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.

And 15 is almost adult.

15 is 3 ways away from being an adult .That's another 20% of her life away!

Sorry, but asking you to look after her phone whilst she revises is not a sign that she can't self regulate. It's a sign that she's sensible enough to know she's going to be tempted, has acknowledged this, and come up with a sensible solution.

That makes me think even more that it's time you trusted her to regulate her own bedtime and phone usage. You have to start trusting them to become independent of you at some stage.

Bedtime at 15?

Limiting screen time is fine, but I wouldn't impose a bedtime at this age.

There's a fine line between being controlling and setting healthy limits. I'm not sure what your situation is, but I'd think about why you have the rules you do.

Thanks for answering my question about what the rules were when she was 10.

I think that you need to increase her privileges. In 5 years her bedtime has only been put back by an hour and although she is now allowed a phone, it's use is heavily controlled.

I'd relax both phone and bedtime and see if she learns to self regulate. She won't learn without the chance to try.

Also, I think calling parents of anyone she's staying with is babying at this age. Let her get on with it but be a safety net for her questions and concerns. She's not a little kid any more, it's time for her to start learning independence.

I didn't have a bedtime when I was 15. I went to bed when I was tired. I started going clubbing at 16 and had no curfew, I came home when I'd had enough. But I was pretty sensible/boring, and have always been an early bird rather than a night owl, so I was usually home by 12 at the latest at that age. I'm too old to have had a mobile though...

I definitely think YABU about bedtime.... Not sure about the other things, depends how sensible and mature she is.

You are very over bearing and I can understand why she exploded like she did. To be honest I think a bedtime for a 15 year old is ridiculous, as is taking her phone off her at 9PM!!!! Seriously???

Out teen, although slightly younger, doesn't have a bed time and she can take her phone up with her - It's no odds to me because I am a wifi nazi and her phone is PAYG with minimal data that she burns through in about an hour at the start of every month. So it's not like she can sit up all night watching porn or something.

Relax a little. She's fifteen, almost an adult. Stop treating her like a child.

Out teen, although slightly younger, doesn't have a bed time and she can take her phone up with her - It's no odds to me because I am a wifi nazi and her phone is PAYG with minimal data that she burns through in about an hour at the start of every month. So it's not like she can sit up all night watching porn or something

So its not as if you're DD is having to make choices regarding being responsible with her phone and settling down at a reasonable hour? All thats happened is that you've taken that choice away from her full stop - not that its taught her anything given how she's used her data up at the start of every month.

You're doing the same as the OP but in a different way - not that its the OP giving another parent her character.

We have a phone/electronics curfew for DS (for me and DH too as no-one was sleeping well with them in the rooms) and a very similar bedtime. DS asked for a later bedtime/no bedtime and we tried it and he slept in and missed the bus to school twice and was generally horrid to everyone every night and morning and stopped waking himself up in the morning and was revolting if anyone tried to get him up so we went back to enforced bedtime.

My dd is 12 and bedtime is roughly 9pm, she loves her sleep so I don't think we will go much beyond 9.30 for her as she gets older as it will be impossible for her to get out of bed in the mornings.
Rules in this house no tech upstairs, everything stays downstairs to charge overnight. Only exception is if there is a sleepover.
I don't even like tech upstairs during the day, luckily she likes the PC more (Minecraft) and this is in the lounge/dining room so I can see/hear who she is speaking/Skype calling.

From a secondary school teachers perspective. I see kids regularly struggling to stay awake in lessons because they have either been out all night, up all night playing on games or on their phones. When I ask them why they are so tired they will honestly say it's because I didn't go to sleep until 4 am etc. I always wonder what on earth the parents are doing to let them turn up in such a state, especially when they are reaching the really important years with GCSEs around the corner. What you are doing may seem harsh and unfair to your daughter, but I'd say it is in her best interest. When I was that age I didn't have a mobile phone, but I did used to sneakily stay up an extra half an hour reading under the bed covers with a torch ha ha.

Ellie - same here. It's frustrating that parents don't see the effects that this has on their learning.

Years ago I read a sleep study by a reputable journalist - teenage years are similar in growth spurts to early years, but socially, the teenage age group expect more adult privileges (more independence, allowed to see more TV etc). Teenagers need more sleep if they're to develop healthily on all three way - neurologically, emotionally and physically. Fact. That said, trying to explain that to a moody demanding teenager is another kettle of fish.

To those parents who let their DC have devices upstairs I'd ask this: Do you think phones upstairs are the equivalent to reading books under the covers using torches?

It is best to take all devices away before they are supposed to be going to sleep as it's well known that "screens" including tv interfere with the production of melatonin. I think that is correct, trying to remember as my three are well into adulthood now, but yes "everybody else" is standard teenspeak, ignore and do what you think best.

I have a fourteen yr old.

No 'bed time' (she's not ten)
I do not remove her electronics but I do turn internet off at ten-thirty when we go to bed.

To rural for mobile signal.

'Meeting friends parents' - just weird at 15. !! (Quick chat on the phone to make sure they are going to
Be in. ) - This point on its own will make you the 'crazy mother'

You sound very very controlling and willing to accept your child can actually leave home next year without your consent.

Find a compromise, you are not teaching any independent thought.

My mother was like you. Drove me to leave and live with my reasonable Grandmother at 14. GM wasn't
an easy touch but gave me some space to make some of my own mistakes and learn from them.

Still passed all exams and went to very good Uni. (The only reason to say thisis to demonstrate the fact that leaving my annoying mother didn't harm my life chances)

I would let her keep the phone until she goes up to bed at 10 on school nights. Otherwise you are being responsible if a little strict. My dc are are in their 40s and on their 15th birthdays I stopped enforcing bedtimes. I found that when the novelty wore off they often went to bed earlier than before.
I do agree about curfew though. I enforced curfew until they were 18 although by then it was midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

Agree with Mousing hole. When you stop enforcing bedtime they stay up late a few nights with the novelty oof it then start going earlier than you planned. Ofter saw dd off at 9 as completely wrecked after busy day. Found with dds friends the stricter the parents the more ideas they came up with for dodging the rules and the more aggro in the house. Dd used to say how naive parents are thinking they won't find ways to break all those rules. Bottom line is respect and l would carry on with the phone regulations but let her decide her own bedtime as be late now and then but mostly grand just like yourself.

When I was 15 nearly 16 I was out at work for a time and bought my own phone (ok there wasn't even texting then) and my own laptop. My parents wouldn't have presumed to take them off me at night and I quickly learned to self regulate ready for work in the morning. Not in the UK! I also had a 50cc scooter to get me about and sometimes was working past 10pm so your bedtime wouldn't have worked either!

Since learning self regulation/ self sufficiency was a part of my growing up I now pride myself on being organised enough to start my own company and employ others successfully since my early twenties. Children need to learn to organise themselves, have self sufficiency and self regulation with support from parents.

DS1 is 13 and goes up to bed at ten. He is trusted to charge his phone at the far end of his room (big bedroom) and leave it alone after that time. He also knows the first time he's ever caught sneaking back on it, it will stay downstairs. No tv's, no Xbox, no iPads in the bedroom. If he can't sleep he can read until half ten then lights out.
Often not happy about these rules but I don't give a monkeys. He is completely unable to self regulate screens, and even as a toddler would never 'play', and just wanted to watch tv all the time!

I'm interested in the adults who don't have phones in bedrooms either, we both use ours as alarms (far more flexible than a normal alarm clock, I have different times set for different days of the week) and I assume some teenagers do this too.

TooLazy I have a big standard alarm
clock, battery operated, phone downstairs. Friend of mine died from an inoperable brain tumour a few years back and her oncologist said, that although he couldn't prove it and that there was no clinical data to support it, he wouldn't ever advocate sleeping in the same room as routers, smart phones etc. That has haunted me for obvious reasons and I'll never stray back into that territory.

Big? I meant bog standard.

Pretty flexible too really, quick turn of a dial and it's set. No great rocket science.

Yes but you need to reset it every night! Mine knows to wake me at time x on Mon and Tues, time y the other weekdays, and not at all on the weekends!
That's very sad about your friend, but a bit of a scary story and not sure if I want to add it to the list of things I'm already paranoid about.

Definitely a time regulation thing that limited how much time I spend on mumsnet would help me though!

DS (14) doesn't have a bedtime but all electronic gadgets are collected from him at about 10-10.30 ish because otherwise he would stay up all night using them. At least if he's got nothing beeping and lighting up he's more likely to sleep.

It's so difficult. I didn't have my adolescence in the digital area polite way of saying I'm old and it was a lot less complex then on so many levels. At 10 and 7 I can still control my DD's environment. In a few years time I can see me turning to MN for help