!!!!!

[Ohmygodareyouserious]

As the title would suggest my daughter is 15 and in year 10 (4th year old school). I take her I phone off her at 9pm every night (wind down time), she has a 10pm bed time (although with her faffing always more like 10.30) and a curfew when she goes out at the weekend. Last night she exploded, apparently I am the ONLY mother of, not only all of her friends, but the whole of her school, that thinks it is reasonable to treat a 15 year old this way!! She is old enough to regulate her own bedtime, curfew and internet use apparently and everyone else's parents that she speaks to think that I am crazy. I do know that all of her friends are allowed their phones all night as hers is constantly lighting up whenever I go into the kitchen (sometimes at gone midnight) which to me means they are obviously not regulating their use. AIBU? Please tell me that I am not the only one, I am beginning to feel as though she is hard done too.

I never regulated my children's phone use, but even a few years ago (they are 22 and 19) they didn't use them like they do now. Yes there was Facebook but there was no Instagram and SnapChat and Twitter wasn't used much. Smart phones were not readily available.

I see them now (and many other younger people from 13-33) with their phones and the scrolling and messaging is constant. How would they function without them?

So, despite me being a lot more slack, I actually don't think you are being unreasonable, and if mine were younger now I may be more strict.

I do however BAN all phones at the table, any table, I cannot abide to see families out for dinner and all of them are looking at their phones.

I don't think you're being unreasonable at all. I think it does help though if there are similar rules for everyone in the household, adults included. We have a 'no tech in bedrooms overnight' rule, everything goes into the office on charge. Also a 'no checking phones at the table' rule, though I have to say the only one inclined to break that one is DH, teen dd being mostly far too focused on her dinner

Dd is 16 now and we used to be much more strict with phone, internet etc but then my friend pointed out that in two years she will be 18. She needs to learn to make her own way. We have our wifi on a timer so its switches off at 11pm but I don't take her phone anymore.

She goes to bed herself and I don't call her in the morning anymore she has to set her alarm and get up and get her own breakfast. I want her to be able to cope when she leaves home.

Her curfew at weekends depends on what she is doing. Tonight movie and a cheeky nando's (was sat an a bench with a bottle of cider in my day). To be honest I usually taxi her everywhere anyway. I am also the ONLY one who insists on meeting the parents of friends whose house she is asking to stay at, only has 3 of these for that reason - she is allowed friends over to sleep any night she wants, weekends and holidays but rarely do they check with me that I have them. I always check with parents when she is staying over, this may seem untrusting but one of her friends had an unsupervised party 3 weeks ago and it didn't end well. My dc went but was home for 11 and told me all about it the day after. they had purposely not told her it was unsupervised as they said she tells me everything and of course my call to mum to check would have blown the whole thing.

Your doing the right thing.

Even when my daughter was in the last year of school she had a 9.00pm bedtime and lights out at 9.30 that she stuck to herself without any nonsense because she knew that having to be on her way to school at 6.50 for a 7.20 start meant she needed her sleep.

There were no electronics in her room either, no one had them and its the still the same today.

Just read your last post. You really are doing the right things you know and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And whilst my children would moan and say oh so and so's mum blah blah blah, and I hate you blah blah blah, you're such a spoilsport blah blah blah - I notice they are all doing the same things with their children.

Ya and yanbu, it may be time to let her be a bit more adult, being a grown up is something you learn, it doesn't just kick in over night. She must feel you don't trust her to do things and self regulate her behaviour at all. However you are quite right to not allow phone time at night, the light from the screen is blue 'morning' light and it tricks our brains into waking up, also a good sleep pattern is so important, we could all stimulate out minds into the small hours but we wouldn't function to the best of our ability, explain this and why you make the rules you do. Tell her you expect her to keep to these and if you catch her flouting these rules you will be proven right in having micro managed her this long. She will push it but you will have to loosen the reins at some point, ime the earlier you start the younger you have made a responsible self reliant adult.

Teens do tend to have only 2 friends. These are Everybody, whose parents allow whatever your child wants to do, and Nobody, who has restrictions on them applied by a tyrant parent! 😉

DS will be 17 soon, and he is good about turning his phone off at night, but we do have a rule that he should be thinking about bed by 10.30 if he has school next morning. Otherwise, it would be even harder at 7.00am! And naturally, no one else's parents have such restrictive guidelines.

My daughter is also year 10 and 15, she actually has phone and tablet taken off 9 and then bed is 10. She does not go out weekends as she is in the army cadets so is away a lot with them.

I can't really comment on the bed time, as every teen is different and so needs different amounts of sleep. However, very well done you for taking the phone off her - I was starting to think I was the only one that did that! Lots of parents tell me "Oh I trust him / her, so I don't need to take their phone off them at night." I wish those same parents were round my house late at night to see who is sending all the messages flashing up on my DD's phone!

I have a 15 year old and he goes to bed at 10 and the phone has to be off or else there is Big Trouble. This is completely normal.

I'm having the same conversation with my dd and she's 11. It depresses the hell out of me that there are few parents actually putting any sort of limit on social media - her friends message at 10/11/12 during the week.

Year 10 and 11 are the stressful years she needs her sleep. I don't think you are being unreasonable I plan on doing exactly the same as you.

My kids have regulated their own bedtime from 3ish!

When it's a novelty they take the p*ss and end up staying up late, after a week or so the novelty wears off and they go to sleep when they're tired.
They go to their room at a sensible time, but then are free to read or whatever until they're tired. They put their own lights out. No devices in the bedroom though.

Beeziekn33ze
perfect!

We have a no devices in bedrooms overnight rule. It applies to everyone in the family, adults included. We also have no TVs in any of the bedrooms. No-one gets special treatment.

Re bedtimes - it depends on when she needs to get up. Teenagers that age should be getting 9-10 hours of sleep a night for optimal functioning. Most teenagers get nowhere near that. This is a bad thing, not something we should be encouraging by saying teenagers should not have set bedtimes.

In an ideal world, school for teenagers should start later than 9 in order to match their body clocks more closely. Unfortunately that is never going to happen, so we parents will just have to be tough in order to get our teens to sleep enough.

My DD1 is 15 - she has lights out at 9.30 because she is up before 7.

No gadgets in any bedroom at bedtime here. The 13 year old tends to wander off to bed between nine thirty and ten thirty. If she's knackered the morning after she'll have an earlier night to make up for it.

My 15 yr old ds has a bedtime of 10pm on a school night we don't remove devices unless he's abusing our trust and the weekend and school holidays it's bed before 11.30 he's fairly good and is normally asleep by then anyway most of his mates are the same with only a few having no set bedtime.

My DS15 says exactly the same to me. He is the ONLY one and everyone thinks he is soooo hard done by, I am a laughing stock . I say phone down at 10pm and lights out by 10.30 on school nights (10.30/11pm weekends) but really I think that's too late, your timings are better. I can remember saying these things to my parents when I was a teenager. It's a strategy to destabilise us

Obviously everyone parents different , however the first thing I thought of was that she will be 16 in a years time, legally able to have sex, so maybe it's time to let her grow up and become responsible under your terms rather than the backlash when they are old enough and have no idea what to do for themselves!!!!

My ds 13 has no set bedtime, he is also allowed phone in his room overnight. He is 95% of the time asleep by 10.30, more often than not 10. He is already learning to get enough sleep and not to stay awake on his phone all night. I have access to his Facebook, and he knows that I do check messages etc so if I see him awake he will lose his phone.

But every teenager is different, so if it works for you then carry on. Just pick your battles - you need to with teenagers! I'm not happy with some of the things my boy gets up to, but they are only minor things. The major things that are important to me in my way of parenting are non negotiable.

to me - parenting a teenager is a nightmare and there has to be some give and take..... And also make sure they are getting the opportunity to learn life skills whilst still in a loving family home......

DD's don't have phones yet but they already know that it'll be devices stay down at bedtime. I don't keep mine upstairs at all ever.

I teach pupils who yawn their way through lessons and ask them
If they've been on their phones
and they almost always say yes.

As an aside, it really cannot be healthy sleeping with smart phones under pillows, surely?

IMHO you're being far too strict for someone who is a year younger than I was when I had a full time job and moved out of home. At 15 I worked fulltime also (extended work experience placement who bent the rules in order to have me working fulltime and paying me).

My Mum wouldn't have done what you are but then she couldn't have either since I paid for it and it was my property.

at 15 she's probably old enough that she should be taking some responsibility for these things herself. you do her no favours by micromanaging her

i suggest letting her be provisionally in charge of her phone use - if she is then habitually staying up so late that it has negative effects the next day then bring the rules back in but letting her learn to control herself is teaching her useful skills

god knows the time i snuck around the block on the pc and stayed online till 5am as a teenager and spent the next day feeling like death trying to function on 3hrs sleep taught me more about responsible internet use than it being turned off at 10pm ever did

I think you are storing up trouble. I have had two teenage daughters! By being so strict you are setting yourself up for rebellion at some point. I would think it's better to allow some freedom and 15. Children of overly strict parents always go wild at uni.