According to my 14 year old ....

[Dontgiveamonkeys1350]

I’m being completely unresonable by not letting him have his phone after a certain time in the evening.

Apparently every other teenager is allowed their phones when they are in bed.

Im a terrible mother.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who makes their child come off the computer at a reasonable time and plug phones in outside of their bedrooms. Then I can feel less terrible

We have devices downstairs from 9. Its changing from today (back to school) to 8pm. DSs are 13 and 11

Also have screentime block so only 30 minutes of gaming and 30 minutes of browsing a day (phone, messaging etc are not restricted).

Phones away an hour before bedtime here and on charge downstairs overnight (for me and dh too). Just as well really. Ds1, who was pretty good at self-regulating last year, has recently become obsessed w the damn thing. He's also said he's going to go back to doing homework downstairs after a couple of months experimenting w doing it in his bedroom- gets distracted.

DS1 (14) keeps his phone in his room, while DS2 (12) chooses to charge his overnight in the kitchen. If we had any worries about DS1 playing on it at night, we'd have it off him in a shot, but he's not given us any concerns so far.

The blue light from a phone isn't good for anyone at night, no matter how old they are.
There's no blue light on my phone at night as I don't use it. I keep it within reach in case of emergency.

user1511042793
I think your being naive.
I was involved in a CP case where child of 11 was sexting older boys at night her parents had no idea middle class etc. Police woman who was involved said it’s common for kids who have phone in their bedrooms to access porn and chat rooms meant for adults

All phones outside rooms after 9pm

No phone after 8pm here for my 13 and 14 year olds.

Go on to charge and wifi turned off.

Mason thats fine as long as you aren't checking the time (or worse your messages etc obviously) on it immediately before you close your eyes and during the night if you wake up for any reason, and it's not lighting up when messages come in on silent but not switched off.

DC,15 and 12, have to leave all devices in the kitchen at night. I think it’s too distracting otherwise as their phones beep with messages from their friends right up until we go to bed at midnight.

DS has his GCSEs this year and by his choice either leaves his phone downstairs whilst studying or comes downstairs to work near us as he finds he can concentrate better.

user1511042793 I think your being naive

I agree. DS1 is a very good kid. He is studious, polite helpful and well behaved. He doesn't spend very much time at all on social media (circa 10 texts/messages a month ). He did use the kindle app and an online comic subscription on his phone so we let him have it upstairs. He was 11. We walked in one night to see him swipe it under his pillow and when we checked it he had been looking at all sorts. Not hard core porn but certainly stuff that we wished he hadn't seen. Lots of links and references to sexual stuff on online forums etc. Lots of internet searches but he used private browsing and so when we'd checked the phone previously, nothing had been showing up. He cried a lot and told us he was pleased we'd found out because he knew he shouldn't be doing it but it had become addictive.

We learned the hard way. I'm just pleased we found out before he accessed anything hard core.

Mine aren't allowed their upstairs at any time

We’ve just started allowing dss his at night. He’s 14. This is because he likes listening to audible to fall asleep. Also he is allowed it all the time at his mum’s so needs to learn to self regulate. I turn WiFi off if I need to - this way he still has access to alarm and audible.

My DD wasn't allowed her phone at all when she was at home with me and DP apart from an hour after tea, once she'd helped wash-up, dry-up and clean the kitchen that is.

When she started going to college, I relaxed a bit about it but told her we'd still enforce the rule if she was unreasonable about it (i.e. all night on her phone). By then, we'd got into a nice routine so she used to just have it on the arm of the chair but wouldn't really look at it.

We had some epic rows about it but now she's 18 she can see the logic and she's actually very judgmental of her peers who are glued to their phones

I'm the worst parent ever
No tech or tv before school. Radio only
No tech including tv in bedrooms
1 1/2 hour 5 days a week of PS4/tablet. Two days free. They can look up homework stuff though.
All screens (incl tv) off at least three quarters of an hour before bed. Strangely enough, DT1 has had night terrors on more than one occasion if he goes to bed with no 'down time' so for my sanity we are sticking to that one.
They self regulate by doing their homework in their allotted home-work-tech time or they don't get it done and the consequence is theirs.

I definitely agree that it's good idea to get them to switch it off a decent amount of time before bed. The blue light makes it hard to sleep. DS is only 3 so not an issue yet, but DP and I have a rule that phones and tablet must be turned off half an hour before sleep (we read instead). We do keep the phones etc in our bedroom though, because we're adults with enough self control to stick to the rule. Also since we don't have a landline in our bedroom, we need access to a phone in case of fires or break-ins, or in case someone urgently needs to get in contact.

How does this work with the parental controls when phones and iPads have 3G they still can use them surely

Cut off at 9pm here, too (two nearly-14-year-olds); the notifications go on all night from their peer group, and they've got sleeping to do.

They have an alarm clock in their room, and have been getting up independently for school for years now.

@DollyPS the screen time app is installed on their phone and yours and they are linked by account. The app restricts usage. So it doesn't make any difference if they are on 3G or wifi. Once they have used up their time, apps won't work anymore. You can set it that text messaging / calls still work when time is up on other apps. On my daughter's phone everything is included in the time limit except kindle app, spotify and messaging/calls. Then you can set a bedtime when nothing works even if they haven't used up their time for the day.

I keep my phone next to me all night. I have a feature where it won't make any noise for calls between 10pm and 6am. No blue light. I pay for it so I'll use it as I see fit.

You can do what you like strawberri - how do you prevent your phone emitting blue light? Have you found an ap that does that even for notifications?

Dcs often say.... but all my friends can do this and that. Turns out they dont at all! Prob loads of parents of yr dc are limiting phone use too. Just do whats best for yours in yr opinion. Its not that yr dc is being spoilt just trying it on. The trouble is unless you know the other parents theres no way of checking. Doesnt matter what the others are doing anyway. There will always be one or two that let their dcs have phones late either because they cant be arsed to argue with their dcs don't care or have lost control. Some don't believe its a problem. If most parents stopped then the others would have no one to text which would put paid to it. That'll never happen thou.

"Love the poster who is teaching self control by giving their teens 24 hr a day access hmm - ask any teacher/anyone who works with teens if they think this is a good idea."

Then I'm guilty. I'm a teacher and I trust(ed) DDs to come off their phones. There is no phone signal whatsoever here so it's all through the router & signal booster. They know that if they don't adhere to it, I'll change the password and remove the fuse on the signal booster because I'm mean.

I do ask what they are doing; often in GCSE year it was group revision/chats. I've looked at them and they really were work-related. It was good training for DD1 as she is now at uni and has already acquired the self-discipline to do well.

No tech after 7.30pm and no screens ever, upstairs.

DS is 12, his phone goes off at 9pm (I use an app that blocks it) and is left in the living room. However, it will still send notifications through. Some of his classmates are still whatsapping at 11pm or even midnight. They're yr7 FFS!

I will increase his time in line with bedtime as he gets older, but we have an agreement that whilst I'm paying for it, I'm in control (obviously he will get full control at 16ish, but I'm not letting him know that yet!).

"Everybody else's parents" predate phone technology by generations. If you offered to compare notes with "everybody else's parents" you might see some horrified backtracking. If other teenagers can self-regulate, good for them, but you know your own offspring best.