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

My dd's phone is in my bedroom from 9 pm. I did the same for DS who is now at Uni.

Before we did this with DS he would be asleep and you would hear text's dinging at 3.00 am from girls. This was when the phone went off and in our bedroom at 9 pm. .

@blueskiesandforests I could sleep on the edge of a cliff. No blue light would wake me.

Thanks everyone. It makes me realise I’m doing the right thing. He did have it in his room but couldn’t control the amount of time he was in it. Found him once at 2am in a school night. So I did the right thing.
He can carry in moaning. 😂

To those who suggest my son is secretly looking at porn he isn’t. I have full access to his phone. He doesn’t really do social media etc so it just a mini tv for him. I think that response was hysterical. But op you do what’s right for your child as you know them we don’t.

15 year old DS has to leave ALL electrical items downstairs at bedtime.

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

My son has been telling me the same story since he was about 14. I once asked a couple of parents at the parents evening whether that was the case and they all told me it wasn't, so I stopped worrying about it then.

DS can have his phone but the internet is switched off at 9pm with parental controls and the router is off totally at 10pm.

Sounds too early in the evening. A lot of friendships solidify over evening conversations in Year 7,8,9, and 10. Or they have for ds1.

Nope, not after he "accidently" streamed some crappy gamer Youtube video to the telly right at the end of a series I'd watched every episode of and I missed the ending .

It was his nose what did it and he was asleep [yeah right emoticon]

I teach a boy who can barely lift his head off the desk in lessons. His mum told me it's because he is always up so late gaming. I suggested that maybe she should stop this. She asked me how I thought she could do so! I suggested taking away the controller at a certain time each night and she looked at me like I was mad so yes you are doing the right thing!

Im currently Head of Year 11. I can tell you that you absolutely are doing the right thing. The issues that I have dealt with when it comes to mobile phones would make your blood run cold. From bullying to grooming, pornography addiction to blackmail, most of the fall out happens between 10pm and 6am. Protect your kid. Question why he wants it after 9pm anyway.

If you knew the kind of shit that went on online - forget the sex offenders masquerading as teenagers for which there are fucking thousands - I mean the bullying and sniping and sexual pressuring you would all be removing phones.

15 yo here. No tech after 8pm. Stays downstairs with us.

YANBU
14 year old here phone and all gadgets out before bed. This will continue until he leaves school. I have given him several chances to prove he can self regulate and he always blows it so that’s it.

DD is pretty good at self-regulating (have had to ask her maybe twice or three times to put it down eg at meal times) and not getting glued to her phone but it still stays downstairs at night. I see messages coming through often until 10pm and later. She is 12! No 12 year old should be texting anyone at 10pm, IMO.

I saw a notification at midnight from snap chat from one of his friends when I walked past his phone on the landing last night not son had been asleep for an hour at that point. What was so important at midnight for goodness sake.

11 yo DS leaves his phone downstairs at night. I can see at least 6 of his friends chatting on Instagram literally all night.

Two of these friends have been off school all week. One is suffering with unexplained tiredness, so being tested for glandular fever. The other is suffering from migraines. I do wonder if the parents of these two are aware that they have been up all night chatting on their phones.

Mine have always had their phones so unless there is a real reason why he can't get trusted agree with him YABU.

I have full access to his phone

But you can't see the private browsing..

Seriously, I spent the evening in tears last night after going in to DS1 and taking his phone from him without any notice at 7.15pm.

He has full parental controls on his phone and it was before the screentime cut off which locks down his phone for the night.

He was private browsing on a Harry Potter fan fiction site which passed the parental controls (but wouldn't have left a history because of private browsing) but which was basically porn. He's 13

I'm 24. I would sneak my phone back from the age of 15 anyway and wrote my own shockingly explicit erotic fanfiction to share with a couple of friends all the way through high school. There was literally nothing anyone could have done to prevent this. All the parental controls in the world can't shut down a rampantly hormonal teenage brain.

Nobody is trying to shut down a rampantly hormonal teenage brain but I am trying to protect my child from exposure to explicit porn at age 13

Yes- I'm saying that's mostly impossible so better to discuss it than hide it.

I would still be removing ds1's phone at 10pm if I hadn't been advised by the Early help team that with all that's going on with ds1 I need to pick my battles and that despite it being a bad idea for him to have his phone overnight, in the grand scheme of things it's not the hill I need to be planting my flag on (not disappearing for hours after dark and being brought home by the police would be an example of what is currently taking priority for us...). I've started turning the wifi off when I'm about to go to bed and letting ds1 hear me muttering about how shite and rubbish the wifi has got and how I need to phone virgin and complain that it goes on the blink every night etc etc. He uses up all his data within days every month so no wifi usually means no internet... No doubt at some point he'll be wise to what I'm doing but for now it's my only real option.

Yes- I'm saying that's mostly impossible so better to discuss it than hide it.

We have discussed it and now his phone is locked down to telephone and text only for the foreseeable future. He'll survive that. But the impact of being exposed to such stuff at age 13 could be significant.